Collision Repair at Valley Motorwerks

By Walter Ford

From time to time, we’ve been able to help our customers with collision repair. How this all started was when I would take my cars to the body shop and they would look good on the outside but as soon as you looked underneath the car, a lot of details were left out. Part of the issue is that these cars (BMW’s) are very complicated, like jigsaw puzzles underneath. They require little fasteners. So, you can have four fasteners in a row, and the two in the middle can be completely different than the two on the outside. A lot of non-German shops will use any generic screw. Well, there’s a reason why a car’s interior is a certain way.

What I found was the best thing for everyone was for us to do the tear down, send the paintwork and framework out and then we do all the assembly. We make sure that all the fasteners are properly installed and that all the T’s are crossed and all the I’s are dotted with the insurance company. We actually act as a buffer. The customer never has to interface with either the body shop or the insurance company beyond the initial filing. We are their advocate with the collision repair. We’ve always partnered with collision repair facilities that know they will be held to a higher standard, that the car must look absolutely original or they’re going to do it again.

We started doing this as a soft service about a year and a half ago and we’ve completed about a dozen cars. We haven’t advertised it until now. When a customer calls and says, “Hey, I’ve had a fender bender”, we let them know they can drop it off with us and we’ll make sure it all gets taken care of. We do all the detail finish work and handle all the interface for the customer, so they’re not left with having to deal with all the little things they may not be familiar with. Most people don’t come in contact with this sort of process very often, so when they do, they tend to be a little lost.

Not long ago, we took in a car that was literally shorter than the front. The insurance company didn’t want to fix it and the owners didn’t want a car with a salvaged title. The value of the car wasn’t very high, but the value of the car to the customer was high because it had been in the family a long time. So, we were able to affect a good proper repair that would withstand the test of time. The repair was completely undetectable and the customer now has a car that can be passed down to the children and he feels completely comfortable knowing that the car has been repaired properly.