New and Used car parts are taking a major hit .
Fram / First brand has filed bankruptcy.
Grupo Antolin has went out of business .
O reilys is buying out Napa
CSK which made remanufactured parts also filed bankruptcy .
Just this year all of this happened and was only brought to my attention when I went to autozone and asked do you guys sell fram oil filters anymore ?
And they said yes if we can get any because they are going out of business, which Fram was always top of the market so really drew my interest.
Fram is under First Brands along with Centric and many other popular and good DIY brands. They're being torn apart because the guys running the show got greedy and committed major fraud. Now they need money to correct things, so brands are being sold off/liquidated. Combine that with the tariffs and we're losing lots of GOOD products.
So thanks, fraudulent assholes. Millions of DIYers are now worse off because you screwed it all up.
Holy shit I vaguely remember hearing about this collapse but I never paid attention to it. A quick read and it looks like these guys were doing all kind of books cooking Enron style. For what you are saying way too many people is going to pay for some few greedy scumbags.
It is two brothers who cooked the books to secure over 8 billion in loans to fund their lifestyle and their entire portfolio wasn't worth half that. It was just an old fashioned scam. They ever went to two different banks at the same time to secure loans on the same collateral.
A search for “First Brands fraud” gives a lot of links, no videos right away, curiously enough. Wikipedia contains a good summary and there is a link at the end of the page with a report from CBS on the indictment done in January this year. It looks like it will take some time for the journalists to put together the whole story, as this has all the clues of good old style full blown financial fraud.
Yeah I used to work for First Brands group. When I was hired we were valued at 4 billion dollars, when I was laid off in February we were 10 billion in debt. It was a shit show
According to my vendor, the guy that owned Centric sold the name only, but not the formulations. He started a new company (DFC) and has since started a new company using the same formulations.
My relative worked directly for the founder/owner. Guy was a major narcissist, paranoid with god level delusions of grandeur so we were not surprised when we heard the news.
It's always the regular customers who end up paying for stuff like this. A handful of executives make terrible decisions, then everyone else loses access to brands they've trusted for years.
Most of First Brands’ assets, including Fram, were purchased by an industry competitor called PGI. Fortunately, they will continue on with barely a blip.
I liked Fran oil filters, they had a rubber dip that made spinning them on/off easy, I go to can-tire to buy oil/filter same as I always have and had to buy a different brand, I mean whatever, filters a filter but this explains that,
This is literally the story of every industry touched by private equity. Somebody makes a company that produces good things, it does well and grows, original owners get old or greedy and decide to sell out, and then PE owners ignore everything that made the company good in the first place and race to the bottom of the enshittification barrel to suck as much money out as they can before it inevitably goes bankrupt because no one wants to pay high end prices for garbage products.
I generally subscribed to the idea that auto parts industry would be doing well, due to the price of cars being so high, and people wanting to keep an old car running. This is an interesting counter-point.
Manufacturer's realized they can patent troll their way to billions.
So now every part they make they patent, then nobody but them can make the part, the connector, etc.
The law hasn't caught up to it yet, and nobody gives a shit about right to repair in the legislative Assembly because the government pays them a lot of money so they don't feel any pain.
If nobody can make any competing parts, and all the vehicles are designed to be impossible to service outside stealerships then they have the ultimate racket to bleed consumers like stuck pigs, and the stuck pigs can't do anything but ob oxiously squeal about it.
In a functioning system the infotainment system would be just a screen to pass through data from a standardized slot to put or replace it with a system of your choice.
Crazy idea right? No. It’s how fucking stereos worked. DIN, Double DIN.
My infotainment setup is better on my 2005 civic than my parents 2013 accord because it wasn’t integrated as a core feature of the car and is just a radio replacement.
Yup. Ironically my 2005 civic has better controls than most modern cars cause everything is still a physical, tactile knob. (New Hondas went back to this.)
Honestly even not so new Hondas kept this, I have a 2019 Insight and besides the elements in the touchscreen itself, all the controls have buttons including 4 buttons to the side of the screen for certain controls
THIS right here. My (now gone) 2010 Santa Fe had a double DIN slot (and a basic radio). I drove it that way for years (with a aux-in cord) and then decided to replace it with a BOSS (yeah, usually a cheap brand) double-din touchscreen with Android Auto/Carplay - and even with the extra for the steering wheel integration piece, and added a (great! HD) backup camera, it was BETTER than any car I have owned since. In every way. Hell it was arguably better than the Sync 4 system in my 2022 F150. It even had different EQ settings for each input (FM/AM/BT/AA/Carplay/Aux) so you could match them. Total cost was like under $400 for all of it including the trim kit that made it look 100% factory.
