I find it interesting that the people who complain most about the price and quality of parts have never actually tried to make anything. Give it a whirl one day. Walk into a manufacturing facility with your idea and maybe some blueprints. I have. I quickly found out about minimum orders, tooling costs, and the overwhelming drive (on the part of the manufacturer) to cut corners. If you want something absolutely correct be prepared for many months of revisions and samples. It's easy to have $30-100k into a part before the first one even comes off the line (many parts require more than 1 piece of tooling). Once the production run starts the material costs and labor add up real quick! Other parts need multiple steps (assembly, chrome, polishing, etc.). Labor rates in the US are much higher - and typically account for well over 50% of a company's expenses (which they will pass on to the customer) so every time a person has to touch it the costs goes up. In China materials may actually cost more but labor is only about 20-30% of expenses.
Once you have inventory you need to try to recoup as much of your investment as possible so that you can invest in something else. I think that, typically, you'd like to break even within about 6 months. If you can sell 50 parts per month that's 300 parts so if you've got $30k into the production that's $100 each. This is bad if your part is something like a side marker light. Unfortunately, most minimum production runs are around 1000 parts so that leaves 700 in inventory at a warehouse somewhere. This is bad if your part only fits limited production cars (shakers, Hemis, etc.) because you'd have to sell your part to every single car owner - and many of the cars may no longer exist or they're in good condition. In this case the price per part has to jump because the total you may be able to sell gets much smaller. When you start doing things like taillights you have to double everything (tooling, materials, shipping, storage, etc.).
For what it's worth, PG *owns* the manufacturing facilities in China. They own the tooling and the machines. The only way they can make all the parts that they do is because of this. They can make "limited" runs of parts that no one else would take on. One example is 68 Charger tail lights. There are 14-16 unique pieces (and tooling for all of them). I know the initial run was 50 units - I bought pair #6. It is unlikely that any more will be made. At close to $1,000 per pair it's still a major loss. I wonder if they'll ever break even because I just can't see them selling the volume they need to cover what they've put into it.
Also, BE&A is something of a sister company (long story). They usually sell the same parts (usually the better parts of the lot) but they are licensed with part numbers and logos. Chrysler gets their 10% so, of course, the prices are higher. On a $400 part $40 is going to Mopar.
As for quality, it's a never ending struggle. Chrysler destroyed most all of their original tooling in the 80s so all parts have to be reverse-engineered. Companies like PG/BE&A try to use NOS parts to create molds. Unfortunately, they can't find good NOS parts all the time and, worse, the original part usually gets destroyed. So that leaves used parts or superceded parts (which don't always exactly match the originals). Used parts will often have wear, deformation, and may have been tweaked to fit the car they were originally installed on. Not to mention that build quality of these cars when they were new wasn't all that great. Unibodies could be out-of-square by 3/8". Certain parts - especially those made of stainless and injection molded plastic - used extremely expensive tooling when new so the modern versions are slightly thinner or use a different process. This makes for parts that are more flexible/flimsy that likely won't last as long. It cuts the cost by a massive amount though and no matter how many people say they'd pay more for something right it's still not feasible once you crunch the numbers.
As for Ford/Chevy, the two biggest reasons the parts are cheaper are: original tooling and economies of scale (they made more). Chevy had this odd habit of actually using the same part on many car models - unlike Mopar which seemed to keep parts fairly specific. I have a 70 Mach 1 so I do have a bit of experience. If you browse through reproduction Ford parts you can find a lot that are "Original Tooling". These cost more so I wonder how the other reproductions (on new tooling) can be made cheaper? It's likely because the materials aren't quite the same quality. Looking at them in person you can see the difference. Ford and Chevy made a lot more cars (there were more 68 Mustangs and more 69 Camaros than 6-7 years of Chargers and more than the entire production run of Challengers and Cudas) so they had to keep a lot more parts on hand. Some of these parts are still available new at the dealer (same as Mopar but a LOT more parts). I can also say from experience that the quality of a lot of the reproduction parts isn't all that great. This is partially because cost is a major driving force. There may be 5-8 manufacturers for a single part (bumpers for instance) so the lowest price wins. When the competition is that fierce someone always cuts corners - because someone will pay for it just because it's cheap. I have also found reproduction parts that aren't "right" because they were copied off a bad NOS part (see above). A perfect example is the 69-70 Mustang/Torino Shaker seal which gets thinner towards one end and has the later style drain tube. Yeah, it's only $60 but it's noticeably different than the assembly line piece.
So any way, I'm grateful that we have parts to choose from. I, like many others, will continue to question the quality of certain things and the price on a lot of things but I always say "a bad part to fill a hole is better than no part at all". If I can get my car on the road while I search for the perfect part I will - but I won't be happy about it. I know that I'll have 4 more cars on the road than I would without the repro parts though.
Troy
