If you’ve ever replaced your car’s brake parts before, there’s a good chance that you’ve run into brands like Centric, StopTech, or Raybestos. Collectively, these brands have been around for over a century and have provided OEM-quality or upgraded brake parts. But now, the brake repair world is about to get a whole lot sadder as all three of these brands are about to disappear.
Back in September 2025, our Thomas Hundal wrote about how First Brands Group, the owner of huge names in the car parts, maintenance, and DIY space, had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. First Brands had a little bit of everything under its umbrella, from Fram oil filters and Trico wiper blades to Draw-Tite trailer hitches and Autolite spark plugs. First Brands owned so many different names across several car part categories that if you’ve purchased a third-party part for your car at all, chances are you have a First Brands product on your car. Automakers also rely on First Brands to supply parts they do not make themselves.
The implosion of First Brands runs deep, with the company racking up over $10 billion in liabilities. As part of its attempt to keep itself afloat, First Brands put itself and its brands up for sale. According to Automotive News, Ford, General Motors, and other First Brands customers got court approval last week to fund a $48 million cash infusion into First Brands to keep their supply chains running. Unfortunately, even with help from its customers, some brands under the First Brands umbrella aren’t going to make it.
If you’re only just learning about the failure of First Brands, I’ll give you a primer on what happened.
The First Brands Spiral
In 2014, Cleveland-based Crowne Group LLC purchased wiper blade company Trico. Five years later, the company expanded by purchasing Fram. These brands all fell under an umbrella called First Brands. The acquisitions then took off to a mind-boggling degree in 2020, as First Brands scooped up Raybestos-owner Brake Parts Inc., Luberfiner manufacturer Champion Laboratories, and brake parts company Centric, all in 2020. The Centric Parts acquisition also included Centric’s C-TEK, Posi Quiet, and StopTech brands.
First Brands stayed on the gas and acquired Horizon Global in 2023. Horizon was home to nine towing equipment brands, including big names like Tekonsha trailer brake controllers, Draw-Tite trailer hitches, and Reese hitches. By the end of it all, First Brands owned names in practically every part of the supply chain but tires.
First Brands didn’t have the kind of money necessary to buy so many companies in such a short order, so it turned to financing. Then, like a house of cards, it all fell apart, from our report:
Those sort of huge acquisitions require serious cash to close, and most companies don’t have eight or nine figures in the bank earmarked for expansion. Instead, they often rely on outside financing to raise funding, and debt’s modest cost of capital keeps financing cheap. However, if that debt can’t be paid back within a prescribed timeline, that’s when things go really wrong. Earlier this month, cracks really began to show. On Sept. 25, the Financial Times reported that First Brands’ financing vehicle Carnaby Capital Holdings had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas.
[…]
Allegations of financial opacity aren’t good, and it gets worse. The Carnaby Capital Holdings filing claims that this group of special-purpose financing vehicles tied to First Brands holds more than $500 million in assets and more than $1 billion in liabilities. If that’s just a subsidiary, what are things looking like for the crown jewel?
It turns out we didn’t have to wait long to find out how ensnared First Brands Group was in debt. Just a few days after Carnaby Capital Holdings filed for Chapter 11, First Brands did the same. As Reuters reports, “First Brands, which filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District of Texas, disclosed assets exceeding $1 billion against more than $10 billion in liabilities.” The outlet reports a total of around $6 billion in debt to be restructured, a sum that’s simply unfathomable to many.
If you thought all of that was bad, things got worse, as First Brands then sued its founder, Patrick James, alleging that he had pilfered at least $700 million from the company’s coffers. From Bloomberg:
Lawyers for the company — now run by restructuring consultants at Alvarez & Marsal — alleged that James borrowed funds on fraudulent terms, only then to “routinely and regularly” divert cash for himself and his family, according to a Southern District of Texas filing dated Nov. 3. More than $700 million was funneled from First Brands directly to James and his affiliated entities from 2018 to 2025, they claimed.
