Suter have announced their Vampire 4 Stroke engine will cease production. In a press release published on their web site Suter apparently lay the blame on the FIA’s decision not to move to 4 stroke power plants and that has meant a lack greater sales in the future.

To all our Vampire customers and friends

In 2003 the CIK (International Kart Commission) announced that the new 4 stroke class with corresponding rules will be introduced. Until this day almost nothing has been done and the respective race categories have not been implemented.

It is hard to understand why the FIA (head of CIK) wants to have cost-efficient, cleaner & more silent engines in every motor sport under their lead but don’t care about it in karting.

As this will be probably also the case in the near future and therefore no bigger sale numbers can be expected, SRT feels impelled to stop the Vampire Kart production end of this year.

Suter Racing deeply regrets to have to take this action; the decision was not an easy one especially after all the remarkable successes in the last few years on and off track. The Vampire engine could establish itself in different championships around the world and become the No.1 four-stroke kart engine on the market.

However, the unprofitable kart project now demands in its 3rd year several investments for a technical update and the new homologation, which cannot be justified looking at today’s sale figures resulting out of the above mentioned situation.

Of course the spare parts supply will be maintained to further serve our Vampire customers and dealers. We would like to thank all these people for their trust in our products.

If one day the CIK should introduce the international 4-stroke Kart Engine Class we could imagine being back on the grid with a new Vampire engine.

Link>>

The Vampire is mainly raced in the VT250 class in Germany, but rumours circulating on the German karting forums believe that the alleged end in production is to do reliability issues more so than the lack of action from the CIK. The global recession also may have paid it’s part in the end of the Suter Vampire claiming it’s first major karting victim

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