The monthly brand momentum tracker from The BRAKE Report. Fifty-one brands, five categories, one 30-day window. Explore the full interactive rankings at aftermarket.thebrakereport.com.
The eighth edition was written by Automechanika Frankfurt. The world’s largest aftermarket trade show landed squarely inside the September window, and the brands that treated it as an aftermarket launch pad — rather than an OE showcase — own the top of the board.
One methodology change, applied in public
Until this month, Editorial worked like a switch. One BRAKE Report article in the window was worth ten points; none was worth zero. That made Editorial the only category where a single article could move a brand ten points, and it meant part of the board was moving on publication timing rather than momentum.
Starting this edition, Editorial follows the same aftermarket-relevance weighting as the other four categories, and it decays instead of falling off a cliff:
- An aftermarket BRAKE Report article earns the 10-point baseline.
- Coverage that is only motorsport, rail, OE or merchandise earns 5.
- A brand with no coverage this month keeps half of last month’s Editorial — once. Decayed points drop to zero the month after.
We also made one attribution call explicit. Coverage of a parent company is credited to the brand at the same relevance weight — the way AUMOVIO coverage counts for ATE and PHINIA coverage counts for Delphi. This month that applies to NUCAP, the parent of NRS Brakes. Prior months stay locked as published.
#1: Brembo, 64
A month after BOLDIKA — an OE-only caliper with no aftermarket application — cost Brembo the top seat, it brought the opposite to Frankfurt. Its entire pad range is now copper-free. The LMD-coated Greenance Plus disc-and-pad kit leads a Greenance family that now includes brake fluid. The caliper lineup was refreshed. All of it was aimed at distributors and workshops, and all of it counts at full weight. Same weighting, different month.
EBC Brakes holds #2 at 61 on published Super Ceramic test data — dyno protocols plus R90, FMVSS and SAE J2975 ratings — ahead of its SEMA launch, and a steady flow of new-part news on its own site.
Three at 59
NRS Brakes takes #3 on the tiebreak. Its monthly part-number releases continued on its website and LinkedIn, and The BRAKE Report covered NRS Fusion twice: parent NUCAP’s new process that cures friction as a separate puck and presses it onto the NRS galvanized backing plate, shown at SAE Brake Colloquium and now open to other friction suppliers for trials. Fusion is supplier technology, not a part an installer can buy, so it counts at half weight — the same treatment BOLDIKA received in September. NRS’s first-to-market fitment for the USPS Next Generation Delivery Vehicle landed October 1 and will score next month.
ATE (AUMOVIO) is #4 on its independent-aftermarket debut and the inaugural ATE Smart Awards, honoring 22 ATE BrakeCenter workshops across six European markets plus six in Australia. The MK 100 brake control system was credited as a preview last month and is not counted twice. AUMOVIO’s distributed brake-by-wire order and semi-dry concept for Volkswagen are OE stories at half weight.
Biggest Climber: Delphi, ▲12 to #5
Delphi Technologies had three aftermarket stories in one window: expanded coverage for Chinese vehicle applications and new Professional+ light-commercial pads at Automechanika, Associated Partner status with UK road safety charity Brake under its Make Some Noise campaign, and 198 new references — 47 of them braking. After a summer in which Delphi’s releases were mostly steering, electronics and fuel parts, the braking lane is open again.
One to Watch: Wagner, ▲9 to #6
September’s Biggest Faller came straight back. DRiV added 547 new Wagner caliper SKUs, taking the 100% new, no-core-charge line to about 1,100 part numbers and roughly 78% of vehicles in operation — the largest single aftermarket release of the month. The question for November is whether that is cadence or a one-off.
Elsewhere on the way up: TRW (▲8 to #8) on DTEC pads and discs built for Euro 7 particle limits; ICER Brakes (▲10 to #12) on a busy Frankfurt stand and a renewed website; and PureForge (▲11 to #14), which named Grant Hanson chief revenue officer to take its Atomic-Forged rotors beyond law enforcement into fleet, OEM and Europe.
Biggest Faller: Hella, ▼8 to #20
August’s first-ever commercial-vehicle pad launch went to Automechanika, but trade pickups of the same launch aren’t counted twice, and nothing followed it. Last month we asked whether it was a program or a press release. September didn’t answer.
Akebono slid the same eight places on a second content-light month, and PFC Brakes (▼7) stayed strong on LinkedIn without a new release. The decay rule kept those falls to a glide rather than a cliff. Dynamic Friction Company is the clearest example: ▼6 to #9, while its weekly Friction Friday coverage releases never stopped.
The bottom of the table
Raybestos (Friction One) still awaits its first Q4 shipment. MPA’s Centric Parts and StopTech remain quiet ahead of a relaunch promised by fiscal year-end. Frasle Mobility’s Movetech USA opening in Detroit landed October 2 and will count in November.
The full rankings
The complete 51-brand table — expandable category breakdowns, heat badges, and the rolling archive back to March — lives 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. All five categories are weighted by aftermarket relevance. Coverage of NUCAP, NRS Brakes’ parent, is credited to NRS at aftermarket-relevance weight. Industry Partner and Sponsor designations carry zero scoring weight. The momentum is the point.