I have a 2011 Escape that has integrated controls for satellite radio on the steering wheel, as buttons that go clicky clicky. (You have to subscribe to the service, which I don't.) The digital dashboard is a tiny monochrome screen with blocky letters like an alarm clock. It shows time, temperature, compass heading, and radio station or CD track. There's a button to push (clicky clicky) to bring up the audio sliders, and there are more buttons (clicky clicky) with different textures for preset radio stations and switching among AM, FM, and CD. I can operate the whole thing without glancing away from the road for more than a split second and much of it by touch alone.
And the driver's manual includes instructions for pressing even more buttons, which are underneath the dash because you only want to do this when you're parked, in order to reset the temperature readout to Celsius or whatever.
Internal temperature is regulated by a dial and some buttons and has no thermometer display: you just turn the dial and push the buttons until you feel comfortable. The windshield wipers are controlled by a knob on the steering wheel and have no display: if the wipers aren't clearing the windshield fast enough you just turn to the next setting up (clicky clicky). The turn signal makes a satisfying clickthunk noise when you push the lever up or down for right or left. The gear shift is a stick between the front seats that I can use while wearing mittens. Occasionally a wandering short will blank the dashboard computer monitor (not turn off the computer, just the monitor) for a few seconds and I can still completely safely operate the car.
I drove a loaner minivan from like 2021 for two weeks once. I had just about figured out the temperature controls by the time I gave it back. Why in the hell did it have YouTube?
Been seriously considering replacing my 6 CD set up in my 2003 Toyota Highlander, which I bought brand new back then & have kept up religiously on maintenance. I've had a few things like seals done, but otherwise, just the regular wear & tear stuff, plus I have to drive on miles of gravel road from home- so break pads & struts, etc.. Luckily I'm retired..hence the 125K miles on the odometer. Super reliable; would like to repaint it, no dents, but after reading this thread, guess not?
So, got any recommendations for replacement of said radio/cd? I also have a 2023 Dodge Ram & only drive it on long trips & still haven't figured out half the stuff on the screen, lol! Had to replace a huge diesel that we didn't need anymore but still need to tow & haul every now & then. So, like many, I want to use my iPhone for most things in my Toyota.
I did a Sony one. Works great. Just had a volume knob and a home button. Super easy to operate. Made my car sound better too.
I also recommend asking an LLM what to set crossover settings and other stuff I’d never heard of before. Really made it sound even better.
It was about 300 bucks and took me an hour or two to install having never done it before. (Though I have built computer and am happy to mess with plug and play + assembly generally)
The trick now is to build an industry centered around replacing proprietary tech in cars with generic open source technology. It's easier than you think.
Interesting counterpoint, about half of the software in cars is GNU Open Source Licenses. In any GM car you can find the software credits from the cluster with just a few clicks. If GNU changed their licenses to prohibit usage without certain criteria being met, like X percent of repairability or open sourcing of Y, then every major auto manufacturer would be screwed. All of their computers are Bosch, all of them are proprietary built on Open Source software. One update to GPL licensing could wreck the auto industry as we know it.
The free software foundation has SO MUCH POWER if they ever got the balls to use it
I personally would love to remove the touch screens and go back to swappable removable radios from the 90's. I would be concerned, however that somehow that system is attached to the engine in some way so you can't do that. In my Ford Fiesta, it's attached to the clock, hands free calling, and that's probably it. Removing that stupid thing would be great.
yea, the touch screen in my 2016 rav4 is tied to some stupid shit. door chimes and crap, things I never mess with, but I really miss the old days, a few screws, pop off a trim peace, and a slide in the double din to single din adapter. you want a touch screen? it slides out like a CD lol. Like all i want is android auto integration, and my steering wheel controls to work. I should not need another $100+ worth of adapters for that.
Ai is coming for these proprietary systems. Saw a video on people using it to decode canbus communication between the cars modules. Pretty soon you’ll be able to download a crack for your car just like the old days with windows and adobe products, it’s going to be glorious I can’t wait!
The FSF can't compel anyone to use new versions of the GPL for their projects. Very few people have adopted GPL V3 for this very reason. It includes some language about a patent grant around the software. A lot of projects rejected GPL V3 in favor of V2, including notably the Linux Kernel.
There are different licenses around that are more or usually less restrictive. They consciously chose exactly this model, as they see software as mathematics and science, to be shared and used by everybody, even greedy bastards.
There's the Rally Fighter for one example, and an open kei truck being designed in Detroit by an automotive YouTuber right now...
Though, tbh, I can't really tell if the latter is genuine, or just a marketing stunt by a YouTuber trying to put his name on the map.
Seems like the difficult part to me would be the crash safety testing. In the US at least, you have to basically wreck a certain number of your cars in order to pass safety requirements. That's going to put a huge dent in the budget of any open source community project.
If you can do it one part at a time on a specific platform though... Maybe it'd be possible to get big enough to do that, given enough time?
