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Automotive stabilizers are safety components and it is therefore important to asses theirfatigue behaviour in terms of real load conditions as well as material strength. For thesecond point, a detrimental effect in the fatigue limit of high strength steels is given by thedefects present in the component, coming from the material (as microinclusions,microvoids, etc) or for the process (as, for example, handling marks), in other words, it isvital to analyse the risk of failure in presence of inhomogeneities in order to improvecomponent reliability. In particular stabilizers are subjected to multiaxial fatigue. For thisreason, in this paper, starting from FEM analysis in order to obtain the stresses in thecomponent, a defect assessment is carried out considering round and planar surface defectsin terms of its SIFs. Results are then analysed in terms of maximum SIF against the ∆K thfor short cracks, which were obtained experimentally.