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Originally Posted by AKADriver
This should be no surprise anymore, but people's anecdotes about poor QC make me wonder what things will look like a decade from now, if these companies will just fall into the noise of 'brands' and no one will care about them or respect them anymore. When you pay $320 for an HKS Sport exhaust (versus the ~$1000 they cost back when they were made in-house) you know full well that it's made by a third party, but you hold on to the faith that HKS wouldn't put their name on an eBay-grade product. If that faith collapses HKS becomes nothing more than Megan or NRG with a Japanese PO Box.
I'm waiting for the day when one of these companies' US importers fully gives in to the dark side and, instead of going Tomei's route of going straight to the same supplier, they contract with one of the counterfeit suppliers.
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On your first point, I said "most"
Some brands might outsource, but in the case of HKS their exhausts are cheap because it is made by their Thailand subsidiary.
Economies of scale is the key here. Some still have manufacturing capability in Japan, but that does not mean it is high quality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AKADriver
True to an extent, that is the central annoying part of being an enthusiast for old Japanese cars though - the industry didn't mature into supporting legacy platforms in the era before today's marketing/manufacturing landscape the way the aftermarket for American cars did. No one will ever make metal S13 fenders because no one can do it cheap enough and sell enough of them to break even, meanwhile you can buy fenders for any random obscure American car that are better than OEM. This is as good as it gets and it sucks.
Also Tomei is one of the only 'big name' companies supporting the KA at all. Which is not at all to disparage the myriad smaller US based companies making this or that specialty item for the KA. They've quietly discontinued the cast turbo manifold AFAIK and that to me is a big loss - they say they have a new product coming, but if it's another tube manifold then it goes right back to "why buy from Tomei when five small companies with better reputations make this product already"
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Well, your second point here addresses the first point... random obscure American car parts are easy to find because the car itself sold plenty or there are lots of options on the market. Part of this is because a lot of it was driven by collision repair/insurance claims, and the need for non-genuine parts at a cheaper price.
I'm actually dealing with this right now, refurbished/used headlights and bumper covers from reconditioning/resellers of used parts for a collision repair on my Lexus is half the price of new, and 1 week lead time (vs 3-4 weeks backorder from Lexus). This is just how the industry works.
Metal S13 fenders can be had, but unfortunately everyone 10-15 years ago got fed containers and containers of front clips with full engines for cheap, and that's what we are left with. We dug our own parts grave in the first decade of this century.