By Leo, Workshop Manager – EuroLab Ltd, Auckland
There’s a business model in the New Zealand car scene that most people don’t know about. Buy parts from Alibaba for a few dollars. Slap your logo on them. Sell them as “performance” upgrades at ten times the price. And nobody checks.
I’m not talking about budget parts that are marketed as budget parts. That’s fine. Everyone knows what they’re getting. I’m talking about companies that are deliberately rebranding cheap Chinese factory parts as their own product line, complete with logos, packaging, and performance claims they’ve never tested.
This isn’t a grey area. It’s a con.
How the Scam Works
Go on Alibaba right now. Search for coilovers, wheels, carbon fibre bonnets, body kits, intake systems. You’ll find thousands of products from Chinese factories that sell directly to anyone with a business account. No minimum engineering qualifications. No quality certifications required. Just a bulk order and a credit card.
Here’s the process:
1. Order 50 sets of coilovers from a Chinese factory at $80 per set.
2. Pay an extra $5 per unit for custom laser engraving or a branded sticker.
3. Create a website with professional photos (often taken straight from the factory listing).
4. Sell them as your own “performance” brand for $800 to $1,200 per set.
5. Write marketing copy full of claims like “track tested” and “precision engineered” with zero evidence.
That’s the entire business model. There’s no R&D. No engineering. No testing. No dyno data. No track testing. No crash testing. No long-term durability testing. Just a sticker and a markup.
We Went Looking on Alibaba. Here’s What We Found.
We didn’t just write about this. We went on Alibaba and searched for the exact same products being sold by relabeling companies in New Zealand. What we found was worse than we expected.
This is a coilover factory listing on Alibaba. 32-way adjustable damping, monotube, pillow ball top mounts, camber adjustable. The exact same specs you’ll see on “performance brands” selling coilovers in New Zealand for $1,000 to $1,500. The factory price? $280 to $355 USD for the full set. That’s roughly $450 to $570 NZD.
But here’s the part that matters most. See the customisation options? Custom logo. Custom packaging. Graphic customisation. Minimum order: 50 pieces. That’s the entire relabeling business right there. Order 50 sets, send the factory your logo file, and they’ll laser engrave it or print it on the box for you. Your “brand” is born. No engineering. No testing. No R&D facility. Just a file upload and a purchase order.
And here’s the wheel side of the operation. Forged monoblock wheels, T6061-T6 aluminium, 5×112 bolt pattern, 18 to 24 inches. The factory offers “drawing-based customisation, sample-based customisation, full customisation” and claims they can deliver a custom wheel design in three days. The price? $108 to $400 USD per wheel. That’s $175 to $645 NZD.
Here’s another one from the same factory. “NNX High Performance Forged Wheels.” $128 to $443 USD per wheel. Customised logo, customised packaging, graphic customisation. Minimum order: 200 pieces. The factory has an 8-year trading history, 823 reviews, a 4.6 star rating, and ships to Switzerland, the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. This isn’t some back-alley operation. It’s a verified, well-established manufacturing pipeline. And the only thing standing between this factory listing and a “premium New Zealand performance brand” is a logo file and a purchase order.
Meanwhile, the same wheel with a different logo is being sold in New Zealand for $1,000 to $1,500 per wheel. Four to six times the factory price.
These factories aren’t hiding. They’ve been operating on Alibaba for 8 to 16 years. They have 4.6 to 4.8 star ratings with hundreds of reviews. They have 44% reorder rates. They ship to Switzerland, the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. This is a well-oiled, well-documented supply chain. The only thing that changes between the factory and the consumer is the sticker.
Some of these factories don’t even try to hide their OEM branding services. They openly advertise “OEM ODM Custom Made” on their listings. They’ll build coilovers, lowering springs, stabiliser bars, brake kits, and stiffeners. All from the same factory. All with your logo. You send them a design, they manufacture it, brand it, box it, and ship it. The entire product catalogue for some New Zealand “performance brands” is sitting right there on Alibaba, waiting for the next order.
