Air ride suspension

Air ride uses air to adjust ride height and suspention stiffness through air springs. When adjusted right, any car will ride like it's on a cloud. I know they recently started making an air strut that could possibly fit a Z. Has a built in shock absorber too. I don't beleive that air suspention would be good for racing-I.E. Go to the track and pump up the preasure to corner better, then let some air out for a smooth ride home or cruising. From what I've researched, they are mostly for comfort and showing off. I don't beleive the current systems can handle enough preasure to make the suspention stiff enough, and the properties of air alone would inhibit much predictability. Most places I've seen these systems are older street rods and trucks owned by older folks, or kids that are too cheap to buy hydraulics for their crappy lowriders.

i thought wrx sti's had airbags as stock or as an option.

Most Linc. Town Cars (and clones) and other marks have these. They are nice when they work, but expensive to fix (at the dealer level) when they commonly fail and the car gets stranded because the susp. collapses. Aftermarket fixes are avail. tho, including going back to non-air bag suspensions. The air susp. sys. is used to level the car under various loads and does not have anything to do with ride quality. A spring is a spring unless it is a leaf spring (inferior ride quality) and whether it is a coil or an air bag makes no diff. to your rear end - or the car's.
Almost all the air shocks I have seen on cars fail at low mileage levels because the things just don't hold up in real world use.

"older street rods and trucks owned by older folks" feeling bad over here.

Charles