- Aftermarket wheels are awesome.
They look better than pretty much any OEM wheel
out there except for a couple two, three.
And they're usually lighter, they're faster,
they're better made, they're just cooler to look at,
and everybody just seems to love them
because it allows you to personalize your vehicle.
Which is pretty darn neat,
but when you actually break it down
when it comes down to the difference
between OEM and aftermarket wheels,
there's, well, not a lot different.
You see, there's a few things about aftermarket wheels
that a lot of people just don't know
and don't understand because the market
of aftermarket wheels is kinda like politics.
- Wrong.
- You really just don't know what's going on.
You only just catch the headlines,
and that's how you make your brash
oversimplification of an opinion on something,
and then at the end of the day you're usually wrong
and you look like an idiot on Facebook.
But we are here to talk to you about that,
because if only there was somebody
that was in the wheel game that knew this stuff
because they sell wheels, tires and suspension,
and they also have a growing, aspiring media channel
in hopes that people can learn more stuff
about wheel fitment and things like that.
If only there was a company that specialized
in providing information through video.
(crickets chirping)
Hey guys, it's Alex from Fitment Industries
Don't forget to subscribe,
and let's get into some things that you probably
didn't know about the aftermarket wheel market, market.
Squared.
So the first thing that you may not know
about the aftermarket wheel market
is that if you have cast wheels,
they are likely made overseas, probably in China.
That's gonna be 80 to 85% of what we would say
most of your cast wheels are made,
but here's the kicker.
If you have cast wheels,
and you're talking smack about
another aftermarket wheel company
that also produces cast wheels,
there's a pretty good chance that
they're made in the same exact factory.
You see, when you have an aspiring brand new wheel company
and they wanna go out, they wanna change the world,
they wanna make some aftermarket wheels
and they wanna be cool about it
and they wanna just make the wheels and do the thing.
They ultimately don't have enough
purchasing power to pretty much get in anywhere.
You have to remember that overseas,
every single factory wants to produce OEM wheels,
and that is really what they specialize in.
But they'll fill in random quarters
with other people's wheels if they, well, if they want to.
So when it comes down to making aftermarket wheels
and you're a new guy on the block,
the chances of you getting into a factory
are pretty much zero percent.
So what you have to do is you have to partner
with other small companies to get
into these factories for buy-ins.
You're ultimately producing
maybe only 5,000 wheels a quarter
and the other company is producing 5,000 wheels a quarter
and you multiply that by six companies
and you finally have a good enough buy-in
and a good enough price point to all go in
and to all make your wheels with
the molds that they have to produce.
At the end of the day,
the companies that are partnering with each other
to essentially get into the factory
almost always are in direct competition of each other
once they hit the actual public market.
So you'd be surprise at the amount of wheels
that come out of one factory
can end up being seven or eight different wheel companies
that are making their cast wheels at that same place.
Murica, freedom, everything of the land of the free
and the home of the brave makes everybody wanna believe
that everything needs to be made in the USA.
Therefore, because of that,
anything made overseas is absolute trash.
And, I mean, like, there are some things
about that that are true,
but the whole made in America thing
has become such a marketing ploy
that really it doesn't actually mean if it's better.
It just means that it was made here,
and a lot of times people will finagle their way around it.
Really what I'm trying to say is that
naturally a lot of people in the automotive market
believe that anything made out of the USA is trash.
Especially when you consider wheels made in China
or Taiwan or Japan or things like that.
People automatically associate
entry-level wheels to be absolute garbage,
but what they don't remember is that a lot of
American-made wheels actually really aren't that good.
Especially when you consider the truck wheel community,
which our boys over at Custom Offsets could probably
tell you a whole bunch of stuff about.
But actually, American-made wheels
have had a slew of problems.
They're absolutely littered with things
that were wrong when they made the wheels.
Whether that was orange peel, whether that was powder coat
or paint, whether that was finish, whether that was size
or weight problems and things like that
that really, when you think about it,
overseas have never really happened.
A lot of the expertise of
making wheels, in fact, is overseas.
The brushing that you get on a lot of different vehicles
or different wheels just isn't possible here in the USA
because of just how expensive
and how insane it is if you were to mass produce the wheel.
Which, really, when you think about it,
in the USA, there's not a lot of companies,
if at all, that mass produce wheels
for aftermarket priority or aftermarket purposes
like here, because people just don't do it.
But that doesn't mean that wheels made overseas are bad.
In fact, a lot of wheels are made overseas.
They have a lot of things that we don't.
There's a lot of technology that is behind the wheels
that are getting shipped overseas.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love to keep jobs in the USA
and I'd love to keep all of the money here in the USA
because, gosh darn it, I like NFL and PBR
and so do you,
but at the end of the day,
that's just not how the economy works.
There's a lot of technology overseas that exists
that helps keep things affordable,
and also keeps the product worth it.
You may notice that there's a lot of wheels coming out
that are rotary-forged, which is something that
is actually quite expensive in terms of a product to build.