The Taiwan and Japan Branding Play
Here’s a tactic we’ve been seeing more and more.
Some of these companies have worked out that customers are getting wise to the Alibaba game. So they’ve adjusted their marketing. Instead of saying nothing about where the parts come from, they now claim their products are “developed alongside a large Taiwanese manufacturer” or “sourced from Japan” or “engineered in partnership with a Japanese firm.”
The wording is always vague. Always non-specific. Never an actual factory name. Never a verifiable address. Never a link to the manufacturer’s own website. Just enough to make you think the parts aren’t coming from the same Alibaba factories as everyone else’s.
We’ve pulled parts off cars in our workshop that came with Mandarin stickers on the internal packaging. Not Japanese. Not Taiwanese. Mandarin. From factories in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Ningbo. The same factories we found selling identical products on Alibaba for a third of the retail price.
The Taiwan and Japan branding play is designed to do one thing: create distance between the product and its actual origin. If a company tells you their coilovers are “developed alongside a Taiwanese manufacturer,” ask them to name the manufacturer. Ask for photos of the factory. Ask for the engineering specifications from that manufacturer’s facility. Ask for the test data from that manufacturer. If they can’t answer any of those questions, you have your answer.
The Products They’re Selling
This isn’t limited to one product category. The relabeled Alibaba parts game covers almost everything in the aftermarket world:
Coilovers – These are the most common. Alibaba factory coilovers with custom branding, sold as “performance suspension.” The damping rates are untested for your specific vehicle. The seals leak within 12 months. The spring rates are guessed, not engineered. Ask yourself this: does this company have CNC machines? A suspension assembly plant? A testing rig? Or do they just have a warehouse, a website, and a sticker printer? When a quality coilover from KW, Bilstein, or Ohlins costs $2,000 to $4,000, and the relabeled set costs $800, ask yourself what’s missing. The answer is everything that makes a coilover actually work.
Wheels – This is where it gets truly brazen. We’ve seen companies selling Alibaba wheels for $6,000 a set when the same wheels, from the same factory, cost $1,000 delivered to New Zealand. No certification. No impact testing. No fatigue testing. No radial load testing. Just a logo and a ridiculous markup. We’ve seen these wheels crack on New Zealand roads. Not bend. Crack. A quality wheel from BBS, Volk, or Enkei has passed JWL, VIA, or TUV testing to international standards. A relabeled Alibaba wheel has passed a visual inspection at a shipping container. And it costs more than the genuine one.
Carbon fibre parts – Bonnets, splitters, diffusers, mirror caps. The carbon weave looks good in photos. In person, the resin is inconsistent, the fitment is off by centimetres, and the UV coating starts yellowing within months. Real carbon fibre from Seibon, APR, or Vorsteiner is laid up in specific patterns for structural integrity. Factory carbon uses aerospace-grade resin systems. The Alibaba version uses whatever’s cheapest.
Body kits – Fibreglass bumpers, side skirts, and splitters that need so much modification to fit that the labour cost to install them exceeds the cost of buying a proper one in the first place. We’ve seen kits arrive with mounting holes in the wrong position, uneven surfaces, and gel coat that chips off within weeks.
Ignition coils and electrical parts – This one’s been doing the rounds lately. Companies selling “high output” ignition coils with claims like “10% more energy output” and “more spark equals more power.” Sounds compelling. Except there’s zero dyno data to support any of it. The factory coils on your BMW, Audi, or VW already fire the full air/fuel charge. A coil that produces more spark energy than needed doesn’t create more power. It creates more heat and shorter coil life. We run cars up to 900 wheel horsepower on factory ignition coils. Nine hundred. If factory coils can handle that, your Stage 2 daily driver does not need “upgraded” coils. It’s $200+ for literally nothing.
The Safety Problem Nobody Talks About
Everything above is a rip-off. But this next part is genuinely dangerous.