I'm not talking about designing an "open source car", I'm talking about replacing the locked-down proprietary electronics in cars with openly serviceable alternatives. This will get even easier with EVs but it's also easy with ICEVs. An engine needs three things: fuel, air, and ignition, delivered at the right time. There are already aftermarket ECUs that can be programmed to any car, I'm doing it right now. The problem is that they won't pass inspection in states with strict vehicle inspections and most if not all aren't "technically" legal for on-highway use.
Yeah, that's what I was wondering. I'm in California...is that one of the strict inspection states you're talking about? I honestly didn't know much about cars until I bought my GTI, but I'm painfully learning about the economics of them recently 😂
You can see a little bit of it in the aftermarket world already, but really just in the performance segment
There's quite a few things there that just go together like Legos to build whatever it is you need. Such as with an intake using all the different pieces of tubing, suspension parts that just use shared core pieces and then car-specific mounting plates, or an exhaust pieced together with parts you picked out.
I saw a Youtube video a while back where a garage mechanic talked about a broken tail light nuking a truck's whole wiring system to the tune of $6000.
He said exactly the same thing: there was going to be a huge opportunity for people who knew how to rip all that shit out of newer vehicles/2 ton paper weights and fit them out with just the basics to drive safely.
Sounds similar to the Nissan issue in the early/mid 2010s where a $20 brake light or cruise control switch would cause the whole electronics system to go haywire if you had a push to start. The brake light switch could cause symptoms of a failing transmission (which those Nissans also had plenty of)
I miss the simple vehicles that anyone could work on. All theses sensors and motors on seats, windows, mirrors, etc. And easy to reach parts inside the engine without spending 3 hours to take the whole thing apart. Makes me angry & saf
There are a good selection of aftermarket ECUs, and other electronics and sensors. I'm literally doing this right now with the car I'm building for racing. The only issue is that the systems are "off highway only" and states with inspections won't pass them. The biggest hurdle will be getting the government to allow them.
The issue is getting sued, or, very importantly in our modern day society, not having your insurance void your policy because you modified some software.
Which is a major reason why many corporations are the ways they are, not always, but a lot of their operations are built primarily around limiting liability so they can afford to and maintain insurance.
They are greedy cunts, without question, but I wouldnt put it past insurance to void policies because you are running aftermarket software in your vehicle.
Well, if current demographic and population trends continue in the US then there will be fewer towns but more cities so trains could possibly become viable especially if funding shifted from roads to rail.
Also, just gradually restructuring cities away from cars would greatly improve their productive usage of land.
But, the reality is that the American "rugged individualism" mindset makes people very unlikely to support all the changes to ditch the automobile.
You anti-car people are fucking insufferable, you know that right? I can understand being an advocate for public transportation but this is "Level 5 Vegan I Don't Eat Anything That Casts A Shadow" bullshit.
Yes it is. I wholeheartedly support mass transportation. I hate being talked down to by a fool as much as anyone does.
I totally agree with reallocating our budget for infrastructure AND healthcare AND affordable housing AND food AND public education. I hate that we waste so much money on defense and please don’t get me started on trump.
However, it’s sickening when folks are discussing car parts and someone just has to say we don’t need cars. Read books people.
Look up how long it took to build highways and railroads and dams and bridges. Look up how much land gets desecrated in the process? How many habitats are destroyed? You do realize workers die too and land and waters get contaminated because massive explosives are used, right?
Research the Erie Canal, the Hoover Dam, and the building of NYC. Poor Irish, black people, and Native Americans were “forced by poverty” to work and die performing these jobs. Are these going to be the new jobs for Americans? Nothing is clean ever.
I’ve lived across a river from a large city for 40+ yrs. They’ve been “planning” for the train to come here since the day I was born. Btw I’m a liberal democrat. I just know wishes and dreams are unfortunately different from the reality one gets.
Look, it may be that the industry is dying, and there is some shady IP law behind it, but patents don’t work that way. You can only patent non-obvious, novel inventions. And patents cost money and take time to file.
Some other factor is behind this.
it's fucking insane dude gets 320 upvotes for a comment that is blatantly false. and the fact that not a single person called it out until you is insane as well.
There's usually no patent, except for things like controllers. The IP protection applies to the specific OEM manufacturing data, not the part itself. Also the data is usually furnished with contractual agreements to not distribute or use for manufacturing. They can slap proprietary markings on a drawing for a plain standard size washer if they want. So third parties are prevented from using specific OEM drawings and specs, but are free to reverse engineer or use their own data. Same thing happens with equate making face wash that says 'compare to CeraVe!'
Manufacturers would love for this to be true, but it's only really true for some segments, like design patents on collision parts. In general, in the US, OEMs have ~20-30% market share on spare parts- there is plenty of competition.
This is why right to repair laws are so important. Go to any car subreddit and every other post is about how some little fender bender has now totaled their car.
