Sometime in early 1975 the founder of WP Suspension crashed hard on his bike and was injured quite badly. During the time of his recovery, which took more than 12 months, he spend all his time in his small workshop looking for ways to improve the shock absorbers on his bike.
The result of his research and development were so successful that more and more MX riders in that time became interested in using Wim Peters' shocks. One of the early successful MX riders that used "WP" shocks was Dutch MX hero, Gerrit Wolsink (aka "the flying dentist"). Soon many others followed, Kees van der Ven, Heinz Kinigadner, Dave Strijbos, John van den Berk and many other MX, side-car and enduro riders. After these first successes, the one-man-operation soon turned into a 'real' business. After being founded officially, in late 1977, WP immediately realised that comfort, safety and motorcycle performance could be considerably improved through the use of high quality shock absorbers.
In the early years unrestrained effort was put into further developing and testing shock absorbers, specifically for competitive motorcycling. Ultimately this lead to the enormous product range of high performance suspension products WP Suspension is offering today.
Right from the beginning, the springs that were used on WP shock absorbers were white, which became the typical WP colour. There's a nice anecdote to the circumstances that led to the "choice" that was made for this colour. In the beginning the springs were coated by a company that produced hospital beds and white was the only possible colour for them (!). Although, nowadays the coating is done by special spring coating companies, the WP shock absorbers can still easily be recognised by the white springs. The white springs also introduced the original brand name of "White Power" which we are not using actively in the market anymore since 1991. From the beginning, the outstanding quality of the shock absorbers was clearly evident from the construction, the materials used and the adjustment options. Use of WP shock absorbers led to many great successes for competitive motorcyclists of all motor sport disciplines all over the world. Owing to demonstrable top performance, within several years, the good reputation of the WP Suspension factory in the Netherlands had been firmly established world wide. Practical knowledge and enthusiastic efforts in the field of technological innovation and co-operation with top motorcyclists had borne fruit. This knowledge was used to develop an extensive range of "after market" as well as OEM products which are used by motorcycle manufacturers such as KTM, Husaberg and BMW.
Production is realised using computer controlled equipment and first-class engineers and assembly personnel. Manual and automatic quality control is employed systematically throughout the entire production process. Thanks to a distribution network that effectively covers the entire world, many motorcycle enthusiasts are using our technically refined and extremely strong suspension. Our service and spare part stock remains available for many years for the benefit of maintenance and eventual changes in the application of the shock absorbers and front forks currently in use.