Genuine, OE-brand and quality aftermarket parts: what each grade means

Genuine means a part made by or for the carmaker, sold in the carmaker's own box with the carmaker's part number on it. A Toyota pad kit in a Toyota box is Genuine whether it came through a dealer or through the parallel trade. What makes it Genuine is the maker's mark and box, not the shop that sold it.

OE-brand means a part from one of the carmaker's own suppliers, sold under that supplier's name. Denso and Aisin are examples: Wikipedia describes both as Toyota Group companies. Taiho's history page records Toyota's orders for engine slide bearings from 1961. The supplier's box carries the supplier's brand in place of the carmaker's, and the part number points back to the carmaker's.

Quality aftermarket means reputable brands that are not shown to supply that carmaker: made to fit the same car, sold under their own name, with a known maker behind them. The label depends on the car. GMB's own site describes it as a maker for original equipment and the aftermarket, and the carmaker customers named for it elsewhere include Chrysler, GM, Hyundai, Kia, Renault and the VW group, but no source we found shows it supplying Toyota, so on a Toyota it sits here.

The table is a counter-price check, not a quote. It uses two parts for one family of Toyotas, read on two Dubai parts sites with 5% VAT included, one of which says it is in soft opening and may contain errors. The grade labels are ours: neither site states a grade, so we assigned each from the maker's published relationship to the carmaker.

Genuine costs about 1.5 times the MK Kashiyama pads, 1.7 to 1.9 times the aftermarket water pumps and 4.4 to 6.9 times the budget pads. MK Kashiyama is a Japanese brake-pad brand that parts sellers describe as a supplier to Japanese plants. We have not confirmed that from the maker's own site, so the OE-brand label on that row is a working label.

Two prices from two parts do not make a market. They show the shape of the ladder and the size of the gap, and they say nothing about trade prices for a list, which depend on quantity and on who supplies the line. Budget lines are shown for contrast. They are not a label we use, and we do not quote them as Quality aftermarket.

Gulf buyers use three words that are not the same as our labels. A 2017 report in The Peninsula, carried by Qatar Living, calls original parts genuine ones made by the original equipment maker, and tijari parts, which it spells tejari, non-original products similar to the OEM part but sold under other brand names. A Saudi car guide on Syarah, updated 29 March 2026, calls commercial parts cheaper and says they may need replacing more often.

Tijari covers too much to be useful alone. It can describe a supplier-boxed part from a name you know, or an unbranded part from nobody you can name, and both are called commercial. That is why a quote from us names the brand and the grade, never only the word. If a seller offers you tijari and cannot name the maker, the missing name is the answer.

Taiwan is a country of origin and not a grade. A Dubai distributor's trade-show profile describes a branded line as made in Taiwan, and one importer's own site lists China, Thailand, Taiwan, Korea and Malaysia as the sources of its aftermarket stock. A part can be made in Taiwan to a high standard or a low one, so we quote the brand and the grade.

In our own chats, a buyer who writes original often means a part taken off another car, not a new one. On our quotes the word original is never used loosely: a line is Genuine, OE-brand or Quality aftermarket, and all three are new. We do not supply parts taken off cars.

Copy means a replica. The Qatar report defines counterfeit parts as exact replicas of original products, and Arabic-language guides seen as search summaries describe imitation parts that copy a brand's name with a letter changed. We looked for a written automotive definition of first copy in English and in Arabic and found none, so there is nothing for a quote to rest on.

The law is the second reason. A December 2024 trade report on Al-Futtaim Automotive's raids says Federal Decree-Law No. 42 of 2023 further strengthened UAE protection against counterfeit goods, and describes counterfeiting as a grave criminal offence with penalties from fines to imprisonment. The report does not tie each penalty to the decree. The words copy and first copy describe goods that may be counterfeit, so we keep them off every quote.

The UK government's overseas business risk page for the UAE, updated 3 July 2023, calls the UAE exposed to a significant trade in counterfeit goods and says enforcement is by emirate and typically ends in a fine. Enforcement is real and uneven, which is a reason for a buyer abroad to check the part and not to rely on the exporter's country of registration.

Filters are the clearest case. The 2024 Al-Futtaim raids in Sharjah, the Northern Emirates and Al Ain took more than 2.5 million fake components worth nearly AED 7.46 million, and AED 2.81 million of that was oil filters, about 38%. The raids were run by an authorised Toyota and Lexus distributor, and the report does not say where the fakes were bound. It shows what the UAE market itself holds.

Elsewhere the same pattern holds. A June 2025 report in Kenya's The Star, citing the Anti-Counterfeit Authority, names brake pads, spark plugs and engine parts among the counterfeit automotive items now dominating the market there. Taiho's own page records thousands of imitation Taiho bearings seized in China in 2004. Parts that protect the car and parts closed inside the engine are where a fake costs most.

A word on the box is not proof. One budget pad listing in our price check describes itself as genuine quality, at under a quarter of the Toyota price. The listing is honest about the brand, but a buyer skimming it could read genuine into it. The check that works is the grade written on the line, the number on the part and the price compared against the ladder above.

Ask for the grade on every line, in writing, with the brand and the part number. Then ask for photos of the part and its box with the numbers readable, and compare them with the quote. Qatar requires a certificate of conformity for brake pads, seat belts, wheel rims and tyres, so for those parts ask for the certificate as well as the photo.

Use the ladder as a sense-check. If a seller offers Toyota Genuine front pads for that Land Cruiser at around AED 70, the price itself is the warning, because the budget pads in our check listed at that level. For a Genuine filter lot, ask whether a distributor invoice exists for the lot. A line with no paperwork behind it is a line to question.

The mix is yours to choose. A common order combines Genuine for parts that protect the car, OE-brand where the maker is known and the saving is real, and Quality aftermarket for the long tail. A person confirms the grade and brand of each line on WhatsApp, and a line whose grade cannot be confirmed is left off the list.