Car manufacturers don’t manufacture car parts, they manufacture cars. They mostly assemble car parts which are bought from car part manufacturers.
OE stands for “Original Equipment” – it refers to the ‘factory fitted part’. OE and Genuine refer to the same thing.
Car part manufacturers (e.g. Bosch, Hella, Valeo) who supply parts directly to car manufacturers (e.g. Ford) are referred to as OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers).
An OE car part refers to any part fitted to a vehicle from production/factory. It stands for Original Equipment and refers to any part which was originally fitted to the vehicle.
As previously stated, an OE part is the same as a ‘factory fitted part’ or ‘genuine part’. It won’t usually be manufactured by the car manufacturer themselves, but by an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), who is a manufacturer of original car parts.
Since OE refers to an original part, it is often considered to be the best in terms of quality, as one assumes the OE part manufacturer must adhere to the original specification of the vehicle manufacturer.
The premier range of Headlights available from Allparts are all OE parts see the Lighting section of our Online Store).
Matching Quality/OE Quality Parts
These are parts which match or exceed the quality of the original. When these parts are fitted to a vehicle, it will not invalidate the vehicle manufacturer’s warranty.
They should come with a suppliers certificate: “These parts are specified to perform to the same standards as original equipment and to meet or exceed the matching quality requirements as detailed in the Block Exemption Regulation EC 46/2010. According to this regulation, the correct installation of such parts will not invalidate the vehicle manufacturer’s warranty.”
