Oddbean

From experience: The issue with all vehicles as they age is parts availability. There is so little money in selling parts any more there is little incentive to make them in small shops. Starting around 2021 OEMs started dropping support new part for most vehicles older than about 8 years, or when extended warranty expires. We were returning like 35-40% of the OEM parts in our shop sourced from well known wholesale OEM resellers (we were one of the few with good connections in Canada where most of our parts are manufactured these days) because they're so poorly manufactured now. Remanned parts have a huge return rate too. Resellers can make money on them so there will be fewer places to purchase parts also and thin margins for companies like RockAuto and CarId means they'll cut support just as easily. For precision powertrain parts, most are mfg by Bosch, they raised their minimum purchase quantity such that warehouses have to purchase like $10,000,000 of product at a time which caused us massive order hold times. The OEM parts scene is a huge mess. Anything older than 2000 I suggest hiding away least 1 parts vehicle on your property you can scavenge parts from as your vehicle ages. Something to consider, in 2023 SEMA released their docs for something like $150m in revenue for the entire aftermarket parts industry THAT'S IT. I'd be willing to bet Holley accounts for 100+ of it.

None of these warehouses have good data, they handle most things via email (no kidding so little money involved) so we (and many other shops) get HOSED because parts are on back-order when customers paid, need a refund, overhead costs, shipping prices because of warehouse availability. It's a data nightmare

I understand. The email thing is very real and true. Even harder when ordering from overseas. I have a 66 Mustang in the shop that’s been sitting here for two months going on 3 for parts. Such is the nature of this business.. we don’t have to wait long if they sort those issues.

In resale that was the killer. Shipping to customers outside the US was such a pain we eventually just stopped. Felt bad, but many European customers were very demanding and unforgiving to a highly complex system that's mostly out of our control. Which is a huge bummer to those who needed to get parts from the US and we were the only ones that could get it. In the shop we had many customers just buy new trucks and scrap the 5 year old ones because it cost them more money sitting in the shop than on the road.

Haha yea. It takes a certain kind of madness to own an old American car here in Europe. I've partnered with other shops there for parts procurement. We pay a premium of course and the customer is made aware.

Dedication. That's pretty cool and I really hope you can continue to make that work for you and your customers! I'm happy I got out of auto for now, but I do miss all of the problems that need to be solved and no one to solve it. Just no really money investment, and it's super dangerous running up against so many law enforcement agencies and regulations.