James “secretly pilfered some of the Company’s assets to fund his and his family’s lavish lifestyle. In short, he lined his pockets at the expense of First Brands and its creditors,” according to the document. The plaintiffs drew on data from more than seven million documents, as well as bank records and a collection of devices from employees.
In the 35-page document, lawyers paint a picture of James’ luxuriant spending habits, pointing to a fleet of at least 17 “exotic cars” and a celebrity personal trainer. In some cases, payments to James and his family were made directly from First Brands accounts, including at least $3 million in rent paid over 2019 to 2024 for a New York townhouse and about $500,000 paid to a private chef in 2025.
Thankfully, First Brands remained operating while all of this happened. But there was a clock running. First Brands had only so much time before funds would fully dry up. According to a January 8 report by Automotive News, First Brands claimed that it had $190 million in cash on hand and would run out of money by late that month. In an effort to stay afloat, First Brands offered itself for sale as a whole or in parts.
The Closure Of Major Parts Brands
First Brands warned that if its dive could not be arrested, it would have to shutter some of its brands. Unfortunately, the end of the month came, and First Brands was still in a dire condition as no buyer was found for the many brands that were for sale.
On January 26, First Brands announced the closure of Brake Parts Inc., Cardone, and Autolite. On February 5, Brake Parts Inc. announced that it was shuttering its McHenry, Illinois, facility. 332 employees were laid off that week, and an additional 57 employees were retained to assist in closing down the business. They will be laid off when that process is complete. I live down the street from this facility, and it has been rocking the community as many locals had worked at Brake Parts Inc. for years.
On that same day, First Brands also announced the closure of Centric Parts, which affects Centric-brand parts as well as C-TEK, Posi Quiet, and StopTech parts. Carlson brake hardware, Autolite spark plugs, and Cardone remanufactured parts were also caught up in the whirlwind of closures. Yesterday, Motor1 reported that all of these brands are ceasing operations.
Just a few days later, on January 29, the United States Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, announced charges against former First Brands execs Patrick James and Edward James. According to the press release, the former execs are facing charges of “conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and multiple counts of wire fraud and bank fraud, in connection with various schemes to defraud lenders regarding the liabilities and financial condition of First Brands.”
The closure of these companies will mark the end of businesses that have been household names for a long time. Raybestos, for example, was founded in 1902 by Arthur H. Raymond and Arthur F. Law in Bridgeport, Connecticut, as the A.H. Raymond Company. In 1906, Raymond and Law were credited for the creation of a woven asbestos brake lining. In 1916, the company would change its name to Raybestos. Parts from the company would aid in both World War efforts, and Raybestos was heavily involved in racing for six decades. Along with brake kits, Raybestos was known for OEM-quality brake parts.
Centric Parts was founded in 2000 by Dino Crescentini, who had previous experience in imported cars and their parts. In 2013, Centric picked up StopTech, a brand that’s been around since 1999. While Centric’s whole deal was to provide OEM-quality parts, StopTech’s business centered on racing, track days, and street performance. StopTech was known for selling big brake kits, aero rotors, calipers, lines, and performance pads. If you do track days, there’s a chance you’ve seen StopTech brakes on someone’s car, if you already don’t run such a kit on your own car already.
The good news is that, reportedly, existing Centric, StopTech, and Raybestos stock will continue to be sold. As of publishing, you can still buy these branded parts at your favorite retailers.
Unfortunately, it’s unclear what’s going to happen once the stock dries up from these companies. As of publishing, the Raybestos website isn’t even online anymore. Thankfully, these companies weren’t the only names operating in these spaces. There are plenty of brands out there to buy brakes and brake parts from.
Still, it’s sad that these once huge names in the car parts world are going away. A bunch of people are losing their jobs, and soon, there will be a little less variety out there on the parts marketplace. I hope the people displaced by the failures of First Brands land on their feet and that this isn’t only the start of a greater fallout from First Brands.
