Brembo holds the top seat in the August 2026 Aftermarket Power Rankings at 65 points, down four from July, in a month when no brand on the board cleared 70. NRS Brakes finished one point back at 64, and EBC Brakes held third at 58 as the gap to the top two widened to six points. The full 50-brand board carries category breakdowns across Media, Social, Digital, Product, and Editorial alongside the rolling archive back to March. Midsummer compressed the entire field, and the separations that survived it say more than the scores do.
Highlights
- Brembo #1 at 65, down four points, with Q2 earnings and powersports concept previews both scored at half weight under the aftermarket-relevance methodology.
- NRS Brakes #2 at 64, one point short for a second straight month, carried by an NS2477 galvanized pad expansion adding 326,000 vehicles of coverage at full weight.
- Wilwood and Bosch both climb 13 spots, to #7 and #11 respectively, on aftermarket product programs.
- AmeriBRAKES reaches the top five for the first time, up seven to #4, on a July drop including four MAX DUTY heavy-duty applications covering 4.45 million vehicles.
The Top Three: Same Seats, Thinner Air
The sixth edition is the quietest board The BRAKE Report has published — and that is itself the story.
Brembo’s four-point slide reflects the shape of the window rather than anything that went wrong in Bergamo. The headline activity was Q2 earnings — $1.13 billion (€983 million) in revenue, up 6.4%, with full-year guidance raised — alongside powersports concept previews. Both count at half weight under the aftermarket-relevance methodology. June’s Automechanika aftermarket showcase, which powered last month’s #1 run, has aged out of the 30-day window.
NRS Brakes lands at 64, one point short of the top seat for the second consecutive month. It was a real month: the NS2477 galvanized pad expansion added 326,000 vehicles of coverage at full weight, the owned-content engine stayed busy, and the company’s backing-plate durability series ran on The BRAKE Report. But there was no distribution win on the scale of June’s Mighty Distributing partnership, and one point is one point. The streak now has a shape — NRS keeps producing top-two months and keeps finding Brembo exactly one point ahead.
EBC Brakes holds #3 at 58 on a racing-heavy window: the GPFAX D2 flagship track and race motorcycle pad, Goodwood Festival of Speed, race-team content, and a SEMA pad program teased for later this year. All real activity, most of it motorsport, which counts at half weight here. The weekly new-parts drumbeat that carried EBC’s June #1 was not visible this cycle. Sponsorship carries zero scoring impact, and a sponsor sliding on the merits is the methodology working in public.
The Month’s Biggest Moves
| Brand | Move | August rank |
|---|---|---|
| Wilwood Engineering | ▲13 | #7 |
| Bosch | ▲13 | #11 |
| AmeriBRAKES (Momentum USA) | ▲7 | #4 |
| ATE (AUMOVIO) | ▲6 | #9 |
| ICER Brakes | ▼10 | #17 |
| Delphi Technologies | ▼8 | #16 |
| Wagner | ▼5 | #10 |
Biggest Climber: Wilwood, ▲13 to #7
June’s Biggest Faller completes the round trip. Wilwood Engineering rolled out its OE Flexline program — year/make/model-specific direct-replacement performance brake line kits for OE calipers, with Teflon liners, stainless braid, and PVC armor — and picked up SEMA eNews coverage for it. That is clean, full-weight aftermarket product for street vehicles, exactly the lane this ranking rewards. An AMSOIL Champ Off-Road series partnership counts at half weight alongside it. Two months ago Wilwood was the case study in what a quiet news cycle does to a momentum score; this month it is the case study in what one genuine program does.
Bosch climbed the same thirteen spots, #24 to #11, on a commercial-vehicle aftermarket expansion announced for Automechanika, headlined by new disc brake pads at full weight alongside non-brake lines at half. One deliberate scoring note: this was scored as one event with one primary lift, not three category peaks, per the single-event rule.
AmeriBRAKES (Momentum USA) reaches the top five for the first time, up seven to #4, on a third consecutive monthly release. The July drop adds roughly two dozen part numbers, including four MAX DUTY heavy-duty applications covering 4.45 million vehicles — Escalade, E-Transit, Super Duty — and fifteen coated rotors, with pickup across the trade press. Three straight months makes this cadence, not a surge.
Biggest Faller: ICER, ▼10 to #17
ICER Brakes’ two carrying stories — the roughly 400-reference expansion for Chinese vehicle brands in Europe and the brake-accessory technical piece — aged out of the 30-day window at once, with nothing new arriving behind them. Delphi Technologies (▼8 to #16) and Wagner (▼5 to #10) fell on the identical pattern. Delphi’s window is instructive: thirteen new first-to-market part numbers, all of them steering, electronics, and fuel components — real aftermarket activity that a brake ranking correctly discounts.
The counter-example is Dynamic Friction Company, which barely moved (▼1 to #15) despite a third straight month without a trade-press headline. DFC’s news engine lives on LinkedIn, where its recurring Must Have Monday and Friction Friday series regularly announce genuinely new application coverage — most recently the 2026 Cadillac Escalade IQL — that never touches a press release. Starting this month, the Product score credits owned-channel coverage announcements. Quiet in trade media is not the same as quiet.
One to Watch: Raybestos and Two Diverging Re-Entries
The two First Brands re-entries are separating. Raybestos (Friction One) is this month’s One to Watch, not for a rank move but for a signal: Friction One acquired BPI’s former research, development, and testing laboratory in McHenry, Illinois on July 23, 2026, adding seven brake dynamometers specifically to support the Raybestos relaunch ahead of first shipments in Q4. Companies do not buy dyno labs for brands they intend to badge-engineer. The rank move comes when product ships; the investment says it intends to.
Centric Parts (MPA), by contrast, holds the bottom seat at #50 with only a fading acquisition-coverage tail and no disclosed relaunch timeline. Same bankruptcy, same month of rebirth, very different signals so far.
Scoring Notes
Two methodology items this month, both in the interest of transparency. First, ADVICS’s Digital score was recalibrated downward (▼11 to #43) to reflect an owned web presence that has not been meaningfully updated in roughly two years. That is a correction to how the ranking scored it, not something ADVICS did this window, so it sits outside the Biggest Faller conversation and prior months stay locked as published. Second, the DFC owned-channel change described above applies going forward.
Elsewhere: ATE (AUMOVIO) recovered ▲6 to #9 on the BMW brake and electronics supply agreement worth more than $1.15 billion (€1 billion) — significant news, held to half weight because it is OE. The entire TMD Friction family (Textar, Mintex, Pagid, Ferodo, DON) sat out another cycle. Apec Braking’s cadence continued at slightly lower volume, 34 new Apec Red parts in July against June’s 49, for a small give-back to #8.
The Full 50-Brand Board
The complete 50-brand table — with expandable category breakdowns, heat badges, and the rolling archive back to March — is published at aftermarket.thebrakereport.com.
The Aftermarket Power Rankings measure roughly 30 days of publicly observable brand activity across Media, Social, Digital, Product, and Editorial — not company size, market share, or product quality. Media and Product are weighted by aftermarket relevance. Industry Partner and Sponsor designations carry zero scoring weight. The momentum is the point.
Subscribe to The BRAKE Report. Get free sample chapters.
