October 2026 Update — Zen and the Art of Harmonizing Your Ride Is Here!
After more than a decade of exploration, contemplation, experimentation, writing, and refinement, my multimedia suspension e-book, Zen and the Art of Harmonizing Your Ride (ZAHYR), is now available to read and experience for FREE at Fat Cat Motorsports.
By the way, if you’re curious and you’d like to engage but aren’t sure where to begin, you can take our short Ride Harmony survey to receive a complementary 10 minute phone Q&A consultation ($50 value) to ask Jalal how Fat Cat’s experience can help you get closer to The Perfect Ride. 5 questions, 2 minutes, and a warm conversation with the Fat Cat himself to follow!
Back to ZAHYR. The draft came to me the second morning I awoke in Poland during a two-month trip in Spring 2013. I wanted to connect with my mother’s family and visit her homeland. It was an amazing experience, and since I couldn’t build dampers all I could do was think, reflect and write. Oh boy, did I write!
Over the past 13 years, I’ve learned even more about suspensions and vehicle optimization. The knowledge had to simmer and age, and finally by early 2026 I felt I had the best synthesis of ideas to put into a cohesive message. I wanted to take the best insights from the mentors I’ve had, experiments I’ve conducted or been a part of, the most relevant customer testimonials, and a vision to create The Perfect Ride: a sublime state of harmonizing a vehicle’s travel across the road with its human driver (and occupants).
ZAHYR begins with a test that I took part in during Fall of 2015. I call it the most important accidental experiment I’ve ever participated in.
I got a ride in a customer’s Audi airbag-equipped wagon and dead dampers! We did a bounce frequency test in the garage to confirm the new springs would create Flat Ride, but then I had the crazy idea to take the car out, drained / degassed shocks and all, to see how this would feel on the street! The owner was willing to trust me and the crucial observations I made have informed my suspension tuning ever since. Flat Ride is truly the foundation of Ride Harmony, and every other decision flows naturally when you begin with creating ‘harmony’ between the vehicle’s front and rear suspension.
Flat Ride gives you Fast Setting. This means the front end steers while the rear end stabilizes! This universal principle applies to FWD, RWD, or AWD vehicles!
Today, those discoveries form part of my Ride Harmony and Race Synergy Framework™, an approach refined through decades of driving, interacting with my customers and integrating their feedback, testing, measuring, racing, and always wondering what more is possible.
The synthesis of Ride Harmony and Race Synergy is what I call Sublime Speed.
My book, abbreviated ‘ZAHYR’, brings together everything from my origin story as a budding driving enthusiast and suspension tuner, to physics experiments, customer testimonial videos and real-world results. Whether you’re an enthusiastic, a daily driver, a hard-core racer, an engineer, or simply curious about what makes a car really connect to the ground without beating you up, I invite you to dive in.
Read my free multimedia book:
Zen and the Art of Harmonizing Your Ride — Fat Cat Motorsports
Have you felt Sublime Speed?
— S. Jalal Ahmad
From the Archives: Where This Journey Began
The reflections below were written before the publication of ZAHYR in August 2026. I’ve preserved them as part of the history of The Perfect Ride and the evolution of my work at Fat Cat Motorsports.
What was once a developing manuscript has become a living multimedia exploration of Ride Harmony, Race Synergy, and the pursuit of Sublime Speed.
From Jalal:
Some years ago (starting in 2013 during my first trip to Poland to visit my mother’s family), I began working on a comprehensive book sharing my journey through the world of suspension design and optimization. It’s no exaggeration to say I was totally absorbed for weeks and put so much thought, reflection, data, and observations into it. I had tentatively titled it “Zen and the Art of Harmonizing Your Ride” or ZAHYR. It remains in draft form and only a few intrepid associates have read it.
Since that first extensive draft, I’ve developed some new technology and integrated some existing methods to create an even more-refined approach to suspension optimization. Also, the reality of short attention spans and a multi-media world where attention is the commodity made me rethink my communication strategy. Being a ‘recovering perfectionist’ hasn’t helped!
What I’ve come to realize is that every medium has its pros and cons – print, audio, short video, longer video, presentations, face-to-face tech talks, etc. My plan for 2020 (as I’ve said in previous years but really feel it now!) is to utilize this blog more effectively to share ideas via stories, pictures, and data. It’ll be searchable, readable on various devices, and an aggregate of my thoughts – an online journal.
This page will house links to a series of white papers / presentations I’m creating to share essential concepts with you, mostly in story form. Each customer I’ve worked with, each vehicle I’ve owned and tuned (and sometimes totaled!) has taught me something. Instead of presenting a series of facts or concepts like an engineering textbooks, I want to engage your interest holistically, like listening to a campfire story as our ancestors shared experiences, caution, wisdom, and entertainment.
Envisioning The Perfect Ride, Part 1 – Greg’s Audi and a Shocking Test Ride
Envisioning The Perfect Ride, Part 2 – The Indelible Impact of Greg’s Story
Envisioning The Perfect Ride, Part 3 – BigJae’s Track-driven MW M3 and Flat Ride
Envisioning The Perfect Ride, Part 4 – Marc’s RC Trophy Truck – Flat Ride vs. Pitch
