Auto manufacturers must make spare parts for 10 years

[snopes]

Comment: I keep hearing this one but can't find any concrete information.
The claim is that auto manufacturers are required by federal law to have
parts available for any models they sold for the period of 10 years.

This matter to me personally because I have a car I will want to keep
longer than 10 years.

[snopes]

Apparently the term has been increased from the previous seven years.

- snopes

[snopes]

Comment: Are U.S. automobile manufacturers required to make parts for the
cars they manufacture for ten years? Which parts are included? All of
them?

[Not_Done_Living]

I can only speak for what i know, but the Vehicle Manufacturer in which i manage makes very few parts.

They have thousands of suppliers who make parts for them, and to their specs, but all they do is design. build, and market.

If you require a piece for your vehicle, you WILL be able to find it..as long as you are willing to pay for it.

[GenYus234]

The EPA requires that certain major emission componants be covered under a warranty for up to 8 years. I wonder if that is where this UL comes from.

[AnglRdr]

I suspect suppliers will continue to produce parts as long as they sell. However, considering the standardization of parts throughout and across production lines, I doubt it is really a huge issue.

[Floater]

I have heard of a person who wanted one of these. His problem was Volvo stopped making them in the sixties, but with the right amount of money in hand he was able to have one built out of spare parts.

There used to be a federal law that required manufacturers to keep auto parts available for 20 years. It was passed in the 1960s, and deregulated in the 1980s.

And then there was the chap who built a brand new 1974 V12 Jaguar E-type from parts

[NotYouMe]

Originally Posted by Floater

I have heard of a person who wanted one of these. His problem was Volvo stopped making them in the sixties, but with the right amount of money in hand he was able to have one built out of spare parts.

I drive a '67 Volvo (122, not the 544 you were talking about), and I'm consistently amazed at the wide availability of parts. The idea that there are enough old Volvo fanatics to make it profitable to continue manufacturing just about every part of the car is really quite astounding. Beyond that, there are several companies that specialize in making performance parts exclusively for Volvos from 1970s and older. Not just springs and sway bars, mind you, but everything up through superchargers and pre-built high performance engines. Not that the idea isn't tempting, but it boggles the mind that there is enough money to be made off people trying to supercharge an old Swedish tank that it's worth developing and marketing such items.

All that said, a great deal of the parts available are not OEM. In my case, Volvo still produces some items (especially if they are compatible with several different models), but in general, the bigger or more specific the part is, the harder it is to find and the more it will cost. For big stuff like body panels, it's almost always cheaper and easier to salvage from other cars. I recently had to replace a fender and found that while a perfectly straight used one cost $125, a new aftermarket replacement would have been closer to $900 after shipping.