- 02/05/2026
- 3 Min Read
- By: Christian Schaefer
Working With Our Partners To Bring The Best To You
How far would you go to fix your vehicle the right way? Circumstances aren’t always on your side when it comes to repairing your vehicle, as was the case for many P1 and P3 Volvos, where an expensive replacement of their engine’s oil filter housing was the only fix for a common issue with the PCV system. We watched owners work through that repair, conveniently placed between them and the companies manufacturing the oil filter housings. There was nothing we needed to do, but offering an expensive “solution” that was almost guaranteed to force another replacement later on at great cost just didn’t sit right with us, so we reached out to one of our suppliers for a better solution. Now those Volvo owners have a simpler repair option, bespoke to FCP Euro, at a tenth of the cost of the complete housing replacement.
Going beyond what’s necessary to provide solutions to issues large and small is a driving force behind what we do at FCP Euro. Many of our experts are enthusiasts who know and love these cars as you might, and they’re in a position to make a difference. That often involves pushing for bespoke solutions to problems like the one above, and our unique experience between the consumer and suppliers has allowed us to make that happen on more than a few occasions.
Identifying Gaps Requires The Right People
As we update, optimize, and expand our parts catalog, we work to bridge the gap between parts suppliers and you, the consumer. We see what you need, and you often tell us what you want, allowing us to tailor our offerings to anyone who repairs or services a European vehicle. Usually, that means stocking the right parts, but there are also plenty of times when it lets us identify gaps in support where we can work with our partners to develop real solutions.
Those opportunities are handled by the Product Team and their smaller, automaker-focused groups. As a larger team, they’re in charge of the catalog, but they do so separately, each focusing on a particular brand. The members of each team are carefully chosen, partially because of the knowledge they have of the automaker they support. Some are long-time enthusiasts, and others are factory-trained former technicians, but no matter where their knowledge originated, they bring the key expertise needed to go above and beyond stocking the basic parts. They are collaborating with vendors and partners daily to figure out where we can be better, offer more, and fill those annoying gaps in parts availability with the best quality option.
One of our more popular collaborations is the M3 Control Arm Upgrade Kit for older BMW 1-Series and 3-Series models. Although the parts were initially designed for the M cars, our experts knew from prior experience that they would bolt directly into a non-M E9X or E8X BMW chassis without issue, providing a larger, more durable rubber bushing in the tension strut and a sealed monoball bearing in the lower wishbone. These components were originally supplied by one partner, but a change in manufacturing facilities reduced quality enough that owners and our experts could see the difference. Rather than continue to stock a part we had less faith in, the BMW team reached out to Meyle with the situation. After a little back and forth, we had a new supplier of M3 arms built with the quality we expect for our customers.
Similarly, our Audi experts have collaborated closely with Elring to ensure all supercharged 3.0T Audi owners have the gaskets they need when they need them. For a time, it was nearly impossible to get a hold of the multitude of gaskets that need replacing when the supercharger comes off. Seeing the demand and lack of supply firsthand, we worked with Elring to produce OEM-quality gaskets as another option over the Genuine components, and then put them in a kit to make it easy to purchase.
However, not all opportunities have easy solutions. Some require reengineering and others, bespoke parts, though neither of those is too tough a task for our partners and us.
Collaborating To Create Better Solutions
Despite the thousands of hours and millions of miles of testing automakers perform a year, cars often still come with flaws. If we’re lucky, engineers are alerted to the issue, and revisions are made, leaving any affected early models with an updated solution, but not every vehicle is so lucky. Some are restricted by regulation, while others are left without the right support, destined to continue with parts we know could be better. Solutions, then, need to come from elsewhere, and on more than one occasion, it's been an FCP Euro employee starting the process.
Such was the case for the Mercedes-Benz control arms that we offer with a Syncro Design Works inner bearing. In this particular instance, the modification came about from racing a W204 C300 in the AER series nearly a decade ago. The monoball bearing was the solution to the control arm’s soft inner bushing that’s prone to failure under regular driving conditions, let alone the rigors of motorsport. After 100+ miles of racing, the Syncro Design Works bearing, installed in an otherwise OE Lemforder arm, showed no signs of wear, but improved steering feel and handling by a good amount without adding too much harshness to the chassis.
Knowing the slightly modified arm was simple, effective, and could be a great upgrade for a Mercedes platform lacking aftermarket support, then driver/builder and current BMW Product Manager, Nate Vincent, set about bringing them to the FCP Euro catalog. Doing so required the cooperation of two companies separated by the Atlantic, in Lemforder and Syncro Design Works. In speaking with the latter company, they agreed to continue producing the bearing for the Mercedes arm, despite their focus on BMW products. Then, reaching out to Lemforder, we were able to buy the thrust arms without their inner bushing installed. Now those arms are shipped directly to Syncro Design Works, which installs all of the sealed monoball bearings into the arms and allows us to offer them to all W203, W204, and related chassis owners.
In other instances, solutions find their way to us on their journey to making your automotive experience even better. NRW Design reached out to us with their freshly debuted aluminum valve covers for BMW’s S65 engine before we’d ever made contact with them. The covers were going to be a permanent solution to the issue of the S65’s magnesium valve covers failing at half the cost of a set of new magnesium covers, and that was enough for the BMW team to immediately establish a connection, leading to an official partnership. Their covers have now been in the catalog for over a year and have helped several hundred M3 owners avoid issues from leaky magnesium.
In the end, all of this is about bringing you the right parts, not just an option you’ll settle for. Our experts are here to facilitate whatever’s best for you, whether that’s connecting companies across oceans for a niche fix or swapping suppliers for superior quality. So when you're shopping for your next DIY project, do so knowing that we’ll still be here, working with our partners behind the scenes, to ensure we’ll have the best solution for whatever’s wrong with your car. In the meantime, keep your eyes on the DIY Blog for more company updates and entertaining content, and stay tuned toour YouTube channel for DIYs and guides.
