thegarageblog.co.uk : How a car costs so much less than the sum of its parts.

Many years ago, I remember reading that someone had bothered to add up the cost of buying all the individual parts that make up a car, and discovered that it was many times the cost of actually buying the entire car. I often wonder how the car manufacturers justify the prices of some of their parts, as I’m regularly left speechless on the end of the phone when enquiring about the cost of some vital part or other. Just yesterday, I had a tiny little rubber washer delivered for a Mazda 6. This part was literally a tiny rubber seal, around 3mm in diameter yet the price on the invoice was over £11.00! I’d have expected it to cost no more than 20p or so, but being a Mazda, the parts are extortionately priced.

We spend around £15,000 per month on parts, which is spread between several ‘motor factors’ that cater for many makes of car, and the rest with franchised dealer parts departments. I check the prices on almost everything to see if it seems reasonable or not and on the whole, most of them barely raise an eyebrow. One thing that does surprise me is that the cost of parts for ‘prestige’ marques such as BMW and Mercedes are often very reasonably priced, yet some parts for more mainstream models are ridiculously overpriced.

Let’s say that you’re lucky enough to own an S Class Mercedes Benz and your drivers electric window stops working. A quick call to Mercedes will get you the required window regulator for under £130, yet the similar part to repair a Renault Clio costs around £190. If the entire digital air conditioning controller and display on your 1999 BMW 320i should require replacement, your local dealer can supply a new one for under £150 but if you own a Renault Laguna, the price is nearer £400!

By far the most expensive main dealer parts (apart from Renault) seem to be for Japanese cars. Toyota, Honda, Subaru and Mazda seem to be priced way above the prices of the others, with Mitsubishi and Suzuki parts often surprisingly inexpensive. I remember having to buy a little metal suspension link for a Subaru Legacy a few years ago and it cost almost £80. An almost identical-looking part for a Rover at the time cost around £9.

Much more rarely though, I might think that a part is ‘too cheap’ if for instance, a big and heavy metal lump like an engine mount is only £25 (thankyou Ford).

I reckon I’ve worked out the pricing structure for certain dealer’s parts though, and it seems to be based on the following; If a part is really crappy, cheaply-made and likely to break, they can charge a fortune for it as they’re going to sell loads of them. Renault must have known that the hazard warning light switch on 2001 onwards Clio’s was a useless piece of tat and would usually stop working after a couple of years, resulting in failure of the first MOT. Why else would they double the price from £16 to £33 in the space of a few months? There’s probably more profit in selling hundreds of hazard switches than there is in selling a new Clio. To the credit of Vauxhall though, their notorious failure parts seem to go down in price each year. When we first started replacing faulty camshaft position sensors on Vauxhall Astra, Corsa, Vectra and Omega models, they were around £70 each. Now these little parts usually cost under £30 each, and are much easier to justify to a customer.

As so many modern cars and vans ’share’ platforms, parts are often interchangeable between different makes. A popular example is the Ford Galaxy, which is also sold through Volkswagen as the Sharan and through Seat as the Alhambra. If we need a part for a Volkswagen Sharan, we’ll often phone Ford and buy one for a Galaxy as it’s often much cheaper for the same part and more likely to be in stock! The Vauxhall Vectra and Saab 9-3 are virtually identical under the skin, yet an alternator from a Saab dealer will cost £250.00 and the same part from Vauxhall might be £100 less. More often than not, the Saab part will arrive in the same General Motors box, yet cost much more, simly as it came from a Saab dealer!

It’s all about knowing what fits what, and that knowledge and experience can save a fortune. The next time an X-Type Jaguar 2.0 Diesel needs a new starter motor, I’m not even going to bother phoning Jaguar, but will just order one for a Mondeo or Transit instead and save £50 for the customer.

In the meantime, I must remember to send that £11 seal back to Mazda for a refund as we found an indentical seal in another set for 10p that does exactly the same job.