[aki]

Zomg I can actually rep you again.

There's one company in Japan that uses shorter strut housing in Japan, but their coilovers cost about $2k. I'll see if I can find it again.

I always wondered, why don't cars come stock with the shortest strut housing possible? Is there some downside that I don't know about?

There's another way to have a much lower car, with less suspension travel but greater handling: increasing the piston cross section and increasing fluid displacement. Motons use shorter fatter rods but have 2-3x more fluid displacement, meaning the suspension requires very little travel. The downside, of course, is that they're expensive puppies at $5-10k =)