It’s not uncommon to hear that all body shops are essentially the same. But it’s not true, especially if you’ve got a car that requires certified technicians to repair it. A certified collision repair shop should be your first choice for a number of reasons.
Using The Best Parts
The goal of collision repair is not to bang out the dents and make your car look good. Rather, it’s to restore your car to its original condition before the accident happened. Everything should function as it did before the accident, including the parts you don’t think about, like crumple zones and other safety features that you won’t know aren’t fixed until you’re in another collision.
Certified repair shops use only OEM (original equipment manufacturer) parts. You’ll know exactly what’s going into your car, and you’ll know it was built to be there.
Hiring The Right Technicians
Still, using OEM parts doesn’t mean much if the technicians at your shop don’t know how to install them. Just like there’s a big difference between you and everyone else your doctor sees, there’s an enormous difference in the technology and construction of cars between different makes and models. A guy who knows the Ford line inside and out can be just as baffled as you when looking at the inside of a Mercedes.
A certified collision shop does away with these issues by only hiring trained, experienced technicians to handle the job. They know how your car was built and thus how to fix it.
Using The Right Tools For The Job
Back in the day, “collision repair” meant having a hammer on hand to knock out dents and a welding torch in the garage to do spot repairs on a frame, but it’s the twenty-first century. Modern cars use complex alloys, customized plastics, proprietary materials, and other bits and pieces to put together your car.
A shop that’s gone through a manufacturer’s certification process will have the necessary tools to fix your car on hand. When it comes to your family’s safety, you shouldn’t skimp on the tools any more than you would the materials.
Being On The Cutting Edge
The construction and design of cars is changing at an unprecedented pace. As a result, repairing cars has become a more complicated and involved endeavor. Your average repair shop has to be versed in materials’ science, electronics repair, metallurgy, and a host of other disciplines just to fix cars.
A shop that works with the manufacturer doesn’t rest on its laurels; part of the certification process is constantly upgrading and improving. That includes getting to know the latest technologies used to build cars and the latest materials they’re built out of. When your job is bringing a car back to the condition it was in before a collision, you have to know how it’s built, and why it’s built that way.
That’s what a certification is; a manufacturer stating a shop has the knowledge, tools, and ability to fix the damage to your car and return it to a drivable state. Considering how often you’re behind the wheel, that’s who you want under the hood.
