When Auto Metal Direct (AMD) announced that they were discontinuing and selling off a whole bunch of reproduction Mopar sheet metal at 50% off, it caused an up-roar in the Mopar community. While most of the discontinued parts seemed to be for more un-common cars such as early ‘60s B-Bodies and later A-Bodies, the discontinuation of quarter panel skins for cars like E-Body Challengers and ‘Cudas and second generation Chargers caused people to wonder.

Many questioned if AMD was getting out of the Mopar game to focus more on their Ford and Chevrolet customers. We decided to reach out to Mike Gray from AMD and ask him about it directly in which he graciously explained everything.

Mike says, “We are expanding like the many in the industry. We just moved into our new 318,000 sq. ft. facility in Gainesville, GA to help us handle our additional growth plans. The items we are dropping are purely a business decision based on the fact that we are forced to run larger numbers of parts in each production run and many of these (very) slow moving parts were getting near the point of being re-run. We decided not to run them because the quantities would be giving us 3-10 years of stock on these items.”

“We are still developing hundreds of new tools and decided it made more sense to invest in the new items instead of items that we know from history will sit on the shelves for years. We are not destroying our tools and if the situation changes and demand increases, we can always run them again in the future. While we have expanded our Ford and GM lines recently, we are not giving up on Mopar and will be introducing new panels for 1966-1967 Plymouth B-Bodies and 1973-1974 Chargers in the near future. We are test fitting prototypes now.”

In closing, he said, “Please be assured AMD is not giving up on the old car market, just dropping unprofitable parts.” In essence, we do agree that the move is smart with discontinuing slow selling and doubled items. For example, they are discontinuing Challenger Rallye hoods with hood pin holes but not discontinuing the Rallye hoods in their entirety.

If you need a Rallye hood with hood pins, just drill the hole. There really is no need for AMD to produce both. Same with certain quarter panels where the only difference is a marker light. With regards to discontinuing many of their quarter panel skins, it’s entirely based on the fact that many people choose to go with full quarter panels instead of skins.

We look forward to seeing what AMD has up their sleeve for new products going forward.