I was impressed to read that Summit (and Jegs) pulled speedmaster parts.
I know copying happens, and because I buy so little aftermarket stuff I had no idea this brand was a ripp-off brand.

I seem to affiliate this company name with some aftermarket Pontiac heads;
What were they copies of??

My guess is nobody at Speedmaster was even aware of the company name on the valve body. Obviously they are now, but maybe not when the parts went in the packaging. Likely just decided they wanted to sell a copy the valve body, sent a sample to a job shop with instructions to make a copy, and the job shop did exactly that. Speedmaster or Procomp seem to have their name on their other copies. So just lazy or no inspections together with the sleazy business practices.

Counterfeit parts are nothing new. My father worked parts in a Pontiac dealership 50 years ago and they had salesmen in all the time with cheap stuff in OEM looking boxes and labeling. They didn't but someone must have been buying that stuff back then.

The Speedmaster Pontiac heads are a copy of the Edelbrock aluminum heads. Their are some subtle differences, probably just enough to avoid a law suit. At least they don't have Edelbrock cast right on the center exhaust ports!!. General anecdotal reports are the Pontiac heads are decent. The aluminum has been tested and found to be OK. My guess is if the heat really gets turned up on them, they will go bankrupt , reorganize and re-open under another name. They have done this several times already.

FYI,Jegs and Summit still show SM products on ebay along with other Etailers including SMs own site.I dont see them going away soon.Tom

I've worked with Pete who owns Procomp/Speedmaster many MANY years ago and know for a fact he won't go bankrupt over this. If anything he may rebrand but won't go broke. For every 10 enthusiasts, 7 will buy his stuff because of the price.

though ill still buy edelbrock heads for most stuff, i have 2 sets of speedmasters that i think are nicer than the non cnc eheads that use be 1800 through summit way back when. id most likely buy another set if i needed them. i guess thats kinda anti american but you cant beat that black friday sale they have. atleaat on certain things. ive passed on pretty much anything else they sell.

A friend had a very good glass block business with his father. Glass block production was in a EPA grandfathered part of Corning n.y.,location think that's what he said for area. Production could be backed up this was 15yrs ago. So he decided with help of U Pitt.to get block made in China. Trips there etc. 1st Container perfect. 2nd not so good,3rd bad.So talking returns,then lawyers.Suit would be in China. He knew he was taken. Stopped buying...

This really isn’t about other copying that goes on in China, or here, or anywhere else. Speedmaster, a company with facilities in the US, Australia, and happens to have manufacturing done also in China, copied a small shops valve body, left that companies name on the part. Didn’t a very good job manufacturing it (like most stuff they do) and then they sold it as their own product for major retailer’s to resell.

There seems to be a bit of a disconnect about the connection between copying parts, and what Speedmaster did on this. Imagine developing a product, someone buy’s it and copies it, then they do a shotty job reproducing it, and resell it with your name still on it. Maybe you would rather just have someone break into your garage, steal some parts and buy it back on eBay? I run a company that sells equipment, and have a number of patents, I actually would rather deal with someone stealing something out of my shop versus what they did.

Speedmaster has done a bunch of unscrupulous things in the effort to expand their company and for better name recognition. This boils down to very bad management and business practices at SM. Lots of Chinese parts you don’t have much choice in buying or using. But with SM product’s, which are almost all just copies with no R&D put into improving them, you do have a choice.

Sadly you are right and this is exactly why North America has gone to ****z over the last 40 years.

People buy quantity over quality because consumerism gurus told them to.

Any car can be made faster using hot rodded stock parts... Id much rather drive a stock looking iron headed pontiac in the 14s than a 11s Pontiac built with a pile of chinese knock off parts.

I like old cars as time capsules, slapping a bunch of made in 2023 chinese casted junk on a 70s vintage car does not make much sense to me.

Do we still call this a pontiac engine or a pontiac style engine? It may sounds a lilttle extreme but you get the point.

Peter

I bought something from Speedway motors yesterday and couldn’t find any Speedmaster products on their site anymore either.

I bet some folks over at SEMA are feeling pretty stupid about the awards they gave Speedmaster.