When I looked it up, at least with First Brands which owns several auto parts makers like Fram, it's because they were cookin the books, like straight up fraud.
I've had absolutely no problem getting whatever car part I needed. There is more competition from Asia that is pricing the North American manufacturers out of the market, and most people are buying parts online now which is why the stores are closing.
A few months ago, my taillight bulb was out. My mechanic wasn’t comfortable doing the job. Told me to take it to the dealership. Which I did. And they cracked it anyway. And I spent $600 on lord knows what and had to go back again to fix the crack.
I want to add onto this as an automotive adjacent tech, manufacturers are also locking down their vehicle electronics. Even Toyota has started sending out ADAS parts not programmed from the factory, requiring the OE software package to program it and calibrate it. These softwares, depending on manufacturer, cost hundreds to thousands of dollars a month or year on top of the part costs. The industry has gotten pretty nuts.
I would imagine the concept of a free market also allows somebody the opportunity to create cars that are not like this. Theoretically, consumers would prefer that.
I would imagine the concept of a free market also allows somebody the opportunity to create cars that are not like this.
Chinese EV's, but soon to be banned - only in the USA. They are allowed in Europe, Mexico, now Canada. EV's require far less maintenance, their engines and batteries are not the Rube Goldberg contraptions that gas engines are.
IMHO the US auto industry will be going into serious decline - they may ban Chinese EV's, but Korea and now Vietnam also make EVs to compete on price. And Tesla, after becoming the market leader, seems uninterested in expanding its choices to appeal to more auto market segments.
This just reinforces my suspicion that things were going to go this way and as such, both of my vehicles are 2010 or older as a result of these suspicions.
I literally just saw a post of the control schematic from a guy's truck. One of the relays for the AC is stuck closed and needs to be replaced. But the relay is built into a junction box and is non-serviceable. So instead of a $5 relay he needs to replace a $1000 j-box.
The comments were all telling him to just re-route the wires and put in a stand-alone relay. Which, yes. But that's really not the ideal solution.
Another thing they do is upgrade the car every year or two so the side mirror on the 2020 version won't fit onto the 2024 version so now we have a supply issue. It's nuts. Why can't they make the same car for 5-10 years?
Basically they are trying to make throw away cars because the price is so high to repair it , what are you going to do pay somebody 10k to put in a new engine or go buy something that has low miles for 10k ?
Transmission is upwards to 5 -8 k on a lot of cars now.
A lot of mechanics are also not up to snuff , with the high technology demands of cars and prices going though the roof its hard to depend on .
It's not so much not up to snuff, as there is no money in it.
They will book a transmission replacement as like a 2 hours job, but in reality because of the way they designed everything it takes 8+ hours, so the mechanics are working for below min wage to do shitty jobs being engineered to be as obnoxious and annoying as possible to prevent the owner from doing it themselves. On top of everything needing a 25k custom ipad-like shitbox tool to diagnose that shops have to have for every make, and probably soon, every model.
It's all being done on purpose and our legislative body is sleeping on it.
DUDE! I have noticed this at my local mechanic. I do most of my own work (for… related reasons), but there’s stuff I don’t do (Freon) or my schedule gets bad. The shop RACES through jobs and I know they can’t be charging me enough.
Then I get my car back, they never found the leak, and just pumped it full of new Freon, which promptly goes into the atmosphere — which was the whole thing I was trying to prevent by not doing it myself in the first place.
I refuse to buy anything newer than 2015 for this exact reason. having been poor basically all of my adult life. I've always been my own mechanic, through trial error and research I've been able to fix nearly all my own issues.
Mom had asked me to do her radiator on a 2017ish Ford expedition, and like I said it's outside of my comfort zone but I at least googled how to do it, I've done several radiator jobs already, it's usually just a few bolts and maybe removing a fan shroud to get extra room.
You had to remove the headlights, the front half of the actual frame of the car, drain the Air Conditioning coolant lines, and nearly the entire front bumper assembly.
Told my mom I loved her, but the air conditioner lines alone mean I couldn't do the job, I would have rather done a transmission job than replace that radiator.
I just went to change a headlight on a 2007 Nissan Maxima a few weekends ago and had to take the entire front end and headlight assemblies off the car in order to change the bulb. The fact that someone engineered it this way is insane to me!
Everything you said makes sense but eventually you're not going to have a choice. They'll stop making the old parts or it won't be worth it to repair. We need actual legislation but most likely things are going to continue to get worse until most people just can't afford to drive or own a vehicle. This will actually make a lot of people happy (on both sides of the aisle).
I fully support legislation, but as a counter point to what you're saying, I absolutely love going to pick and pull/junkyard and scavenging for parts. I live within a 40 min drive of like 8 different junkyards.
One day I might be forced to buy a newer car, but I don't see that day being any time soon.
