Gabriele,
I know the OSRAV brand well, they are made in Treviso, in Veneto... very close to where my Father was born!!
Once they also did reconditioned dampers as well as new, and also sold seal and shaft kits for older models (back in the 1980's for models made in the 40's and 50's) ...my Father was the Australian importer for quite a few years.
I doubt these dampers will be reconditioned due to the availability of cores in Italy, so new production stock is nice to have.
Good to know there is another avenue for X19 owners, as for me the KYB's don't appeal for their ride comfort... but that's 100% a personal preference.
Ulix,
I've always put the higher spring perch down to the heavier later model cars... add the taller and heavier 1500 engine, the heavier five speed gearbox, the heavier axles and CV's, air conditioning and a catalytic convertor... which is all well behind the cars centreline. So to keep the spring rates the same (or else there may be a frequency mismatch from front to rear) they raised the perch...it always seemed the most logical reason to me...but it's purely an opinion, no hard factory data.
I once had all three types of rear struts lined up and measured... s1, s2 and tall s2... that was several computers ago and I can't find the pictures...but from memory the Australian spec five speed has exactly the same mount (bolt centres) to perch length between S1 and S2, so the odd struts that came in with a parts shipment from overseas we put down to being for US models/air conditioned etc etc which were heavier in the rear...this was in about 1985 before we saw the Bertone models in Australia which had air con and cat conv ... prior to then these were not features on our X19's.
SteveC
