A sad body shop horror story....

[anlauto]

The year: 2006 ....a nice older retired gentleman approaches me about restoring some components for his 1970 GTX referred by a friend of a friend type thing...so I easily oblige, restoring a few parts for his car....

As we get to know one another, I learned that the body/restoration shop his 70 GTX is in, has now had the car about two years and it was real close to be ready for paint....I joked at that time, telling him if he'd brought the car to me, he would be driving it by now....


Fast forward to 2009....He contacts me and want me to order some parts for him for his project, things like new fuel/brake lines etc....Again we get talking and it blows my mind when he tells me that the parts are for the same GTX and that the car STILL wasn't finished after five years in the shop...WTF ? Then he tells me the underside and jambs are painted, but not the outside body ? After five years it's not even painted yet

So yup....you guessed it....The guy just paid me a visit this afternoon....14 FRICKEN YEARS !!! in the same shop and it's NOT even painted yet....The guy is now 75 years old....

Now, don't get me wrong...I think it's almost as much his fault as the shop's owner...he's been way too patient and way too understanding and just lets them get away with it...even telling me that some nights the stress is keeping him awake at nights...

... He tells me now that he would like me to finish the car, and he wants to pull it out of there.....So I agree that I would possibly be able to help him out, get the car out of there now, and have him on the road next Summer....what does he say.... " oh I might still have him paint it, and just have you assemble it..."   So I said...call me in another five years or so when the car is painted

I hate seeing nice people like this just being taken advantage of 

[1 Wild R/T]

There needs to be a new term in the car hobby..... Body Shop Rage......  When guys start showing up at the body shop with their Glocks maybe the bodyshops will begin to understand..... 

Many days I place the blame for road rage squarely upon the person who was the recipient of the rage......  Body shop owners need to experience the same treatment....

[Brads70]

He has more patience that I would.....

[anlauto]

He comes off as a very shy, quite, naïve gentlemen who probably has never killed a mosquito in his life...it's obvious this place is walking all over him...we didn't talk about how much money is involved, but I can't imagine they're "storing" it for free


Oh, and he also owns four GTX's including a 71 he bought brand new...

[JH27N0B]

My T/A was in the same shop for approximately 14 years and in that time they did a bunch of metal work and sent it out for media blasting and etch priming.
They originally said about a year to restore my car.
I knew after a couple years that things weren't looking good, and eventually I'd need to move it elsewhere if I ever hoped to see it done.  Shortly after my car went in, the owner's only employee moved on to another job, and not long after that, he got laid up for a while after donating a kidney to his dad, so at first the delays seemed understandable.
It wasn't until about 5 years that he really got rolling on the metal work.
In the years after he picked up the car, we had the tech wreck which knocked my stock market wealth down greatly, then a recession, and my stable employment at a solid company started looking sketchy as they started going downhill toward eventual bankruptcy.
I got downsized in 05, got another better job quickly, but that fell through end of year, unemployed 2/3 of '06.  Found a job but got canned end of 08 when the economy fell off the cliff and was out of work until late spring of '10.
The car was on the back of my mind but every time I decided I needed to get going on moving it, I'd get sidelined by another setback in life!  Plus the thought of trying to retrieve a car in pieces 4 hours away seemed pretty daunting!!  The thought of holding a gun to the guys head to get him working on it actually occurred to me, but he was too far away and I didn't want to risk prison!
Finally after 14 years I decided to move it to a Mopar shop here in IL with a record of great restorations and many cars in MCG praising how wonderful they were.  They proceeded to take me to the cleaners with overcharges, talk down to me like trash, and the car is now in another shop fixing some things they screwed up, or blew off doing altogether.
That's my heart warming restoration tale!
There seems to be a lot more resto horror stories than good stories.  The scary thing is that more than a few shops with good reputations sometimes go bad.
I just heard stories of a well known midwest Mopar restorer (not the one in IL who worked on mine), someone I've known for 20 years, getting booted from by his partners from his shop for secretly selling parts off cars he was working on, and overcharging customers.  Alcohol is a big factor.  I won't say who but he's well known.
Scary world out there!

[Chryco Psycho]

Far too typical , why do they drag it out , just finish it & move on to the next project , by the time it is in paint he will be too old to drive 

[JS29]

 I hope that this is not A case of if he dies I could end up owning A GTX!!!!!  Come on 14 years.

