Lee's vision splendid takes shape

Shop Profile

Lee's vision splendid takes shape

When Lee Smash Repairs moves into its new building in the Sydney suburb of Artarmon, it will take its place among the best smash repair shops in Australia.
The new Lee Smash Repairs building sits on the site of the old one in Hotham Parade, but is three time the height, and will be able to bring all the facets of smash repair in-house. That includes panel beating, painting, paintless dent removal, trimming and mechanical work necessary to enable body repairs and wheel alignment.
Owner Lee Koudsy has been repairing cars in Hotham Parade for 30 years. His old shop was known for specialising in Ferrari, Porsche, Lotus and Maserati ? all of which have made him a factory approved repairer.
"That doesn?t mean we turned other brands away," he says, "but you can't specialise in everything. We do Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, Audi and Lexus when we're asked to by our customers."
The new shop became necessary because the business had far outgrown the old shop. Over time, the company had purchased some other smaller buildings in Hotham Parade and put various related repair services into them. But Koudsy wanted to have everything under one roof ? and in a building that was in keeping with the prestige brands he repaired. Those smaller buildings have been vital in maintaining the business while it moved out of the old shop and waited for the building of the new one.
Needless to say, the new shop will not only live in an outstanding building, but will house the best repair equipment available. There will be both Car Bench and Celette benches ? to cover the factory requirements of the brands most of which stipulate jig systems for alignment. They will be supplemented by a number of laser measuring machines from Car-o-liner. Lee is another repairer whose patience has been tried waiting for the windows version of Auto Quote, but Koudsy still believes the system is the best available.
Again because of factory preferences, Lee will run three different paint brands: Glaurit, Standox and PPG (especially for Ferrari). They will be used in four Saico hand built Italian ovens and four Lo Bake Prep bays with downdraft dust extraction and IR drying. Some of the ovens will be 8.5 metres long to accommodate commercial vehicles.
In the temporary shop, Lee has been employing 25 staff, most of whom have been with him for a long time. One painter has seen out 24 years at Lee Smash. When the new building is up and running Koudsy expects to double the present staff, firstly because of anticipated growth in work and secondly because many of the formerly outsourced services will be brought in-house.
The building provides over 4000 square metres of work, office, showroom and amenities space. When fully equipped the whole project will have cost between $12 and $15 million.
Like many of the prestige repairers, Lee Koudsy believes that the NRMA online tendering system should allow for prestige car repairs to be quoted only by specialist prestige repairers. As a PSR Lee Smash will be eligible to tender on the WRM system.
"It is no good comparing lemons to apples," he says. "There is no point in quoting against a shop that doesn't know how to repair these cars and just makes a guess. I welcome quoting against other factory approved repairers."