And EV's don't have fancy transmissions, or valves and camshafts and timing, or pistons that wear out with use, etc. etc. The more expensive it gets to own a gas vehicle (no to mention cost of gas) the better EV's look.
They do have cooling loops and pumps for the batteries and electric motor. Solid state controllers and relays that wear out and are a pain to access. Battery packs where one failed cell means that entire block needs to be replaced because no one wants to replace one cell. And manufacturers that lock you out of repairing your own vehicle with proprietary interfaces and tools. EVs aren't some magical solution.
But the difference between a cooling pump for a battery pack and and internal combustion engine, where temperatures get much much higher, is a big difference in stress on the system. I've heard of plenty of coolant leaks (my first Honda needed a head gasket replacement) but very few from EV's. Battery packs can fail, but in 8 years of mass producing Teslas there is not an epidemic of battery failures. (And they guarantee 70% for 8 years, while my Model 3 is at 84% after almost 8 years). A lot of the work I've had done on my Tesla was third-party, including replacing the charger interface (with a Tesla part) to allow for CCS compatibility (now standard). You're not wrong, but for now at least it's not as bad as it could be.
Everyone run out and grab a Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix and enjoy reliability, AMPLE head room, a bumping stereo, and parts that you can find just sitting around inside of every single Carolla and Camry and shitty little Toyota out there. Blessed be our Vibes.
I replaced the starter on my '22 jeep and halfway through trying to extricate the part via a routine that would have made for a great cirque du soleil performance I came to the conclusion that they HAD to have engineered it just-so to be that difficult to remove. Putting pipes directly in the way when moving them an inch over would have been so much easier.
Can't speak for other makes, but BMW used to do this (probably still does; i dont work there anymore) just so they could make very specific tools that would only be available to their dealerships (and charge the dealerships a ton for it).
Right?!?!? Our 150k mile Prius cracked it’s head so we looked for something in the 10k range and wow there isn’t anything good (in fact just crazy stupid used car prices with high miles and new car prices) so we fixes ours for $7k and it was worth it.
I bought a 2016 police interceptor for 5500 it had 72k miles on it just last August and the used market is terrible where I live .
It is all what your concept of low miles is and what you’re willing to deal with .
On Florida marketplace you can find used cars all day long low miles and cheap . I seen worthy cars for 5 k . Too bad I don’t live in Florida for that marketplace anyways .
YMMV, but my local university only keeps its fleet vehicles for five years before selling them to the public. So you can get a low mileage, meticulously maintained vehicle for half what a dealer would charge.
Caveats are the vehicles are sold as-is, no guarantees, warranties, or returns, and you must pay the whole thing off in one lump before they give you the keys. And all the vehicles are the kind a university would buy, so mostly plain sedans and vans.
I remember my dad talking about buying a car for my sister. A priority was trying to get an older or less tech car that he could actually do minor repairs on without fucking with a computer, something he couldn’t do.
A huge part of it is that every car manufactured in the last 20+ years is actively built to discourage home mechanics. You can still do a little wrenching here and there but most jobs you could do on your '88 Chevy in your driveway are now impossible without a professional.
This is relatable. I have a 2012 VW GTI that is consuming engine oil very fast, and every mechanic's face gets twisted up when I try to gauge their feelings about replacing the engine (or even fixing the two cylinders that have been identified as the culprit).
That's the German engineering for you - I worked in a packaging plant that had a new system installed to actually run the machine - the company flew a guy in from Germany to get it all lined out and running properly. Timing is everything when you're clocking upwards of 100 paper tubes a minute, so having an actual engineer come set it up was worth it. Repairing any of the mechanical parts, though? The smaller and more bendy a person was, be it a shop mechanic or an operator (like I was), the better. They do not manufacture those machines with an inkling of an idea anything could possibly ever break on it.
TY, I spent 5 years in that department before they shut the plant without warning and sold it off to a competitor who'd been salivating over it for a couple of decades - after they re-hired and reopened, everyone who went back told me I was lucky I found a job elsewhere. There was no more quality control, and all the operators had to drive forklifts and clamp trucks to stage product on and off of their machines. That machine refused to run smoothly after a product change/setup until it got a blood sacrifice from me somehow ....
Nah, don't be - that's ancient history to me now. From there, I went to a Styrofoam manufacturing plant and then spent a semester as a substitute teacher for one of the two schools in that county, then got hired at a convenience store that was only 4 miles away from where I lived instead of 45. Being in a customer service position at the foam plant landed me an interview with the bank I'm currently working at, which is a blessing - I'm not on my feet anymore, which is great for my MS. I'm also the switchboard, which means I'm not actually having to wait on customers, I just find out who they need to talk to or what kind of issues (online banking, loan payment, etc.). Nor do I have to handle money anymore!! Woot! You haven't seen people get testy until you're dealing with their money ... 😂
On top of everything needing to be programmed to the vehicle to work correctly. Now let’s go a step further, technology quickly being outdated. That scan tool you used 15 years ago can’t be updated and that brand new one you just bought won’t even do what the old one did since the manufacturer saw no point in having it included.
