We had a beautiful sunny day for our Melbourne bodyshop tour sponsored by 1Q1 and Masterbooth - who's work is on display in our first two shops
Our first stop was the fabulous Weststar Prestige where as well as showing us around his beautiful workshop, complete with a new customer pick up and electric car repair area, owner Brad Kolich has laid on something of a spread for our 'tourers'. Refreshed with coffee, fantastic pastries and with a Mercedes-Benz goodie bag in hand, the group then headed for Spot On Panels in Deer Park which has just won a special Paint & Panel editor's award for 'Most spectacular autobody shop in Australia'.
Jaws dropped at the massive scale of the business and the beautiful design of both the workshop, reception area and staff facilties. We all had lunch in the gorgeous staff lunch room. Thanks to Vesco Jolevski and his team for letting us all gawp in amazement.
The last stop of the day was for many the highlight. Smash Repair Solutions in Richmond is the most productive shop per square metre in the IAG repair network. Originally built to fix around 35 cars a week it sometime pushes 70. All this with no parking, one narrow entrance/exit and one spraybooth. Chris Beatty and Amen El Dannaoui were brilliant at sharing how they achieved this with everyone in the group.
A full report will appear in the next issue of Paint & Panel magazine. Thank you again to the three shops for opening their doors to the repair community.