I have a similar story,
I worked for a large American Chemical company, in ~ 2002 we saw a large and growing market in China that we wanted to expand into. We found a Chinese company to partner with and build new plants in China. In a 50/50 partnership, the new plants would be built by the Chinese company using our Engineers, Chemists, Scientists, designs and process.

As the first plant was under construction, we found that the partner company was taking shortcuts and using very poor quality materials. This was particularly disturbing regarding high pressure piping and valves required for many parts of the process area. The business relationship soon fell apart and the other company stole / took everything from us. There is no useful justice system in China to seek compensation, so it was a big write off for us and they now had our tech and the first plant for free.

It has been a running joke by those who know the details, around our company ever since. Many of us are retired so it is becoming water under the bridge now.

Only way it can be stopped is tariff the Sheite out of the Chinese and if they want to outsource through another country, penalize them. The people in now are shills for the CCP.

Speedmaster hasn't ever used the name of their victim on their knock-offs before.
That would be like a pre-meditated suicide for a company selling in the USA.

Best sense I can come up with is the logo got left by mistake , and they made a decision to distribute them anyway instead of scrapping the whole batch.
Really don't understand how anyone in their ranks ever thought this would go well.

It went from knock-offs to counterfeiting
Which isn't too far apart , but counterfeit stigma doesn't market as well as knock-off stigma.

So the people
Not buying speedmasters will
Be buying aftermarket copies of tiger heads and IA blocks instead? Or edelbrock copies of
Kre d ports? There is copying everywhere as mentioned above . Companies that add some
Innovation to their product line hide some of the copied items
Just becomes it's made in America doesn't mean it is unique.
Look at the 7 different branded hydraulic roller lifters
Consumers will take their money where they want and manufacturers that exploit small
Markets with higher than usual profit margins will be targets of copied parts.
Ultimately that will Dictate what gets copied and sold
Just my
Opinion.
innovation will get
New customers that have to have the latest and best. Copying will
Keep
Prices low for
Average consumer

You over estimate SM management. The reason why they had to change their name from Procomp electronics to Speedmaster was because the got sued by MSD for pretty much doing this exact same thing. Would you call this a knock off or copy?

It's quit obvious a lot of copying is going on in the HR industry. They ALL have the same problems!

Remember when Car Craft exposed all the Chinese counterfeit MSD products being sold to lowest bidder buyers.... I wonder what the difference is now that MSD's product comes from China... Things that make you go hmmm.

Yeah I'm sure the "powers that be" will get all over it.

Yep, Then we just sit back and watch the product they had go to crap. MSD just has never been the same since they got bought out and MFG went to China.

Technology gets sent over to China just too get it built cheaper and make the company more money, which happens almost every time these companies get bought out by an investment group. Then about everytime time it happens the tech gets copied over there. After that if the investment group has too deal with copies it is pretty much their own fault. The investment group did that too themselves. Personally, I have far more issues with the bottom feeder reverse engineering that happens that describes what speedmaster has done on about all it’s products.

The only reverse engineered copy of a Pontiac head is a SM E head copy. All the other companies that make and design cylinder heads seem too at least refine the design. I know there are some differences between KRE and Eddy D ports, they aren’t reverse engineer copies of each other anymore than a Firebird is a reverse engineered copy of a Camaro, or vise versa. I don’t know much about those Victor and Tiger examples, but I garentee Edelbrock didn’t just reverse engineer them from another head like SM does. It appears SM even copied someone else’s CNC work on the CNC offering. Then didn’t even bother to flow test it. Looks good.. ship it! Lol

Would call that a knock-off and a copy.
But not a counterfeit - it didn't say MSD on the part , and probably not on the packaging.

The transmission valve body had Broader's name/logo machined into it
That was a king kong jump across the line.
Makes no sense why they would stretch that far intentionally - and then use their SM packaging.
It was suicide or sabotage.

They won't die , but its going to be a huge economic consequence for them losing Summit and Jegs.
The market has accepted knock-offs
But doesn't look like they are ready to accept counterfeit branding
That was a retarded endeavor to risk.