But because the of the few factories
that produce wheels for a lot of
different brands has that technology now,
it allows you to get a rotary-forged wheel
for a fraction of the cost.
Now you might be thinking that while multi-piece wheels
are made in the USA, so ha ha, I got 'em.
They're supplying jobs and paying taxes,
just the way my dad told me to do it.
That's not really accurate either,
because there's a lot of wheels,
especially multi-piece wheels,
and this is a generalization because we're not
gonna throw anybody under the bus
and we're not gonna let anybody drive the bus
that wants to drive over.
It's a weird analogy.
But what you wanna know is that multi-piece wheels
can kind of be a little bit stretched
in terms of what manufacturers want you to believe
when you're buying their wheels.
You see, that forged block of aluminum is more than likely
actually produced and made overseas.
And then those are brought into the States,
imported into the States where they could be
actually stamped into the forged T6061 face
and all that sort of stuff, or even then,
the outer lips, the inner barrels
and the faces sometimes are even produced overseas,
and then everything gets brought over
to the United States where they're actually
polished, cleaned up, painted, and then assembled.
And because they're assembled here in the USA,
they get to say that they're made in the USA.
And unfortunately, a lot of people slip up for that.
Manufacturers, you know, they're pretty smart people.
They kinda know how to make you feel good
about buying their product,
and then they make you feel bad
about buying somebody else's.
But that really goes into the multi-piece wheel thing
as a whole because a lot of people believe
that multi-piece wheels are the Holy Grail of the world.
And they are probably one of
the coolest wheels you can buy right now,
but don't be fooled, especially with what
wheel manufacturers want you to believe.
Multi-piece wheels for today's day and age,
and out in today's world really have only one purpose,
and that is form.
They really have absolutely no function.
Which goes into the next thing.
I mean, multi-piece wheels, if you've ever looked at 'em,
if you've ever lifted them up,
especially in 18 or 19 by 11-and-a-half,
they are extremely heavy wheels.
Don't let the T6061 fool you by thinking
that they're lightweight because they're forged.
They're really not.
A lot of times that outer lip
and the hardware
and the barrel actually add a ton of weight.
The silicon doesn't help at all,
and by the time you're all said and done,
you're often with a heavier wheel
than a rotary forge counterpart.
Especially, well, all the time.
Pretty much anytime that you're getting a forged
or a rotary forged wheel,
you're probably gonna have a lot less weight
and you're gonna have more function
out of something like forged monoblock,
which is actually something RSR is doing
with their 901 to the 903 series.
Now, if you like multi-piece wheels
and you're not a fan of forged one-piece
or rotary forged, that's cool.
And I dig it because there's a lot of people out there
that wanna run those multi-piece wheels
and I think they look absolutely killer.
But just don't try to, don't,
they serve a purpose; they don't serve all purposes.
And probably the most depressing thing
in this already somewhat kind of down and out video
is that when aftermarket wheel companies,
they talk about all the stuff that they're making;
they talk about all the cool
aftermarket wheels that they're making,
and everybody gets really excited.
Then at the end of the day,
after SEMA comes out, everybody's stoked,
and they introduce like one wheel.
And you're like, pfft, why?
It's the same reason that everybody
goes out to these trade shows
and makes these super cool, fancy STIs
and then you get 'em out on the dealership
and you're like, oh.
Like, I guess.
Like, that is what the car aftermarket,
car market, wheel market, is really like.
If you think about it, aftermarket wheels are the same way,
and here's why.
The aftermarket wheel, in terms of where the money sits,
actually really doesn't sit
in the aftermarket wheel community.
It sits in the OE wheel community
because there is way more money in producing
a million units to an OEM vehicle like a Nissan
or something like that than it is
to make a thousand units of some sort of
aftermarket three-piece wheel variant.
The money is essentially just there
because that's just how the world works, you know?
Enkei is doing a great job producing OEM wheels
for so many people that, really when it comes down
to their aftermarket wheels,
they like to come out with a few different things
and be involved in sports and stuff like that.
But besides that, they're pretty much hands-off.
You look at BBS, on the other hand,
and they are completely developed
to race-oriented purposes only
and they want pretty much not a whole lot
to do with people like you and me
just because that's not what they wanna do.
But the money sits in the OE market.
And because of such, you'll notice that there will
always be an emphasis, especially with wheel manufacturers,
that they would much rather get into the OE market
than they would get into the aftermarket.
Because there's just more money in it.
So if you're interested in learning more,
drop a comment below us
and we'll see what you wanna talk about next.
I'm Alex from Fitment Industries.
Don't forget to check out FitmentIndustries.com
if you need wheels, tires, suspension.
I'm gonna do this sales pitch as fast as possible
because somebody's gonna go talk
to somebody else about window tint
and all that sort of stuff.
I'm Alex from Fitment Industries, one more time.
I'll see you later.
Peace.