80 percent in ten years: Insurers: Spare parts for cars are becoming rapidly more expensive

The costs in car repair shops are rising. And a large part of this is due to the prices of spare parts. One reason for this is a protective clause that is intended to protect manufacturers from imitators. The insurance industry is calling for reform.

According to a survey by the insurance industry, spare parts for cars have once again become significantly more expensive. Between August 2025 and 2026, prices rose by more than four percent, as the General Association of the German Insurance Industry (GDV) announced. Since 2016, spare parts have become more expensive on average by more than 80 percent, and the prices of individual parts such as rear side walls, front doors or trunk lids have almost doubled.

Prices therefore rose significantly faster than general inflation. “While the inflation rate has averaged 2.8 percent per year over the past ten years, spare parts prices have increased about twice as much, at an average of 5.9 percent per year,” said GDV Managing Director Jörg Asmussen.

According to its own information, the GDV examined the price development of 20 different spare parts. For all of them, the annual price development was above the inflation rate in the ten-year trend. According to the GDV, higher spare part prices lead to more expensive repairs and thus to higher damage costs.

The GDV cites so-called design protection as one reason for the high spare part prices. This allows car manufacturers, for example, to protect the external appearance of their products from imitation. It includes not only the vehicle, but also visible spare parts such as doors, fenders or exterior mirrors - and meant that spare parts were more expensive because independent manufacturers were not allowed to produce visually identical parts. A planned reform of design law, which will implement an EU directive into national law, could strengthen competition, according to the GDV.

In December 2023, the EU states and the EU Parliament agreed to exclude spare parts from design protection in order to give consumers cheaper access to repair parts. The regulation applies under certain conditions: The replacement parts may only be designed for repair purposes and must look exactly like the original part. Examples given were a damaged door or a broken light.