John Simister John muses about the changing names of parts suppliers.
John recalls some long-lost parts suppliers
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and the Peugeot-citroën group (PSA) have merged. Or so it first seemed; actually, there’s one more PSA board member than there are FCA ones, so really PSA has taken over FCA.
That, in new-car land, is a fairly epic development. It means, to those of us with a classic tint to our automotive appreciation, that the company that once took over Chrysler’s European operations, formerly the Rootes Group and Simca, now has control of the whole Chrysler shebang in the US, too. Does it also mean that Mopar will shortly be rebranded as Motaquip?
Let me explain. Mopar is Chrysler’s parts brand, has been for very many years, and is nowadays Fiat’s parts brand too. In the US, ‘Mopar’ is also a sort of slang for any Chrysler/plymouth/dodge muscle car, so it seemed quite strange when I ordered a replacement anti-roll bar drop link for my 2011 Fiat 500 Twinair and it arrived in a Mopar box.
Service parts for Chrysler UK cars, and indeed for some rivals, were marketed here under the Mopar banner from the Seventies, in the same way as British Leyland had Unipart, Ford had Motorcraft (itself a rebranding of Autolite) and Vauxhall had GM’S AC brand, from its AC Delco components subsdiary. All sold service parts for rival companies’ cars, often through independent motor factors. And then, as Chrysler Europe became Peugeot-owned Talbot, the UK part of the Mopar parts operation became Motaquip.
Muscling in
One of the reasons behind the big carmakers’ urge to sell parts to fit their rivals’ products was the chance of muscling in on the territory long occupied by independent manufacturers of ‘copy’ parts. These were components of decent quality, often close to original-equipment (OE) standards if not quite matching them, and just about different enough from the original design not to infringe copyright while still functioning correctly.
These parts came from companies such as Quinton Hazell, Motaproducts (or ‘Moprod’) and myriad lesser-known brands. The Brown Brothers chain of factors had its own components brand called Power Train, which were actually repackaged Quinton Hazell parts. And, of course, OE suppliers such as Lucas, Borg & Beck, Laycock, Bosch and plenty more supplied parts in their own packaging that were identical to the parts you could buy, carmaker-branded, from your local main dealer.
That is still the case today with OE suppliers, but it’s the names of the aftermarket players that have changed. The original Quinton Hazell company collapsed in 2013, although the brand name still exists on some parts sourced from elsewhere.
The Borg & Beck name, originally the clutches part of Automotive Products, now exists as a brand within aftermarket parts supplier First Line.
Unipart is today a standalone organisation that has left its BL roots far behind. AC Delco as a name has left Europe but continues in the US; its ex-gm affiliate, Delphi, continues to be a big name in Europe both in the aftermarket and for OE parts. Motorcraft is still going strong. And Motaquip?
Going it alone
It, like Unipart, is now a Uk-based independent supplier and continues to have a strong market presence, which means that the name is not about to replace Mopar. So, will the PSA/FCA conglomerate with all its disparate marques come up with a new name for a common supplier of parts to cover them all? Will parts for Vauxhalls (now a PSA company) now be branded Mopar as a former part of GM finds itself linked to Chrysler? Never has an automotive industry merger resulted in a web more tangled than this one, not even the formation of British Leyland.
Meanwhile, a quick rummage through the assembled detritus that inhabits my garage, the result of a half-century of faffing about with cars (I was given a terminally rusty Hillman Minx in 1969), reveals some more makers of popular parts in the Seventies. Do you remember Sedan Accessories? Siran electrical components? Anything made by Harmo? Gone, all of them…