Top graphic image: Raybestos
Not being able to get cheap centric rotors for my NA Miata Track car will likely lead me to buying a big brake kit for it. RIP to my wallet
get Powerstop Geomet coated rotors 🙂
Centric Premium rotors were my go-to on Jeep XJ’s. Black Magic Brakes, who makes an excellent pad, recommended those and nothing else to go with their pads.
I’m bummed about StopTech and Centric. StopTech had one of the few decent street/sport pads without the Corvette tax and the basic Centric rotors took a good track beating for a fair price.
OEM-quality means nothing in modern MBA dominated manufacturing. It’s all built by the lowest bidder, comes out of the same owned factories, and gets packaged by a different label.
There’s a LOT going on with this First Brands mess.
First Brands was a big vendor for NAPA, as our primary rotor line was from Brake Parts Inc. But as you can see with Raybestos and Centric, everyone is impacted. NAPA has been moving away from First Brands for months now, because this was expected. We got a memo two weeks ago that FB would no longer be shipping out rotors due to court order. So what we have in the warehouses in that product line is all we have access to for now. The switch to a new vendor was planned at the end of the year, this brings that process to a rush basis, and we’ve already gotten our first batch of the new supplier’s rotors.
There are thousands of rotors in BPI warehouses that we cannot access. NAPA is transferring this business to the new vendor in three phases, based on popularity. The third phase will be the least popular applications and I hope that when the dust settles that inventory will come back online. But the new vendor has said they will be obsoleting 700 of the slowest moving part numbers. Which means for instance I can see that they have rotors for my Yugo, but I can’t order them, they won’t ship. I thought I could sneak them out, just to have, but no dice. If you have an older/obscure car you want to stockpile some NAPA rotors for, now would be the time to act, if the DCs or stores have any. They may not be available later.
Trico is a First Brands property, and Trico owns both the Trico and Anco brands. Indications from my perspective on availability is Anco is going to die as a brand (we stocked Anco outside of NAPA). There’s hope for Trico, as it’s an OEM supplier, but as of now I don’t know much. Supposedly the product line they sold NAPA will be relaunched in H2 but I don’t know if someone will restructure/split off Trico or if there will be a replacement vendor. I feel like Trico may have some brand equity and value to the OEMs that it could survive.
Autolite, as far as I can tell will die as a brand also. I believe Carter is also a FB brand, I’ve not heard anything on that yet. Our brake hoses, caliper hardware and master cylinders were all FB/BPI product, and are going to be moving to Dorman. Hoses will be first of the three, converting March 9.
NAPA had been distancing itself from Cardone for quite some time, the only lines we still had with them were ECMs and wiper motors. There is no announced replacement thus far for either.
Luckily GPC (owner of the NAPA brand) has global scale and has options to resource. But this happened very quickly and while they operated for a while under restructuring, apparently the criminal charges stopped everything. All the big chains bought from FB, it’s hurting everyone. There are other brands that FB branded for the other chains to go to market with, but the ones I discussed are the biggies for us.
This all really sucks for everyone, lots of people have lost their jobs. Like you Mercedes I’m not far from the McHenry BPI plant and I feel for everyone there.
[checks list of companies] Good, Callahan Brakes isn’t one of them. Tommy didn’t kill the company…
Maybe Callahan should buy First Brands and move all the production lines to Sandusky.
Now this is a winning strategy!
I just made another post, but you can literally buy “Callahan” branded brake rotors and pads on Amazon. I picked up a set for my beater BMW e35.
I almost bought them just for the sticker a couple years ago when I needed to do brakes on my DD. Alas, I went with PowerStop instead…
Good choice for the title Mercedes, I am assuming the Slack was full of suggestions though, it would be fun to see. “Don’t Stop Believing” Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop” “Braking up is hard to do” “Heart Braker”
“ First Brands had a little bit of everything under its umbrella, from Fram oil filters and Trico wiper blades to Draw-Tite trailer hitches and Autolite spark plugs. “
I wonder how much impact the rising sales of EVs has had on oil filter, brake part and spark plug sales in recent years.
