A workshop, a remote, and a very specific axe to grind.

Open Valve started in a unit on the edge of Manchester after our founder lost a friendly argument with his own RS3. The car had been ticked with every box, optioned to the gills, and it still sounded muted on the school run. Sport+ for ten seconds, polite hatchback for the next twenty miles.

The fix was already obvious to anyone who'd ever taken the boot floor out of one of these cars — there's a tiny electric motor controlling a flap, and the ECU spends most of its life telling that flap to stay shut. So we built a small board that intercepts the close signal, paired it to a pocket remote, and put it back together. The drive home was a different car.

That was three years ago. We've now shipped thousands of modules across the UK and Europe to owners of RS3s, M2s, M3s, M4s, GT3s, AMG GTs, Urus, RS6s, Cayennes, Corvettes, Focus RSs and a long list of other cars that all share the same complaint. We test every chassis we sell for. We rehouse the boards in the same potted enclosure. We answer our own emails.

We're not interested in adding apps, subscriptions, Bluetooth pairing screens or any of the other things people try to bolt onto something this simple. Two buttons, one job. Open the valves. Hand them back.