UPDATE:
I called the only official Isuzu Dealer/Service Center here in Louisville KY. I ended up speaking with Will (Parts Dept, Assistant Manager) for about 30 minutes about Isuzu. To sum it up, he said (similar to Phil's story) that Isuzu was waiting for some warranties to run out before they pull out. He said that most dealers across the country, knowing that Isuzu was leaving, started the process of purging Isuzu data out of their system (for the slower dealers/service centers). Also at some point (I think he said 2 or 3 yrs ago) GM purchased all parts, rights, design, etc. for all domestic vehicles 2004 and older. He said that currently some select dealers will be able to offer "limited service/part options" to heavy duty commercial vehicles but there won't be many and that ALL domestic stuff is now owned by GM. I've phoned a couple friends here in the group that I thought may be able to help investigate this info. I'm still investigating. I really twisted his arm on where we can still get new parts and he said that his main parts warehouse was in Auroa IL. He said when he was not able to get them from there, they would order straight from Isuzu Korea and he says they are still active, however they can no longer issue PO's for any of these warehouses and that the "limited parts" for commercial vehicles was coming from a U.S. warehouse which he wouldn't share the info with me. He also told me that a few times that Isuzu Korea would be low on stock and they had a warehouse in Equador drop ship the parts. He said when parts came from Equador that the boxes would always be "double labeled with GM" so that there was yet another middle man (GM) in there somewhere. He told me although he cannot give me any more info than he has, that it shouldn't be difficult by using the internet to find contact names for any of these warehouses... however I have not yet started looking. I just wanted to throw this info out there.
Oh yeah, I told him that I really appreciate his help and that the next time he's out in my neck of the woods to stop by and I will treat him to lunch at my place (our family's bbq restaurant). You could tell he was VERY excited and he said "yea, in fact I've been wanting to try that any way, I think I'll bring my crew out there for our next meeting, is that ok?" And before we hung up he said... Tyler I tell you what, If you do find yourself stuck in a corner after doing research...give me a call and I'll be glad to help.
Oh yea... he also gave me the name of a guy locally who was his "last resort" when he couldn't find a part. I called him and asked for a quote on a passenger headlight. He said, "how about $275... it's got a haze to it but we'll buff that out for ya". Of course since that's a cheap price, I went out to
www.car-part.com to look for myself and found a couple that were listed at $225 and $215 and both had a description of "hazy" or "foggy". So I'm not sure if this guy is something special OR that he just knows a couple of sites like car-part.com and marks up a price for being a middle man.
Just wanted to throw all this out there in my ongoing search for us all to have continuing access to parts...
Originally Posted by Cobrajet
My new bumper reinforcement arrived today. Looks purdy! Really gonna make my VX stand out from the crowd. I imagine it will reduce my aerodynamic drag substantially, and increase my gas mileage by at least .06%. I'll take pictures of my naked VX during install (next warm weekend)....... but it sounds important!
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