The private equity firms that are buying up after market parts manufactures see a profitable growth market potential in these business. Often this is the best way for a cash out retirement for the current owners of the business - its cash on the table versus an employees owned buyout (ESOP) which rarely works out as having many inexperienced "owners" quickly leads to disagreement and failure.

I follow this investment traunch pretty closely and know about most of the players out there - some have an real interest in the aftermarket world others just know a good opportunity. In my mind It's a good move as many of these companies they acquire are solid but under performing because of cash flow constraint or just lack of interest in expanding. The PE brings in the money for new equipment and R&D and will let it grow as it is an investment. As with most business that started small - very few really know how to move the company to the next level - they become stationary and comfortable and return the same income year after year - nothing wrong with that - just a lot of missed opportunity. The next waive will be consolidation of product lines and manufacturing - we have already seen that with a couple of piston manufactures. The aftermarket parts business has grown into a a big industry and with that comes the big money!

when i read the first link about the announcement, it stated edelbrock was USA made, but made no mention of comp cams country of origin.
coincident, or did i miss something ?

Scooter Brothers was one of the original owners of comp Cams, he had worked for Mark Heffington at Cam Dynamics before Harvey Crane bought out Mark to eliminate him from the business. Mark was a very good cam grinder designer.
Comp Cams has always been American made and their products made for them to resell like valve springs, retainers, pushrod and lifters have been made here
I'm not sure about some of the other company they have bought like TCI, FAST and the others but it wouldn't surprise me that all of their products are made here also

I went through a major buyout in 1998...was horrible.. so many good people losing their jobs.. and it snowballed for years later... worse... and it continues.

Not positive but I think Jim Dowel (Racer Brown) got his cam blanks from Comp Cams. I’ll have to ask him.

makes sense, comp dose not rebuild roller lifters any longer

Have been through a bunch. Sometimes it worked in my favor and sometimes it was horrible. Always really stressful either way because you don't know.

Stopped buying Comp products years ago based on their customer service line being beyond busy and not feeling like they were super interested in my needs. Moved over to Lunati for my last cam purchase and was able to talk to the guy as long as I needed to and it was like night and day different between them and Comp Cams.

My recent experience with Comp this week was excellent. I had to send in my FAST XFI ECU to see why I wasn't getting a point signal to my MSD box. They received it yesterday, bench tested it, didn't find a problem so they tested it on their test engine and everything checked out and they sent it back to me today. I must have some other issue my the harness or MSD box. This is a 9 year old ECU and they didn't charge me anything to check it out or ship it back to me. Hope this level of service doesn't change.

I have had excellent customer service from COMP.

However when you get that big consistency is hard.

Different vendors work best with different customers.

Just shop around until you find a good fit.