Per their website, they are out of business.
Yeah, this is shocking. I called them the day before they closed and spoke to an applications engineer about spinning up one of their tool OEMs to make a subframe bushing removal tool. The guy I spoke to was enthusiastic about it, so I imagine he had no idea what was coming.
I'd assume all of their inventory is moving to ECS?
ECS/Turner or BimmerWorld.
I saw it on BW FB page before BA updated their website page.
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Sucks, but they were dinosaurs, did not adapt quick enough to changing online parts retailing landscape. Their service was excellent, unfortunately, customer support is not valued by a lot of people any longer.
They will be missed.
E36/8 2000 M Coupe Cosmos Black/Black
Shark, Conforti CAI, B&B Exhaust, H&R, Bilstein, AKG Subframe/Diff, UUC TME Red/Caps, Swapped Front Hats, Ice>Link.
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They cost more for an inferior experience. It's not terribly surprising. You know, capitalism and all that.
E36/8 2000 M Coupe Cosmos Black/Black
Shark, Conforti CAI, B&B Exhaust, H&R, Bilstein, AKG Subframe/Diff, UUC TME Red/Caps, Swapped Front Hats, Ice>Link.
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E36/8 2000 M Coupe Cosmos Black/Black
Shark, Conforti CAI, B&B Exhaust, H&R, Bilstein, AKG Subframe/Diff, UUC TME Red/Caps, Swapped Front Hats, Ice>Link.
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Well, I didn't think their site was so bad. As a newbie to this world I surfed many sites looking for parts and information. I admit most of my parts came from BavAuto. I thought the prices were competitive and service was always very good. I would count this as a loss to the Z3 community.
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It does appear to be a total loss on a gift certificate for $150.00 bought by a relative for me a couple weeks ago.
Good article, talks about the founders, the tightening DIY parts market, the death of one of them recently and the trucks taking the warehouse inventory away.
https://bimmerlife.com/2019/03/16/ba...an-old-friend/
Last edited by Adker; 03-20-2019 at 09:05 PM.
They certainly had no qualms about selling over priced five minute time bomb cam position sensors.
Last edited by BimmerBreaker; 03-21-2019 at 02:15 PM. Reason: language
Last edited by BimmerBreaker; 03-21-2019 at 03:20 PM. Reason: language
E36/8 2000 M Coupe Cosmos Black/Black
Shark, Conforti CAI, B&B Exhaust, H&R, Bilstein, AKG Subframe/Diff, UUC TME Red/Caps, Swapped Front Hats, Ice>Link.
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Idk man I notice ECS, Turner, FCP, Pelican, all have many products with no photos listed, wrong compatibilities (e.g. Turner has told me stuff will fit my M52tu car that was totally wrong), and are lacking in search functionality.
Bavauto was easy to use just like the others for the most part, you put your year model engine etc in and it pulls up the parts available. Maybe if you were searching direct part numbers it wasnt the best, but it was fairly easy to navigate for me.
Certainly wasn't awful like bimmerworld where all the search functions are for wheel sizes and you have to search to find the parts categories in the one tiny little section
Please watch the language guys.
I think the point does stand though, BavAuto may have had good customer service, but in this day and age to earn customers in the first place it needs to be easy to buy parts. It is no longer enough to have a friendly, attentive person on the receiving end of the phone - more and more people are buying directly through online vendors just by adding parts to a cart and clicking checkout. I know that's how I buy stuff. For retailers that means extensive online catalogs with pictures and etc. Sure - some stuff may be mis-categorized from time to time, but that's because there is a lot of cross-compatibility and so it is inevitable that some will be mixed up. It's just the nature of the business. The fact is though, by posting those pictures of the parts and making it easy to verify the part is what they want by seeing a picture, ECS/Turner (who are for all intents and purposes the same company), FCP and these other online vendors have been able to stay competitive while old-school retailers are closing their doors.
Plus, the items BavAuto produced and sold themselves were of poor quality - all kinds of issues reported with their made in china coilsf for example. So if all they sold was OE parts I could buy elsewhere with less hassle, and the stuff they did make was not of great quality, it is not hard to understand why they have gone out of business. I never once bought anything from them personally in my years of working on BMW's, and I've given a lot of vendors a chance. They weren't the best on price, they weren't the best on quality, what was their competitive advantage? I have a hard time imagining it was even service. Every time I've had an issue in the past, be it FCP, Autohaus, even ECS, it has been resolved quickly with no pain on my end. Maybe 10 years ago when FCP was having issues, ECS was going through growing pains and others were new on the scene, maybe back then BavAuto stood out as a place with great service and a reliable source of parts. Nowadays they are one in what seems like a million BMW parts suppliers.
Anyone with an SSF account could theoretically sell BMW car parts. What sets ECS apart is their ability to get rare Euro parts (at a cost, but still) and willingless to create parts in-house to create cheaper options for aftermarket parts in the marketplace. I don't like paying their premiums but sometimes they are the only source for stuff and I respect what they've done as a business to fill this niche for our old models. FCP Euro stands out due to their phenomenal LIFETIME warranty. Anyone who plans on owning their car LONG-term in my opinion would be foolish not to buy basic maintenance/wear items from FCP. I've even started buying my oil from them. Autohaus - well, their advantage to me is they are local and allow local pickup to save shipping and tend to be the quickest source when I need stuff fast.
What did BavAuto offer?
Going into my TENTH YEAR of providing high quality reproduction BMW fabrics!
PRICE CUT on ALL FABRICS
Offering the best prices on the best quality reproduction fabrics!
They offered the same things. Honestly acting like ECS is the best search function in comparison is laughable given that if I go to some sections it just spits out so much universal parts that it makes finding what I need a hassle, especially given how many reviews theyve had in the past few years for wrong parts being sent out or old disintegrated parts.