Some of these companies are selling relabeled airbag kits and steering wheels with integrated airbags from Chinese factories that have never been crash tested.
Read that again.
An airbag is an explosive device. It deploys within 20 to 30 milliseconds of impact. It is designed to save your life in a collision. The difference between a properly tested airbag and an untested one can be the difference between walking away from a crash and not walking away at all.
Factory airbags go through years of development. They’re tested at multiple impact speeds, multiple angles, with multiple occupant sizes and positions. They’re calibrated to deploy at exactly the right moment with exactly the right force. They work in concert with seatbelt pretensioners, crumple zones, and the car’s crash structure.
A $150 steering wheel with an airbag from an unregulated Chinese factory has been through none of that.
You might install it because it looks cool. Carbon flat-bottom, Alcantara grip, a couple of buttons on it. Very Instagram. But when you actually need that airbag to work, you’re betting your face on a product that’s never been tested in a real crash scenario. The airbag could deploy too early, too late, with too much force, with too little force, or not at all.
We know of a case right here in New Zealand where this exact thing happened. An F80 M3 crashed. Every single airbag in the car deployed. The curtain airbags. The side airbags. The passenger airbag. Every one. Except the driver’s airbag. The one in the aftermarket steering wheel. The one that was supposed to save the driver’s life.
It didn’t deploy because it was never designed to deploy. The “airbag” was nothing more than a resistor designed to suppress the airbag warning light on the dashboard. That’s it. No explosive charge. No inflatable bag. Just a resistor tricking the car’s computer into thinking an airbag was there. The driver thought they had a working airbag. They didn’t. They had a lie wrapped in Alcantara.
That’s not a grey area. That’s criminal. And somehow, the companies selling these products are still operating, still fitting them to cars, and still putting them on the road.
And the person fitting it to your car? They’re not telling you any of this. They’re telling you it looks sick.
How to Spot a Relabeled Part
It’s not hard once you know what to look for:
Search the product on Alibaba. Take the part number, the product photos, or even a description of the product and search it on Alibaba or AliExpress. Nine times out of ten, you’ll find the exact same product from the factory, with the exact same photos, for a fraction of the price. The only difference is the sticker.
Ask for test data. Any genuine performance parts manufacturer can provide dyno results, fatigue test data, or engineering specifications. If a company claims their product makes more power, ask for the dyno chart. If they claim their wheels are “track rated,” ask for the JWL or TUV certification. If they claim their coilovers are “precision tuned,” ask for the damping curves. If they can’t provide any of this, they’ve got nothing but marketing.
Check the warranty. Genuine manufacturers stand behind their products with real warranties. BBS offers a 2-year warranty on their wheels. KW offers a lifetime warranty on some of their coilovers. Bilstein backs their products with comprehensive warranties. What does the relabeled brand offer? Usually a vague “12-month warranty” with terms and conditions that exclude everything that would actually go wrong.
Look at the brand’s history. How long have they been around? Do they have engineering staff? A physical workshop? R&D facilities? Or is it just a website, a logo, and an Instagram page with photos of other people’s cars? A real parts manufacturer has engineers, test facilities, and decades of motorsport heritage. A relabeler has a Shopify store and a shipping container.
Why Genuine Parts Cost More
People look at a set of BBS wheels for $4,000 and think they’re overpriced. Meanwhile, some of these relabeled brands are charging $6,000 for wheels you can buy directly from the same Chinese factory for $1,000 delivered to New Zealand. Read that again. The relabeled version costs more than the genuine article.
That $4,000 covers:
– Years of engineering and design work
– Finite element analysis and computer simulation
– Impact testing to JWL, VIA, and TUV standards
– Fatigue testing that simulates years of road use
– Quality control on every single unit
– Metallurgy and alloy specifications that are consistent batch to batch
– A real warranty backed by a company that’s been making wheels since 1970
The relabeled set? That covers a bulk Alibaba order, a laser engraving machine, and a markup that would make a luxury brand blush.
