I love some of the names - duralast and project MU (mu as in friction I suppose). There aren’t that many OE friction material suppliers in the world and yet as few as they are, they hold 100% of the worlds new vehicle brake business. There are hundreds if not thousands of aftermarket companies making pads just like there are making 12V cordless drills.
What are the reasons. Mazda and all the other manufacturers will currently be talking to their brake suppliers about models that will hit the road in 3 to 5 years. That’s where the discussion starts, with the system makers like Bosch, Ate, Advecs and Akebono and several more. They can provide the entire system of control (interfacing with Mazda’s other safety systems) and hardware. After being given the spec of the vehicle, they will propose a brake system package and what they include as friction material is very much driven by them. They will often have more than one supplier and they may choose different for front and rear. Ferodo might get it because Textar got the last business or they can guarantee capacity. There’s often little to choose between them in terms of performance or price (you’d be horrified if you knew what they pay). Then it starts, the first samples are provided for test - physical properties and dimensions, destructive tests and initial machine performance, then dynamometer testing to the very extent of overload and abuse. It seems odd to go to so much trouble so early on but as Mazda sell the car and their contract is with you, they have to demonstrate that they took every reasonable care to make sure it meets all the requirements of purchase and law.
I need to make something clear, it’s widely accepted within the vehicle industry that pad performance is no longer an issue and virtually all the development is done on refinement, alternative (either cheaper or more environmentally friendly) materials or alternative design like pads without backplates as an example. Keep this in mind for when we get to aftermarket pads.
You can have a vehicle - say a Ford and another very similar vehicle - say a GM that are very similar in weight and performance and yet when fitted with the same system and pads, one behaves impeccably and the other is an absolute dog. It’s because differences in steering and suspension pick up different vibrations or packaging differences (some calipers work fine in front or above a disc but put them in another orientation and they can be as stubborn as you like). It depends where there is room for them. For that reason they get tested on vehicles, first out on a track, then when they’ve tried to break them (notice the spelling), they go off out on the road either packaged in one of those highly disguised things you see in magazines or in a mule - a car that might look like a CX-5 but is in fact nothing of the kind if you look underneath. It’s an engineering bastard. This whole process may take years. You can do the most rigorous testing and still something gets by you - look at the sticky rear calipers. Those warranty issues can wipe out vast quantities of money so they will subject them to all kinds of abuse like extreme temperature and the shittyest of dirty wet and vibration and whatever other kind of abuse you can think of. If it’s gonna break, break before it gets out, not when they have to pay a dealer to put it right and upset a valuable customer. It takes a lot of marketing effort (expense) to coax a customer out of an Audi or a Ford and into a Mazda but you can get one out of a Mazda for free if he’s not happy. He’s gone, never to be seen again and he’s spreading the gospel to boot.
For a company to sell friction material to a vehicle manufacturer, you need plenty of resource, plenty of test facilities, plenty of sales and distribution facilities and you can be expected to take the consequences if it isn’t right. Look at that relatively small supplier that sold accelerator pedals to Toyota. There were people throwing themselves off bridges during that lot.
The bottom line is, if you are seduced by fancy packaging and convincing names like dura this and ultra that then you might be quite satisfied because for most of us moseying about they fill that gap between the caliper and the disc and they ease up at traffic lights without much drama. Let me assure you that they only exist because they are cheap. They have little resources or overheads, their labour is cheap and their back up is virtually non existent. Just like unbranded 12V cordless drill there is a market but are they as good as the big boys? No.