Bavautos website was no more difficult to use, but you also said you never used them so I'm not sure why you're criticizing them. If you had had a bad experience I get it but seems like you're just piling on to join in. The website is no more difficult to use than the others, I don't see where you even do anything with that paragraph but forgive ECS and Turner for mislabeling stuff as the nature of the business while slamming bavautos site for not being easy to use and olny being friendly over the phone with nothing to back it up. I never had these issues with Bavauto and if you haven't used the website how would you know if it was difficult?
As far as their in house parts, I haven't had any issues with the stuff I've used. Turner lists tons of M52 only items as being compatible with Z3s from 96-02, whereas Bavauto and FCP have never accidentally shown me parts for the wrong engine, and for me thats important and seems like something that they should know. I may not have realized the differences because I was a 20 year old with my first BMW but you think they would know the difference given they are supposed to be experts
That I never bought from them does not mean I never shopped on their site. Quite the opposite, I had been on their website plenty, I just never actually had a reason to buy from them. I'm obviously not alone since they went out of business...
I don't usually use the built-in search tools on any of those websites except for very basic, universal stuff. It is always more reliable to plug my VIN into RealOEM then find the part number for what I need. The advantage of the other online vendors was that they almost always had pictures of the parts once I plugged the part number in, which helped me verify it was the right part (BavAuto rarely had pictures)
They were also cheaper than BavAuto for the same given OE parts, so why would I order from BavAuto?
There are also a lot of parts that do interchange with M52, M52TU and M54's...
Going into my TENTH YEAR of providing high quality reproduction BMW fabrics!
PRICE CUT on ALL FABRICS
Offering the best prices on the best quality reproduction fabrics!
Really the mistake-proof way to obtain the correct p/n is to look it up in www.realoem.com using the last seven of a VIN.
BMW seems to have had several ‘rolling introductions’ within a given model year which makes it difficult to find the correct (engine) parts with generalized chassis/year designations.
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When I recently bought some parts to overhaul my Vanos system they were all cheaper than the comparable ECS stuff. I didn't say there wasn't interchangeable stuff, but there is certainly stuff that absolutely does not work between the vehicles, like the thermostat housing and lower temp thermostat switch I bought a while back for my fan delete that when I had asked them to confirm they told me sure itll work. As for the quality of in house ECS and bavauto stuff, ECS is going to continue selling all the bavauto proprietary products so I'm sure they wouldn't be doing that if it was low quality, or else that would mean they are no better than Bavauto
I know it was my mistake and I'm not saying it isn't but mislabeling stuff on your website and then confirming your mistake when a customer asks is pretty weak. If I pull up my car on bavauto it would ask the year engine, etc. whereas if I search for Z3 parts on Turner I have to make sure whether it fits M52, or M52tu myself because they don't have an option for a an M52tu coupe in the drop down menu.
https://jalopnik.com/spying-on-emplo...g-a-1827474482
Not saying Bavauto was the best or anything, I just don't get the hate. FCPeuro has always been great to me, but bavauto seemed a step above ECS imo. Especially given all the cheapo universal tuner crap you have to sift through on ECS. I'll give one good example, if you are shopping for an exhaust you'd think the Performance section, and then exhaust is where you'd find that but you end up sifting through 15 pages of heat wrap and exhaust tips lol. Or if you go to intake you end up with a page full of K and N air cleaners and other various universal crap that should be off in its own section, not sorted into the section as made for a 2000 Z3 2.8. Thats like those craiglist sellers that sell a muffler and add #M #AMG #RS etc. Just annoying to use a lot of times
I liked Bavarian Auto, sad to see them go. Prices were sometimes much better than the other places, sometimes worse-- like anything else you'd need to check around. Then they'd have a 10% off sale at the end of the year, and sales on specific categories during the year.
I've only recently checked out FCP Euro for the first time, and their website does seem fine with pictures and is easy to use. Will probably start using them. Bavarian Auto website was easy to use, though as mentioned they didn't have many pictures.
Pelican website aggravates the hell out of me every time I use it, and they don't even have enough information in the description of the part to be sure of what it even is so I usually have to email them on half the parts I'm looking at for confirmations. And they can't pack for @#$#-- a number of orders I had with heavier stuff like struts and brake rotors ripping through boxes and smashing around. Like they just didn't give a #@$#. ECS website is annoying to use, prices aren't great, but they do have all those nice (and useful) pictures. They must hate Mac/Safari because I've never been able to actually get all the way through the checkout process. Turner website is clunky, prices are not great.
I would search all these places for my parts orders, and a lot of times (especially if I waited for a sale) Bavarian Auto would be cheapest. Not always, but sometimes.
Anyway I personally will miss them, and their nice catalogs, DIY stuff, good customer service etc. I think I will start using FCP-- great website, prices are not the best but then you have the lifetime replacement of parts...... Will still check the others, but after Pelican stopped having discounts when they got bought out (or whatever that was a few years ago), there hasn't been much reason to order from them.
I just got an email from Bavauto about the ECS buyout thing, and apparently ECS will have a 15% off discount for Bavauto customers until April 30. The thing about ECS is, they are constantly having 15%, 20% off etc sales, but their prices are so high to begin with that it's really not as great as it seems.
ECS is honoring Bavauto gift cards through April 30, 2019, per an email they sent me :
We also decided to assist BavAuto’s customers during the transition by:
- Honoring all BavAuto gift cards through April 30, 2019.
- Providing warranty support for Bavarian Autosport branded merchandise
- Maintaining BavAuto's longstanding support for BMW CCA chapters across the country
- Continuing to stock Bavarian Autosport branded parts on ECS Tuning.com
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