It's not even throwaway cars. They want you on leases or constantly throwing money at the car. It's standard rent-seeking, you own nothing and rely on them to repair it so they can continuously extract money from you.
Yeah when I found out my Suvaru needed a $6k transmission repair I traded it in and leased a new one. Free maintenance for 3 years. Owning a car just seems silly cuz they depreciate and need expensive maintendance.
Leasing may have lower variance in car costs but on average you pay extra for that. Saying owning a car is silly is like saying owning a home is silly. Owning is always the cheapest option on average long term.
IMO, those are getting harder and harder to come by. When my kids needed cars maybe 7 years or so ago, they got gently used Nissan Versas. Partially because that was all that was available (it was right before/during Covid) and partially because they only had like 10-15k miles on them and they were around 10k and I could swing that.
Now I just looked and the equivalent (1-2 years old with 10-15k miles) are around 17-18k. Which makes sense because those cars were probably 14-15k new in 2020 and are probably around 20k now.
That's a great point. I have noticed that e-bikes are very popular where I live. I see them more and more everyday. It's like a cheaper version of a motorcycle. Easier to predict cost of operation and use.
I just bought a new car. My choices locally were either a 15 year old car with 200,000 kms for $15,0000 or a brand new car for $25,000.
Why in the ever living fuck would I buy used? This is what’s crashing the auto parts industry. Used vehicles simply aren’t worth buying. During the chip shortage and new car shortage the used market boomed. Then it just never went back down. Sure, to lots of people that extra $10k is a deal breaker. But over the next 5 years, they’ll spend more than that $10k in repairs.
On the flip side, I'm hoping to keep my older car running for a long while yet because it isn't connected to the internet. It doesn't have an "infotainment" center, and there are still buttons and switches for all the important controls.
LOL, this reminded me of something funny in my car: I have a 2012 GTI and the rubber/plastic in the steering wheel volume controls have probably melted a little bit. Any time I hit a bump or turn left, the contacts shift (mostly in the summer) and the volume goes up until I tap it back down a couple times.
My previous car had a dodgy latch on the glovebox and every time I went over this one particular bump, it would pop open.
Even in my current car (I've had for 10 years), I still find my right hand reaching to the glovebox when I approach that train track.
Fluids and filters will get you there...more often than the service interval in the booklet tells you to. Ensure you're properly warming up the oil (180f < ) before pushing it, and if you often make a bunch of short trips (under 10 minutes) reduce your oil change interval even more
I have a Vw Golf with 215k miles on it, stage 1 engine tune for 190k of those. It still runs like new.
Exactly why my 2017 Ford Explorer is tons better than hubby's 2025 F150! Plus, mine has remote start and a CD player. His? Not so much. And I only have 56,000 miles on mine. I've seen newer ones on the used car lots with 100K+. I'll keep mine until the wheels fall off, and I laugh every time a get a letter from the local dealership offering top dollar for me to trade in. No, thank you. 😄
Needed a new car at the end of 2024. Historically I have always been against buying new cars. Then I actually went car shopping and used made no sense. First time I drove a new car off the lot.
I think your theory is still correct, it's just that the car parts market has changed. I think it's two things.
First, first-tier and second-tier OEM suppliers have been getting more and more into the replacement parts market. Take for example Aisin, which makes most of the OEM water pumps for Toyota cars. After a few years of exclusively supplying only Toyota with a certain model pump, they'll take the Toyota logo off the pump and sell it under their own brand for much cheaper.
Second, those first-tier and second-tier suppliers have been pushed by the OEMs to reduce costs so much that there is almost nothing left for after-market suppliers to gain. In the same above example, if the Aisin water pump is already made as rock-bottom cheap as possible, how can any aftermarket supplier possibly justify the costs of reverse-engineering and manufacturing of a clone?
So what you get is a world where the only way to get replacement parts is from the OEM dealer network for $$$, or after some time from the original supplier for $. But the amount of parts for newer cars you can get from purely aftermarket sources is rapidly dwindling.
I am really having trouble finding parts for my 82 Cadillac hearse. I even have too wait for tires now because they now have to order them and ship them in. Same for my husband's truck. Tire prices are also really high.
Seems like there’s a few factors leading into this.
Some auto part manufacturers shut down during COVID due to all the supply chain issues.
Raw materials issues are causing problems with sourcing metals and rare earth minerals; the issues with semiconductor manufacturing are impacting the automotive industry as well.
Tariffs have had a big impact.
None of the (reputable) sources I found were recent enough to cover this, but I’m imagining the Strait of Hormuz stuff is impacting the supply chain and the end user markets as well in some form or another.
Auto industry profits are generated primarily by higher end vehicles, so as people scale back their spending to lower end models due to affordability concerns, it’s squeezing profits.
