Auto Part Brands: OEM, Aftermarket, & What Makes Quality

The automotive industry is enormous, with roughly 3 trillion dollars a year in new car sales, used car sales, repair, and parts globally. It's therefore no surprise that, for a large mainstream marque like Volkswagen, many different companies (including Volkswagen themselves, via Genuine VW dealer parts) supply parts to keep those tens of millions of VWs on the road.

How are you, the customer, supposed to know which brands of parts are safe for your car? OEM VW parts are always a safe bet, but that's an expensive way to keep a car running...especially when VW themselves often contracts out manufacturing of parts like spark plugs and air filters to other companies.

Here at WPD, we're using our decades of industry experience to share our knowledge with you on where parts are sourced and how this affects quality and prices. Our products are tagged with these Brand Classifications: we classify parts based on which part of the the vast automotive supply chain they come from and how this impacts durability, performance, and value:

• OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer 
• OES: Original Equipment Supplier 
• HQR: High Quality Replacement
• AMR: Aftermarket Replacement
• AMP: Aftermarket Performance

With a little bit of knowledge about which parts fall in to which category, you can strike the right balance of price vs quality when working on your car. Read on below!