Shops, Shops and more shops

[sevillaz28]

So, I'm wondering what is going on with prices in the Bay Area. I just finished a garage addition for a guy that is tired of paying people in my area for work on his car. I turned a 450sqft garage into a 1500sqft shop at his home, Now I'm working on another garage addition going from 380sqft to 1085sqft and I have two more coming up and a 40k sqft shop to build soon.

Are the prices for auto repair and alterations so dam high out here people are wanting to spend the money and set them selfs up for their own repair work?

I have been so busy with shop building that i dont have time to finish my new toy or even hit the track in the black rat.

How is it for you guys in the central and East states? What good car builders really exist and where are they?

[LSX67]

I live in North Louisiana and I have more cars than I can handle right now. I am a small shop (just 2 of us, very hard to find quality people) but we have 4 full builds along with 1 to 2 day upgrade jobs. I guess I charge a fair price because a lot are return customers.

[fesler]

We get calls daily from people that are tired of being taken advantage of. For every 1 good shop there are probably 20 that aren’t worth going to. We get so many fix jobs that were just done half ass to get the money and didn’t realize they were in it over their head. If people going to the shops would do their research you would hear less about this stuff it really is frustrating in our world. I feel for these guys and that’s why we say do it right the first time, do your research and know your builder. If you get to know them and look at their work you will know you are in the right place if you just go to a shop and drop off a car be prepared to get screwed. Shops that screw people should be shut down because they give us all a bad name.

On another note I am looking at doing a similar shop size at my house for overflow from work. If you don’t mind what is the going rate for something in that size so I have something to gauge from. Do you have any pics of what you have done. I am really looking at building a 40X60 but not sure the price range on that.

Thanks

[EBMC]

Originally Posted by fesler

We get calls daily from people that are tired of being taken advantage of. For every 1 good shop there are probably 20 that aren’t worth going to. We get so many fix jobs that were just done half ass to get the money and didn’t realize they were in it over their head. If people going to the shops would do their research you would hear less about this stuff it really is frustrating in our world. I feel for these guys and that’s why we say do it right the first time, do your research and know your builder. If you get to know them and look at their work you will know you are in the right place if you just go to a shop and drop off a car be prepared to get screwed. Shops that screw people should be shut down because they give us all a bad name.

I looked around our shop after reading this and realized out of 12 cars, 4 were yanked from other shops. They got the "easy" money. Our Tenacity Camaro being the most extreme example! Those cheap, too good to be true, quotes rarely end well.

[Revved]

I think the forementioned reasons are a major contributor... 80% of the cars I've got in the shop have been in at least 2 other shops prior. Clients are tired of getting raped by guys with big shiny shops and no talent so they would rather trust their money with someone operating a respectable business from a smaller facility... even if it is in their backyard.

Gitomer made the statement that "All things being equal people want to do business with someone they know... and all things being unequal people still want to do business with someone they know."

Another major contributor is the fact that I think a lot of smaller builders are going underground. With the cost of doing business nowadays I think a lot of guys are building shops on their on property where their money stays home instead of renting a shop and paying someone elses mortgage. With as thin as the margins can be in this business sometimes it takes off the pressure of having a high overhead facility, and the cost of employees. Alot of guys don't have the $$ or business sense to open a large shop with employees / work to feed the animal it becomes to keep the lights on and doors open so this is a safe way to live the life.

[GregWeld]

There's several factors going on IMHO...

People earning $35 or $40 an hour can't afford to pay people $80 and $95 and hour.... It takes 2000 hours or more to build a nice car... and I don't care if you're building a simple 32 Ford -- it's a 100 grand in parts....

Lots of people were using their houses as ATMs to build this stuff - when that got shut down - so did the builds...


As far as decent shops go... there are just too many horror stories in both directions. There's the guys that take their car to a body shop or so called "builder"... drop the car off... 2000 miles from their house... and then find out 3 years later the car hasn't been touched / or it's done hackeymotto.... OR the other scenario is - you go to a good shop - and have no friggin' idea what this stuff REALLY costs to do... that's when it's the OWNERS fault not the shops. People let their ego out spend their wallet then blame the shop.

I remember walking into a shop (nameless) in Huntington Beach when I was doing the Nomad... and after a big discussion -- and a shop tour -- I turned to the guy and said... "do any of these cars ever leave here?" The reason I asked is that there were 10+ cars sitting around that had 1/4" of bondo dust on them... parts strewn all over the place... and you could tell that they hadn't been touched in a very long time... He starts pointing to various cars - with a story about each one... "that guy hasn't paid for 6 months"... "that guy can only afford $2500 a month so we wait til we get 10 grand and do some work".... "that guy got cancer"... "that guy got a divorce"....

The big shops with the biggest names --- you see the cars built at some show -- and the rumors start flying.... "I heard that cost 1.2 million to build"... etc. So with that kind of "reputation" what NORMAL guy that could maybe afford a 250K car is going to even bother to call them!

[NOT A TA]

Originally Posted by sevillaz28

I just finished a garage addition for a guy that is tired of paying people in my area for work on his car.

Are the prices for auto repair and alterations so dam high out here people are wanting to spend the money and set them selfs up for their own repair work?

How is it for you guys in the central and East states? What good car builders really exist and where are they?

I'm in Southeast FL and a lot of people build home shops here. I work on peoples builds at their home shops, my home shop, and at a 4 bay garage area at an automotive machine shop. There are some good regular shops in the area and a LOT of bad shops. Most of my customers feel they have been screwed over by at least one regular shop and/or want to keep the cost of building/restoring down by doing some of the work themselves. Some just want to have complete control over their build, don't want anyone to see the car before it's finished, or want to tell people they did all the work (doesn't bother me). I work for several people who have built home shop areas with various levels of equipment from nothing more than the most minimal of hand tools to fairly well equipped shops where I rarely need to bring anything to the job.

I charge less than shop hourly rates when working at peoples homes unless it's a very short job (less than a full day) where travel time etc. becomes important.

I usually have a couple long term full builds I'm working on at peoples home shops and then fill my schedule with shorter jobs. The owners like that the car is at their home so they're not worried about anything happening to it and they can spend money at a pace they are comfortable with rather than feeling compelled to spend more than they would like to at a particular time. If they don't feel like spending money on or working on the car for a month or two and going away on vacation it isn't a problem. They don't feel obliged to continue having work done to the car because it's at a shop taking up space. I just work somewhere else till they want me back.

It works out well for the car owner who can do whatever work they want whenever they want because the car is at their home shop and also have someone else working with them or doing the rest of the work they don't want to do themselves. Having someone else working can really speed up their build.

Works for me because I can be working on lots of cars without storing and being responsible for them while waiting for parts or funds. I get paid when work is done. When a job takes a lot more time than normal due to problems the customer sees that because they're often there to see the problem so I get paid for my time. In a regular shop environment the shop ends up eating the extra time for some jobs because they don't want to try to justify it to the customer fearing the customer will think they're being ripped off.

I'm currently working on full builds of a Factory Five GTM and a 69 Camaro vert PT build at home shops. With a build like the Camaro I'll take something like the subframe away and strip it, get all the mods done for say a DSE stage 3 setup, paint it, and then bring it back to the customers home shop to reinstall. Meanwhile the owner can be working on something else.

I took a pic at a customers home the other day while on lunch break during a complete rewire of a 67 El Camino. There's a 12 car garage/shop in back of the El Camino filled with Tri 5's and late 60's Chevys. This customer prefers to have me just work at his home shop and refuses to leave a car at a regular shop overnight, even if it's me working on it. If I need a lift he'll trailer the car to the shop so I can work on it but will not leave it overnight.