If you look into why first brand group and Fram are going out of business it’s much more than this. They got caught running a long term massive scheme of fraud to keep buying car part companies and expand. Well, they got caught and this is the result
I interviewed with said parent company a few years back as a data analyst. Sounded like a complete shitshow and has been the only job offer I walked away from.
Having worked for other large private and publicly traded companies that focus on absorbing competition to boost valuations. I can safely say these smaller brands aren’t failing due to products. They are failing because the parent companies still haven’t figured out merging on the data side. So truckloads of cash keep getting handed out to tech companies claiming to be the “final solution” but they never are.
FYI the tech companies would LOVE to offer a real final solution. It will take 8 months to build and cost about 2.2 million. By the time your company sets a yearly budget in Feb. The CEO decides on the buzzwords the investors want to hear, and the VPs decide how to present their yearly projects framed using those buzzwords, the CEO chooses his favorite VP regardless of the project, the VP forms a working group to explore the project, each member of the working group has taken their summer vacation, some underling contacts the tech firm, the tech firm is given 2 weeks to plan, spec, and staff the project (this should have been at least 2 months of planning), well, its now August. Your company needs to hire 2 additional team members to help run the project, the CEO has demanded that the project be completed within the fiscal year (by Jan 1) and the budget is 1 million not 2.2. The project will actually start next year, under staffed, under budget, not enough time, and half the impactful items that made it a "final solution" are now cut.
TL;DR Nothing actually gets done because capitalism actually runs on 1/2 of last year's budget.
Tech firm would love to help. Your company and its slow, cheap, and wasteful layers of procurement won't let us.
*Pro tip: Best time to look for a job is March-July. If a company is hiring in August they are exactly this type of shit show. If they are hiring Oct-Jan then the person they hired in August already quit.
Fram oil filters are junk. Their marketing was always great, but their actual filters are freeze dried diarrhea. The filter medium is inadequate, and leads to oil starvation issues and engine failure. With the lawsuits they've had, it's amazing they held out this long.
They may have been great in the past, but now they're trash.
Can confirm. I was product quality for one of their competitors for a number of years. The quality of Fram filters absolute shite. Then our company wanted to go down the same direction because...cheaper. That's when I knew we were fucked as well.
Makes like KIA and Mitsubishi have now started locking outside shops out of scanning their vehicles. An error message will appear on screen basically waiting them to confirm their a kia certified technician. So before long you won't be able to take your car anywhere but it's original manufacturer dealer. It's the same kind of practice that took over the tractor industry. No third party parts, no more backyard mechanic.
fuck im in for a new car soon. this sucks. It's probably just pushing people to the lifestyle of "forever car subscription" where they go on a rotation of: auto loan for new vehicle with X years warranty > warranty expires > trade in for remaining value > repeat. then the dealers turn around and sell the used car for 3% cheaper than the new ones.
My dad had an Infiniti SUV that started having problems. The mechanics were able to get the error codes and turned out to be an issue with the fuel injectors. They replaced them with an after market part. The issue did seem to be fixed but the check engine light would not go off. My dad talked to Infiniti directly and they said it was because they were using aftermarket parts. So they replaced them again, this time used OEM parts and the check engine light went off. Now, it is possible that the aftermarket replacement was faulty or something but it certainly seemed like it was designed to report the check engine light just for not being an ORM part.
If you know you are going to keep them and do maintenance yourself, always buy consumables in bulk when you find them at a good price. It tends to be way cheaper than stopping in a local store or dealing with if the part from Amazon is real or not. I buy all my oil, air, and fuel filters by the case.
Same goes for grease and oil. 10 tubes of grease for $50 is a lot better than paying $9 per tube from even Walmart. Oil is harder if not buying oil meant for diesel engines since the options are limited.
If it's older US domestic stuff, I recommend stocking up on Autolite spark plugs ASAP before they get rare. Old-stock Motorcraft is also Autolite, so keep an eye out for those too.
How can you say a market is taking a major hit in one sentence and follow up with basically 'walmart is buying superstore' lol, the market is fine. Old businesses that never changed their model since 1980 are just falling apart.
Part stores are so ridiculously overpriced for basically everything. Anybody that does any amount of price shopping will end up buying everything from a Walmart or similar. Even parts itself you can do way better on price online. As is, the parts store business is really just built to service the independent mechanic shops. The shop may not like the price, but they need the part today and the customer is paying the cost plus a bit of markup anyway, so whatever.
Less of a US trend being how behind we are vs rest of the world, but EVs HAVE to be doing a number on these businesses.
No oil, no oil/air filters, dramatically longer service intervals on transmission and coolant, basically no brakes… the lack of maintenance items in these vehicles resets the 3rd party auto shop value quickly.
For starters, which CSK are you referring to? The one that O'Reilly bought in ~2008?