With so many brands in the EXACT same market selling mostly commodity items, is this really going to affect consumers all that much?
Ultimately they are better off if some of the weaker brands go away.
It’s going to affect consumers, there is no getting around it. FB had a big share of the market. There are other vendors that sell the same stuff, yes, but many simply don’t have the capacity to make up the differnce on such short notice.
Private equity is a bane on humanity.
Yes and no. It really depends on the health of the company they are acquiring. If the company is failing anyway, private equity can sometimes install new management and turn things around. If they just acquire a healthy company to gut it for the assetts, yeah, that’s pretty bad.
Yes. Show me one good thing that has ever come out of PE. Just one, anything. I’ll wait.
Well, one that comes to mind is JC Penney. They were a failing company who nearly ceased to exist. Private equity purchased them, changed management, and re-opened stores I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re thriving, but they are still around and they employ a lot of people.
Hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.
I understand the vitriol toward private equity, because the bad things make the news while the successes don’t. And there are a lot of bad things that private equity can do. I’m not trying to convince anyone to change their mind, I just want to add some nuance.
Williams F1 Racing team.
They are doing considerably better under the new ownership.
From Google.
Williams Racing owner Dorilton Capital, which is now talking publicly after years of staying behind the scenes.
The N.Y.-based Dorilton made one of the best-timed franchise purchases in recent sports business memory when it bought Atlassian Williams F1 Team from the Williams family in the summer of 2020. That was just as the “Drive to Survive” effect was starting to happen but before it became well understood by investors and media worldwide, a phenomenon that eventually sparked huge increases in team values.
Dorilton reportedly purchased the team for around $200M, but last November Forbes estimated its worth to be $2.5B, a 1,150% return on paper. That value makes Williams the sixth best in F1 and largely only behind factory teams fully or partially owned by globally renowned carmakers like Mercedes and Ferrari.
Another datapoint in the “M&A should be sent on a one-way trip to Sol” database
First Brands then sued its founder, Patrick James…
To which James responded, “I’m Pat-Rick James, b*tch!”
All the consolidation in the automotive aftermarket and parts industries (not to mention pretty much every other industry on earth) over the last 10-15 years has seriously enshittified things for consumers. Take Holley, for example, which has been snatching up performance brand after brand for years. In many cases, they just stop making the parts, reducing competition and selection, and increasing prices.
Then there is the massive consolidation in the classic car restoration parts business by companies like Ecklers. As they have brought many other suppliers into their fold, they have significantly reduced the number of parts they produce, and worse yet, killed all of the specialized expertise and knowledge that came from all of the one-brand or single-model restoration parts specialists used to have. They have probably reduced the number of independent suppliers by 90% over the last two decades, and service and selection have suffered massively.
Consolidation and monopolization like this do not benefit consumers, ever. Never, ever, ever. It just reduces choice, increases prices, and absolutely ruins customer service. Not to mention that it increases the likelihood that a massive monopolistic bed-shitting like this turns an entire industry, along with consumers, under the bus.
Agreed this shit sucks. UMI prices for my turd gen have gotten ridiculous in recent years. And yeah I have a holley system on my bird and looked at the prices recently it is ridiculous. Was looking at harnesses for LSx’s that hook up to my holley computer (in case I blow my 406 and want to LSx swap in the future) and they are just ridiculous now.
Based on recent history, I assume we’ll be inaugurating President Patrick James in 2029.
For context, First Brands has annual revenue of around $5 billion dollars, according to Wikipedia. Additionally, there seems to be some question of exactly how large their liabilities actually are. The wiki page says anywhere from $10 to $50 billion, which is an oddly large range, although maybe that’s normal for a privately held company?