It’s the same across every product category. KW employs over 300 people across engineering and manufacturing. Bilstein has been making dampers since 1954. Brembo tests their brakes at temperatures exceeding 800 degrees Celsius. These companies invest millions in R&D because they know their products will be used on public roads at high speeds by real people with families in the car.
The relabeled brand invests in Instagram ads.
The Real Cost
We see the aftermath of cheap relabeled parts regularly in our workshop.
Coilovers that leak after 8 months. Wheels that crack on a motorway pothole. Carbon fibre parts that delaminate. Body kits that need more hours of fitting than a genuine kit costs to buy. Ignition coils that die within a year. Intercooler pipes that pop off under boost.
Every one of these failures costs more to fix than doing it right the first time would have cost. And some of them, like a cracked wheel at 100 km/h on the motorway or a steering wheel airbag that doesn’t deploy in a crash, can’t be fixed at all.
We’re not telling you to only buy the most expensive parts. There are genuine mid-range brands that offer excellent value. Eibach makes great springs. Enkei makes quality wheels without the BBS price tag. These companies all have real engineering, real testing, and real track records.
The difference between a mid-range brand and a relabeled Alibaba part isn’t the price. It’s whether anyone actually tested the thing before they put it on your car.
What We Do Differently
At EuroLab, every part we fit goes on one of our own cars first. Or it’s from a brand we’ve used for years and trust with our own vehicles. We don’t sell parts we haven’t tested. We don’t make performance claims we can’t back up on the dyno. And we don’t fit safety-critical components from brands that can’t provide test data.
If you bring us a set of relabeled coilovers and ask us to fit them, we’ll tell you the truth. We’ll show you the same product on Alibaba for a tenth of the price. And we’ll give you options that actually work.
Your car deserves better than a sticker and a story.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are all Chinese-made parts bad?
No. Many genuine brands manufacture in China to high specifications with strict quality control. The issue isn’t where a part is made. It’s whether the brand selling it has done any engineering, testing, or quality control. A genuine brand that manufactures in China and tests to international standards is completely different from a company that orders untested parts from Alibaba and puts a sticker on them.
How can I tell if a brand is relabeling Alibaba parts?
Search the product images and descriptions on Alibaba. If you find the exact same product from a Chinese factory with different branding, it’s a relabel. Also ask for dyno data, certification, and engineering specifications. If the brand can’t provide any of these, that tells you everything.
Is it illegal to relabel parts in New Zealand?
If the marketing makes performance claims that aren’t backed by evidence, it could breach the Fair Trading Act. If a relabeled safety component (like an airbag or steering wheel) fails and causes injury, the seller could face liability under the Consumer Guarantees Act. But enforcement is limited, so the industry largely polices itself. Which means it doesn’t.
Are aftermarket steering wheels with airbags safe?
Only if they’ve been properly tested and certified. Factory steering wheels and airbags go through extensive crash testing as part of the vehicle’s overall safety system. An aftermarket steering wheel with an airbag from an unregulated factory has not been through this testing. You’re trusting an explosive device that’s never been proven to work correctly.
Why don’t more workshops speak up about this?
Because some of them are selling the same stuff. The margins on relabeled parts are huge. Buy a coilover set for $80, sell it for $800. That’s a business model a lot of workshops don’t want to disrupt. And the ones who do speak up risk getting attacked online by the brands they call out. It’s easier to stay quiet. We’ve just never been good at that.
What brands do you recommend for affordable performance parts?
For coilovers: KW, Bilstein, Ohlins at the top end. BC Racing for a solid mid-range option. For wheels: BBS, Volk, Enkei. For springs: Eibach, H&R. For brakes: Brembo, AP Racing. For intakes and intercoolers: stick with brands that publish dyno data specific to your vehicle. If a company can show you the numbers, they’ve done the work.
