Why Won't Manufacturers Make Parts For My Car
People always ask us, “Why don’t manufacturers make everything for my car?” We love to provide you with everything you need to restore your car. We strive to find everything you might need but sadly, sometimes there aren’t any options out there. For some items, you have to rebuild them or find a used one in decent condition if you can.
That begs the question though, if there’s demand, why don’t these companies make every single part for our car? You have money and need that part – makes sense they would want to make it, right?
The answer really comes down to economics. Simply put, a company generally would rather make a part for a very popular car than an obscure one. For example, if you were going to make a part, would you rather make it for a wildly popular car such as a 1969 Camaro where they sold over 200,000 of them or a car they sold 50,000 of?
Developing and producing parts takes a lot of money. R&D(research and development) of parts can take months if not years for some products. That’s a lot of money a company has to sink into a product before they can even start selling the first one. On top of that, there are the laws of economics at play too. To produce one part is expensive, to produce 1,000 of them is cheaper.
From that economic standpoint, you have to not only dump money into developing that part, then you have to build a certain level of them to bring manufacturing costs down. This could be thousands or millions of dollars. When the time comes to finally sell that part, the company is going to want to have the greatest chance of success to recoup their investment and turn a profit. That’s why they make parts for more popular cars instead of less popular ones.
Having that less popular car might be cheaper to acquire, but will cost you more in parts. Supply and demand are dictating the prices. For example, rebuilding all the front steering components for a popular car such as a 1966 Chevelle might cost you $500. There are lots of them, numerous companies making the parts, and the price gets driven down. To rebuild the steering components on a 1962 Cadillac might cost $2,000 since there is only one company making the product and they aren’t going to sell as many of them to drive the production costs down.
What Can You Do?
The good news here is that you can do something about it! If a company isn’t making a part for your ride, give them a call! If you’re part of a club for your car, have all the members call and let them know they want that same part for their cars.
If you’re able to create enough demand for a part and let the manufacturer know that, they might be inclined to start making that part. Not always, but sometimes it works. Manufacturers need to hear feedback sometimes to know what the customer wants!
If and when they do start making those parts, we will start to stock them and make them available to you! To see if we have a part you don’t see listed, give our friendly techs a call at (203) 235-1200 or hop back onto our site to view all the products we currently have for your ride by clicking here.