In any case, their problems are much larger than one guy stealing a bunch of money. The whole corporation seems to have been shady and a bunch of people should go to jail for it. See above for my thoughts on exactly how likely that is though.
Private company records aren’t publicly available, so it is likely that the range is taken from the bankruptcy filing. I’ve seen several filings where the range is huge. Usually it has something to do with contested amounts, among other things. With a private company, especially where someone is accused of fraud, the records can be so messed up that nobody is sure how much the debt is at the time of filing. Public companies generally have better controls on their record-keeping, but they can be messed up too.
It’s just possible that replacing the corrupt CEO with the CFO who’s supposed to know those things was a bad idea. 😉
Yeah, normally fraud doesn’t take place without collusion.
That’s a terrible shame for the majority of these storied brands and the people the work for them.
Fuck Cardone, though. Good riddance.
Well, now that good ol’ Tommy Boy saved Callahan’s, maybe he can do the same for First Brands!
I was just thinking, thank goodness Callahan never sold out to them.
tl;dr
Corporate and individual greed destroyed some popular brands.
And hundreds, if not thousands of employees lives.
I for sure see Fram coming back under some company. Maybe not the actual company and employees, but it’s IP will be picked up by someone. The brand recognition is just out there.
I suspect a few of these brands will get their names bought up and slapped onto a shittier product in a plant that might pickup a couple workers to account for the extra volume, but probably somewhere offshore.
Maybe some of the IP will get used, or at least bought up so others can’t use it.
Pretty long shot that any of these factories get bought and brought back online and people get to keep their jobs. Who knows, maybe.
Or an entirely different shitty product altogether.
Oh look, it’s a Raybestos TV! I didn’t know they made ’em…
I own a Polaroid™ TV already, a zombie brand owned at the time by fraudster Tom Petters (currently residing in federal prison). Seems like many of the old reliable brands (RCA, Honeywell, GE, Sunbeam, and many tools) have become zombies. No need to make your brand of crap product popular on its own, when you can buy a famous name.
The Raybestos and Fram names are valuable enough that someone will pick them up.
Also, Raybestos and Centric quality went down fast.
Powerstop makes the best rotors and drums right now, fully coated with Geomet. They won’t rust for over a year, and when the coating finally does start to wear, they will still slide off without needing to use a hammer 😀
Walmart is out of Fram oil filters in the 7317 sizes. The PH7317 is what Honda sells at the dealer, albeit in a blue can rather than orange.
Unless you get an RTA which is a Mahle made filter. That’s what my parts counter guy sells me for $7.99 with the crush washer
I’ve been using Supertech filters (Wix) in my Honda for over a decade. So far so good. Cheaper too.
the latest ST filters have been Champs 😛
I am amazed Raybestos never rebranded to distance itself from its association with asbestos.
I always thought this as well!
I’m going to miss stop tech A LOT. My paperwork binder for the FR-S is literally plastered with all the free stickers they send with the brakes. That and Summit.
Really surprised that Autolite is getting axed!
Man this sucks for people that do their own brakes. Centric was always a good go to cheap brand.
Centric blank rotors are/were absolutely top notch and could actually be resurfaced. I have them on my SVO, SHO and my wife’s Juke. Venture capital vultures strike again!
Yea they are well known in the track community for their “blank” rotors. Track cars go through rotors often and a cheap but durable rotor without being drilled/slotted (which largely just cracks an fails the rotor prematurely) is a great thing, with Centric one of the go-to options. I am unsure what to do here for when I start hitting the track again…
My last brake job I used Bosch pads. They have been fine to the point of being unremarkable but they’re on a commuter so I can’t speak for their performance at the edge.
I’m sure someone will buy up the remains and some of the brands will come back otherwise time for some Ray’s Besto Brakes from Temu ought to do the trick
They’re just doing what they do best; stopping.
I chuckled. Well played.
lol