Improved the ride dramatically over the KYB shocks.great strut by the best maker of struts . Very Very good price . some of the welds required minor grinding for the best fit .I bought a set of Koni STR.T shocks/struts and had them installed on my 2003 VW Jetta TDI wagon back in March 2012. My stock units had served me well for 205,000 miles but it was time to replace them, so I figured these would be a good choice. The ride was ok, but immediately after installation, I noticed an odd humming noise from the right from strut when going over bumps. I spoke with Paul at Koni support and he was familiar with the problem. Turns out, the rod seal was too tight and was making noise as the rod moved in and out. They would send me a new one, but I would have to pay to ship my defective one to them first, and they would not cover the cost of install or alignment. If this had happened after a few years I might understand, but they acknowledged that the unit was defective right out of the box so I thought it was pretty cheesy of them not to cover those expenses for an out-of-the-box defect.Since it did not affect the ride (but was just annoying), I opted to leave it in and live with it.Back in the spring of this year (2014) the car started to drive poorly (dodging, tracking) and the tires wearing unevenly. I figured it had a bad alignment, so last week I put a new set of Michelins on it and had the alignment checked. Turns out, the right front strut is leaking and so is the left rear. My car is used for very mild daily driving (mostly highway miles). There are less than 40K miles on these Konis.Sure, they have a lifetime warranty on them, but there is no way I'm paying labor plus alignment to put another set of Konis on my car if I'm only going to get 30K - 40K miles out of them. That's pathetic. Plus when it comes to really standing behind their product in a meaningful way, you seem to be pretty much on your own too.I would stay far away from these - they are absolute junk. I might try a set of Bilsteins, or maybe even go back to VW stock - at least I know I'll get 200K+ miles out of those.