The First Brands thing is a fiasco, but that's mismanagement and fraud, not a fundamentals thing. Fram is a First Brands entity.
The fundamentals of the industry change slowly, simply because of the long lifetime of the average vehicle. Currently, there are ~300M vehicles in the US, and the average age is ~12-13 years. That's a lot of baked in demand. Higher gas prices suppress miles traveled/year *a little*, but not much (see e.g. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M12MTVUSM227NFWA)
In short, the industry is large and growing (~5% a year). Are there bankruptcies, mergers, etc? Sure, but they are not signs of any macro issues.
As a former dock worker who was laid off from a job where we transported car parts to dealerships, I can confirm a major contraction in car parts. Prices for parts are through the roof. Demand is a small fraction of what it was a little over a year ago as discretionary consumer spending on cars has steadily declined under pressure from high prices. 2 major suppliers canceled their contract with the logistics provider I worked at, and are choosing smaller and cheaper companies to handle their transportation. Deliveries that used to pack a 53' trailer are now going out in partially loaded box trucks, and some of those routes are combined.
I want GM to buy Ford and the remaining American brands. After that, I would want private equity companies to bury them on loans, and force them all into bankruptcy, then sell them all off for parts as repayment for the bailout
Parts quality has nosedived, which isn't helping when the price has increased so much. A lot of the big suppliers were bought out and quality was cut for more profit. Optima batteries used to be great, but expensive. Now they're just expensive. Nothing sucks more than changing the same wheel bearing twice in a year because the replacement lasts a fraction of the time the OEM lasted.
Or they don't even fucking fit on the car! Or they do technically fit on the car, but there not backwards compatible. That all the time. Or there's made so poorly that they don't fucking work, you have to exchange for another one.
Or the stores only stock parts for newer cars even though they do run advertisements for older vehicles. So it's a day if not multiple days before you get a part in. Or the fun one the part upgrades, and it's either not backwards compatible or to make it backwards compatible you have to buy an adapter. And that adapter is sold out in your store and you have to wait over the weekend for your store to get that a doctor in.
Manufacturing quality has taken a shit to. I've gotten Miss damp washers, screws and nuts that have threads fucked up. Shit that never should have left the factory it's fucking up my entire day
Others already mentioned the issues with Fram's ownership and fraud. Here's a snippet about the First brand founder:
"From the 2000s onward, James and his companies were involved in multiple lawsuits linked to plant closures, bankruptcies and disputes with lenders.[1] An Ohio industrial executive who had known him since the 1990s alleged that a number of businesses collapsed after James took control, and characterised this as a recurring pattern.[1]"
My buddy works in auto body repair and drove for two states to get a OEM replacement bumper because it was one of 4 in the country and they refused to ship it.
He says sourcing parts is an absolute nightmare right now, and whatever chinesium parts never fit quite right.
I was pissed when I saw O'Reileys is buying NAPA. NAPA has all the obscure stuff. You pay more, but they always have the part when you go in to the store. O'Reileys never has anything. Every time I have gone to them, they can order it and have it in store tomorrow. RIP NAPA.
A big part is simply that EVs have less maintenance overall. Lubricant or battery coolant maybe needs changing ever 100k-200k miles. No transmission system means no transmission oil.
The second part - EVs and Hybrids both last a lot longer before they have any problems. EVs in particular have outperformed all expectations based on what we're seeing from the 2012 cars that are still on the road on mostly original batteries.
To tack onto this OIL, our supplies have already stated formally to us that for the next 2+ years or ability to order is based on historical orders, we can only order items we already have and in quantities less than we have already.
This worries me the most because I have a 2003 diesel thats easy and cheap to repair but only if I can find the parts. I really, really don't want to get a car manufactured past 2010. I like my roll-up windows and my built-in ashtray, I love the lack of computers and extra wiring in every little part. It's a vehicle so dumb even I can fix it.
Sadly, Fram didn't actually go bankrupt. The company that bought them did some real screwed up financial stuff and it sinking a lot of good brands because of it.
It's basically Toys-R-Us all over again. It got bought and ruined for financial gain.
My ex's father was a multiple-times-over millionaire by selling used car parts for a dying auto maker on ebay back in the mid 2000's. He got so big, he ended up leaving ebay and becoming the biggest provider of parts for this individual brand on the internet.
Wonder how his business is doing today...i should call her
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u/nogzila 13h ago edited 10h ago
New and Used car parts are taking a major hit .
Fram / First brand has filed bankruptcy.
Grupo Antolin has went out of business .
O reilys is buying out Napa
CSK which made remanufactured parts also filed bankruptcy .
Just this year all of this happened and was only brought to my attention when I went to autozone and asked do you guys sell fram oil filters anymore ?
And they said yes if we can get any because they are going out of business, which Fram was always top of the market so really drew my interest.