Personnel news from Aftermarket Auto Parts Alliance leads off our top stories of the week. Yesterday, the Alliance announced the appointment of Daniel Rader as senior product director. Rader brings extensive industry experience with him to this newly created position. Most recently, Rader was with CARQUEST for 11 years in a host of product management positions from product merchandising manager to vice-president Global Sourcing. Prior to his tenure with CARQUEST, he worked for APS Holdings (d.b.a. Big A Auto Parts). Rader is a graduate of the University of the Aftermarket Leadership 2.0 Program and an ASE-Certified Parts Specialist. He currently is a member of the AAIA Category Management Committee.
In news from the technology sector, ShowMeTheParts.com this week announced that it has seen its unique visitor count more than double in the past six months to more than 371,000 unique visitors in October. The company says this increase is the result of adding 87 manufacturers since its inception a little more than a year ago. Among the most recent companies to begin utilizing ShowMeTheParts’ online application catalog are Dayco Products, Python Injection and Rad Limited.
Also this week, Standard Motor Products announced the sale of its European distribution business. The business was sold to the current managers for approximately $3 million in cash and a promissory note and approximately $3.1 million in assumed debt. Proceeds from the sale will be used to pay down debt and Standard will retain its manufacturing operation in Poland, as well as certain land available for sale in the United Kingdom and a small investment in a joint venture.
Tire manufacturers this week have announced a new round of price hikes, after taking most of the past two years off. On Wednesday, Bridgestone Americas, Continental Tire North America and Yokohama Tire Corp. made increase announcements, joining Nexen Tire America and Goodyear, which had previously made price adjustments. The increases come as a result of the slight rises in raw material costs and the aftereffects of the recent 35 percent added tariff on China-made tires imported into the U.S. Analysts had expected the increases as U.S. makers sought to maintain price separation between their premium products and anticipated tariff-driven increases of lower tier tires.
The last item in our round-up of the week’s top news concerns Affinia Group, which this week filed a petition requesting the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to begin rulemaking toward adoption of a first-ever Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard for brake rotors. The petition for a safety standard is the latest step in Affinia’s ongoing public awareness campaign to bring to light important safety issues affecting aftermarket auto parts and to push for effective action where necessary. The new Safety Standard that Affinia seeks from NHTSA would require all rotors sold in the United States to meet minimum performance standards for structural strength and crack-resistance under rigorous laboratory testing. No such mandatory standard exists in the U.S. today, according to Affinia, despite the fact that brake systems are a critical safety component on a vehicle.
In response to the news of Affinia’s new petition, AMN reader John Bradley, technical director for IIVES, noted that there was some much-overlooked work done by the Vehicle Equipment Safety Commission (VESC) on this very issue, which took place from the early 1960s through the 1980s.
“VESC V-14 was to a great extent subsumed by and included within [Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and Regulations] FMVSS 135. However, the section of V-14 related to marking drums/rotors with the ‘discard dimension’ was not. It is still on the books. For decades manufacturers engineered, tested and marked rotors properly per VESC V-14 – and many upright manufacturers still do,” Bradley wrote.
"NHTSA may only act upon reasonable evidence of a critical safety issue involving ‘lightweight’ rotors,” Bradley added. “There is already a mechanism in place and that is adherence to and enforcement of VESC V-14.”
