OEM vs Aftermarket

We try to walk the balance of offering high quality parts without the high price tag. Our mission is to allow BMW owners to keep their cars running as they came from the factory and without breaking the bank. Not many people realise, but BMW don’t make the majority of the components that are fitted to their cars. They mostly have other companies make the auxiliary parts for them, usually with a BMW Roundel logo stamped on the side, before fitting them at their own factory.

For this reason, we seek out BMW suppliers as it ensures consistent quality. Sometimes it’s not always feasible to do so, but for a lot of the products we sell, they will actually come directly from the original equipment manufacturer (OEM). For example, we stock a full range of oil, air, fuel, and cabin filters from MANN. We also supplement some additional filters with stock from Hengst and Mahle. All three of those brands supply the original filters that BMW fit to their cars when new. Our radiators and thermostats come from BEHR Hella, who supply cooling system components to BMW. All of our brake pads and rotors are Zimmermann, who are a brake supplier to BMW.

What we sometimes find is that the part that is made by the OEM supplier has had the BMW Roundel manually etched off, allowing the part to be sold as an aftermarket item. Sometimes an aftermarket supplier will even rebox parts from a different OEM supplier. Vaico, who do not supply to any car makers themselves, often buy excess BMW Genuine stock and rebox the parts as their own. The wheel bearings we offer have a similar story. Most are made by FAG, Koyo, or SKF, but have been reboxed as IPD, who also rebox INA pulleys and tensioners. The electric HEPU water pumps that we offer for sale are simply reboxed Continental water pumps that BMW fit to their cars at the factory.  

The end result is a store full of parts that are equal in quality to those found behind the spare parts counter at your local BMW dealership. The only difference is that because they’re not in a BMW Genuine box, they’re significantly cheaper.

Offering reboxed OEM parts isn’t always the best option, however. We offer many Meyle-HD suspension components, particularly for the E46 3 Series, for example. Not to be confused by the standard Meyle range, their HD line of products has actually been re-engineered to be superior to the original design. The company looks at parts that suffer from high failure rates, and tries to find a way to make them better. Sometimes there isn’t a better option though. As we wrote in our previous blog post, there currently is no better maker of window regulators than BMW themselves, and so we insist on offering BMW Genuine replacements.

We’re steadfast in our belief that owning a BMW shouldn’t mean paying a premium for maintenance. Equally, there’s no reason why sensible prices must mean a poor standard of quality. We cherry-pick our parts from all over the world to bring our customers the best quality for the best prices, and back that up with a 12 month Australia-wide warranty.