While getting your car repaired, after a damage, it is better if you know that if parts which are being used in repair are OEM or Aftermarket. The problem is that most of us don’t know what OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) is. Taking benefit of your lack of knowledge, your car repairer might use recycled parts in your car, which are of lower quality and much cheap than what you are being charged.

Here, we will be doing a comparison between OEM and aftermarket products leaving it up to you to decide which one is a better choice for your car, next time you enter a garage to get your car repaired.

Aftermarket Parts
These are the parts which are not manufactured by the car making company. There are dozens of other companies which take toil to produce parts which are cheaper and do well when it comes it performance. These parts don’t void the warranty of your vehicle. Insurance companies often go for these when you make a claim. Salient features of the aftermarket parts are:

Affordability
These parts are much less expensive compared to the OEM ones. Their cheap price makes them a favorite over the parts manufactured by original companies. You should roam around the market to find the cheapest with best possible quality and strength.

Availability
These parts are easily available in the market. Unlike, the originally manufactured which are available especially on demand from the company, these parts could be found in plenty.

Quality Issues
There could be some quality issues with these parts. Since these are lesser in price compared to the original parts, so these are inferior in quality as well.

Warranty Issues
These don’t always carry a warranty with them due to their less price.

Original Equipment Manufacturer

These are the parts manufactured by Producer Company itself. Salient features of these parts are:

Expensive
These parts are more expensive compared to aftermarket parts. Due to the name of the brand being associated coupled with the quality offered, a higher price is charged.

Availability
These parts are not easily available in the market. Very few retailers keep them in their inventories. In a special case, you have to request the company to sell you the original components.

Quality
These are without any doubt, superior in quality compared to the aftermarket products.

Warranty
The parts manufactured by the company itself are always warranted. You can claim if they don’t work within their warranty tenure.

It is true that OEM is a company made, expensive and carry warranty but these are not always superior to aftermarket ones. Some aftermarket products have been found to have better quality and service life than OEM products.

There are, however, cases in which you should always go for OEM products for cars :

  • When it comes to collision repair you should go for OEM products to get the exact match for the damaged parts of your Porsche, Mercedes, Audi, Maserati, BMW, Tesla car’s body.
  • When driving a leased car, use OEM products in case of damage, otherwise, the leasing agency will charge you extra at the end.

Final call is yours

It is always up to you to decide, in this OEM vs. Aftermarket debate, to decide which one you prefer. If you want assurance of quality and spending extra bucks isn’t an issue for you, then you should go for OEM products. Otherwise, the market is filled with aftermarket products.