[anlauto]

We talked about that this afternoon as well...He has two project cars, with parts spread out all over the place and really doesn't want to burden his family with that mess "after" he's gone....he would like to see both cars finished...

[Chryco Psycho]

OK then he knows what he has to do

[kdcarman]

My T/A was in the same shop for approximately 14 years and in that time they did a bunch of metal work and sent it out for media blasting and etch priming.
They originally said about a year to restore my car.
I knew after a couple years that things weren't looking good, and eventually I'd need to move it elsewhere if I ever hoped to see it done.  Shortly after my car went in, the owner's only employee moved on to another job, and not long after that, he got laid up for a while after donating a kidney to his dad, so at first the delays seemed understandable.
It wasn't until about 5 years that he really got rolling on the metal work.
In the years after he picked up the car, we had the tech wreck which knocked my stock market wealth down greatly, then a recession, and my stable employment at a solid company started looking sketchy as they started going downhill toward eventual bankruptcy.
I got downsized in 05, got another better job quickly, but that fell through end of year, unemployed 2/3 of '06.  Found a job but got canned end of 08 when the economy fell off the cliff and was out of work until late spring of '10.
The car was on the back of my mind but every time I decided I needed to get going on moving it, I'd get sidelined by another setback in life!  Plus the thought of trying to retrieve a car in pieces 4 hours away seemed pretty daunting!!  The thought of holding a gun to the guys head to get him working on it actually occurred to me, but he was too far away and I didn't want to risk prison!
Finally after 14 years I decided to move it to a Mopar shop here in IL with a record of great restorations and many cars in MCG praising how wonderful they were.  They proceeded to take me to the cleaners with overcharges, talk down to me like trash, and the car is now in another shop fixing some things they screwed up, or blew off doing altogether.
That's my heart warming restoration tale!
There seems to be a lot more resto horror stories than good stories.  The scary thing is that more than a few shops with good reputations sometimes go bad.
I just heard stories of a well known midwest Mopar restorer (not the one in IL who worked on mine), someone I've known for 20 years, getting booted from by his partners from his shop for secretly selling parts off cars he was working on, and overcharging customers.  Alcohol is a big factor.  I won't say who but he's well known.
Scary world out there!

I live in the Chicago area as well.  I made the decision to ship my car off to Alan in Georgetown, ON.  The exchange rate on the labor, Alan's knowledge and productivity and quality of the restoration more then made up for the cost of shipping.  Also, I spend quite a bit of time in Canada and had zero concerns shipping the car over the border.

Not to get into bashing shops on the forum - maybe you can PM the shops you have used in Chicago.  Curious about that.   

[anlauto]

ahhh shucks 

[JH27N0B]

I'd never heard of Alan and didn't even have a home computer in 98-99 era when my restoration oddessy began!
Just to clarify, the shop that had my car for 14 years was in Michigan. The owner is a nice enough guy, I don't hate him despite him disappointing me.  The only part I can think of that was missing when I got it out of there was the rear frame tiedowns.  I know those where supposed to be removed in dealer prep, but they rarely were.  Mine were there but disappeared.  I found a nice pair on Moparts complete with bolts for $40, no biggie! At least I got free storage at that shop for years...
The shop that recently fired their partner for stealing and selling parts off cars etc is not in IL.
The shop that finished the bodywork, painted the car, installed the driveline to the point I could get a trailer and haul it out of there, after 70 large in bills, is here in Illinois, and shows cars often in local and national shows.  I'd had dreams of them proudly showing my car after completion, and maybe one of Rob Wolf's how cool is that stories in MCG about the car and my great experience with them, but like most fairy tales, wasn't going to happen for me.
Track me down at MCACN in a few weeks, my car will be there, and I'll be there somewhere, in a yellow coat guarding the ballroom or maybe the RTS display and I'll be happy to discuss my shop horror story further!

[I_bleed_MOPAR]

Wow. Y'all give new meaning to the terms "body shop prison" and "paint jail".   


Tim

[RUNCHARGER]

Yes: Really it's the owner's fault for enabling this. He'll never see that car done needless to say. If I can't hammer a car out in a year I'm sick of it anyway.

[anlauto]

Yea....I agree, it's the owner's fault as well, but what kind shop allows this to happen ???