April 5th
Both were bought by Race Winning Brands. These are the same folks who own JE, Wiesco, K1 and some others. Starting to wonder what that endgame looks like. Thoughts.......?

Well if I owned JE, Diamond and Wiseco I'd sit down and figure out which each brand was really good at and then figure out some way to share the technology across the brands. I would also consolidate the backroom operations for all three brands and take a bunch of cost out. No need for three different sets of books, three different management teams, three different shipping departments, etc.

There might be room for three different brands though but I'd think that all of the brands could use the same machining equipment and the same blanks and stuff like that. Maybe have one brand focus on imports, one on modern stuff like LS and Coyote and one brand focus on muscle car stuff.

Shouldn't be too hard to get rid of the duplicate part numbers and then figure out where the holes in the catalog are. One thing I'll say is that none of those brands are making pistons as nice as Mahle so they had better wake up and start improving their stuff. We just got a set of Mahle pistons for a Ford 427 FE engine and they are much better than anything I've seen from JE, Wiseco or Diamond. The stuff that JE, Wiseco and Diamond build for Mopar engines looks basically like what they were making 20 years ago so they haven't really bothered to improve things in a long time.

The parent company of Race Winning Brands is a private equity firm. There only concern is profit. It will keep these companies until it bleeds the last dollar out and get rid of them. They don't give a bleep about the product line or racers.

Randy,could you more specific why Mahle is a better product?I just bought a set of Diamonds at Marsh Performance.

Lack of competition will stagnate the industry...

I was thinking the same about a set of diamond slugs this week when I was putting them in the block, nice pistons, for 1990.

Sounds like a good reason to support companies like CP, Ross and RaceTech pistons, and Molnar, Scat and Eagle for cranks & rods.

From what I've seen, CP and RaceTech BBM pistons are a generation ahead of the stuff that Diamond and Wiseco offer. I like Mahle, too, but it's all 4032 alloy for BBM and the selection is pretty limited (e.g., no dish or dome options).

Here is another example of loosing jobs in local community's. Big money groups buy up business and consolidate for saving money what business do but the collateral damage is jobs lost. Many buy ups like these shut down some locations to move to another more cost effective area that makes business sense but leaves some people out of work real bad when it is a small town and has many employees. This is happening all over for years now and can be devastating to smaller towns eliminating large employers. Also the goal often is to shed long time employees who have earned better pay and benefits over time and replace them with new cheaper workers. Makes you wonder how long before several places own it all and what they decide is not worth making anymore profit is only goal we may loose some products altogether.

Joe Hurdka started and sold and bought back Mr. Gasket back in the early 1960 a up to the mid 1980s, I think
Bill Hayes started Hayes Clutches and Flywheel and sold it to Lakewood, five years later he started Hayes ignitions and Hayes parent company filed a lawsuit against him and he change the name of the ignition company to Stinger ignitions.
Ed Iskyderian started Isky cams way back in the dark ages before sunlight and his family still runs it.
The Calvert Bros. started and made JE pistons very successful and then sold it, five or six years later they started CP pistons and ended up buying Carillo rods.
Mahle, a German Company, recently bought them out is what I have been told
I started working for a small SO CA Telephone Company in 1964, General Telephone had bought them out before I started working there was what I found out later
I got drafted in 1966 and went over seas in 1967, General telephone became GTE and absorb our old company(California Water and Telephone) when I was in Germany in 1967. When I went back to work for them in September of 1968 I found out I didn't like the new company at all, they treated the customers and employee like they where only put on earth for GTE to suck money out of them.
I quit them two years later in 1970 and went to work for another small telephone company 70 miles away.
GTE bought them out in 1991 and absorb them into GTE of CA in 1996 I was rifted in 1997 and haven't had to work since
My message is things change, company buy there competitors out to reduce the completion or to make their company better, that has been happening since before our country was founded
Make the most of each day and prepare for tomorrow
You can piss and moan about life or be happy and smile, it is in your control
Happyness comes from within, your in control of your life and future and how you think and perceive things

Maybe thats what you have seen.. myself.. I bought
a set of Diamonds the last time I bought.. they
were very nice.. I did have some custom specs to
them and I picked them up in 3 days.. the numbers
were right on and the finish was very nice.. they
didnt looked as good as my PCs or at least damn close

I understand how competition works,but really makes Mahlie better than Diamond or CP or Ross.I think they all have a fine product and when made to your spec are not better or worse
Me thinks it's the customer service and the knowledge of the people that work there!

Never questioned Diamond's & Wiseco's machining quality. But their (and Ross') piston blanks for BBM look like the same ones they've used for 20+ years. CP's take those a step further in terms of weight, and Mahle & RaceTec use more current skirt designs & shorter pins to reduce weight compared to "traditional" designs.

Well where do you gt info on Mahle pistons? Who sales them on here?

When I ordered my CPs I wanted them light weight
so they cut extra out of them.. they were a very
nice piston but the extra work I had done on the
Diamonds they didnt look like and old stock pistons
and for the small added cost for the work and the
time frame I thought they were very nice.. if Bob
(Bob Fox) does sell the company I hope they keep the
quality up
EDIT
Also on a CP piston if you make any change its now a
custom piston unlike Diamond that will give you up to
a total of 3 changes before they call it custom.. and
it was (when I bought my last set) $35 per change to do
8 pistons so I call that cheap.. I changed the pin height
and added a FAIR amount of dish to run my W-2 on pump
swill 87

I beleive Pankle? Now own CP pistons

No. Pankl is not the parent company as some have posted here before. On paper its the "parent" company, but im pretty sure the Calverts a responsible for its continued existence. Pretty sure the Calvert bros bought Pankl, and grafted it into their own.

It all equates to less competition and higher prices and greater profits.