AFTERMARKET PRODUCT,

With regard to automobile parts, Aftermarket refers to any part that is not manufactured by or expressly for, the original vehicle manufacturer. This can be something as benign as custom wheels you might see offered in your local speed or wheel shop with a very different look than the vehicle manufacturer had intended, but it may also be something far more innocuous.....

There exists a growing industry of small manufacturers of exact replicas of OEM parts. It amazes me that the automobile manufacturers tolerate this, given that these replicas appear EXACTLY identical from the point of appearance. However, they are most definitely NOT the same.

 I have inspected these replica parts, and they are unilaterally of inferior quality to their OEM counterparts.

 How? QUALITY. It is obvious that the reason for the aftermarket replicas, is to provide what may be construed as the same item at a lower price. But there is generally only one way to make the 'same' item at a significantly lower price, and that is to remove value.

These aftermarket replicas are manufactured, either in China or Taiwan, to the very minimal standards to still appear the same as the OEM design. But their failure rate is astronomical. The replica part, always begin to flake or peel in less than a year.

I'm in the business and I see these parts at car dealers after a short amount of time. Chrome replica parts always being to flake and/or peel with a year, compared with OEM/Factory chrome wheels that remain uniform for 5 or more years depending on the conditions to which they are exposed.

But what is catastrophically worse, is when these aftermarket wheels truly FAIL - as in CRACK. Yes, I have seen on NUMEROUS occasions, where one of these wheels has actually cracked! This is due to the inferior quality of materials metallurgy of these aftermarket replica wheels. The replica manufacturers seem to answer to nobody due to their foreign manufacture.

People buy aftermarket replica parts on the internet, and when such a catastrophic failure occurs, they return to the (new car) dealer for warranty replacement. The service advisor will recognize that this is an aftermarket replica parts, and obviously not only not cover the failure of the part, but will not cover any other damage that occurred as a result of the failure.

 While I personally disagree with the following practice, I've even seen some service managers go so far as to void the remainder of the vehicle's warranty on everything including unrelated systems, solely due to the use of this type of aftermarket part.
Something to seriously consider, when one is shopping purely based on price.

As a rule and for the above reasons, I generally do not carry nor endorse aftermarket replica parts. Please feel free to check all my Land Rover Range Rover parts I have for sale.