In case you missed it in our March/April issue.
Andrew Mitchell balances custom and restoration work with collision repair at Auto Transformers in South Australia. Allan Edwards discovers how.
Andrew Mitchell is the walking embodiment of the saying "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."
Andrew always had an interest in restoring cars but he didn’t follow a traditional pathway into the discipline. The South Australian’s background was working in the printing industry and he completed a few restoration projects of his own as a hobby. He obviously enjoyed it and was soon working on projects for his friends.
In 2008 he decided to turn it into a full-time business and opened a small 240-square metre workshop in his native Adelaide. A year and a half later he had already outgrown that space and moved to a larger premises. At the time of the move he had grown the operation to three staff.
Eight years later, in 2016, his team had grown to eight staff and he decided to move into his current 8,000-square metre block on a main road in Para Hills West. Today Auto Transformers has 20 staff consisting of administration, management and technicians.
The property includes a 1450-square metre workshop and administration building and 750 square-metre storage garage, in which he keeps vehicles that are waiting for parts or assessment by engineers. This space is also occasionally rented out for customer car storage to help with cashflow.
The business began as a restoration business but in 2014 began undertaking some insurance work. “We do work for all insurance companies and are RAA approved,” Andrew says.
“Our current split is 50 per cent insurance and 50 per cent private restoration and custom work.”
Auto Transformers began doing insurance work as a way to keep the cash flowing through the business as restoration work, while lucrative, can often be slow paying.
“We started by becoming an RAA approved repairer here in SA, which meant that a few jobs would be directed to us and obviously we're not a volume shop. And then we just moved into some of the other insurance companies and the natural progression was that more and more older cars would be sent to us from Shannons,” Andrew says.
“It was definitely from a cashflow point of view, most insurance companies might not pay as fantastic as we would like sometimes, but it is regular, so you can always count on a nice regular stream of crash repair jobs coming through.”
However, Andrew points out that there is a fine balancing act between how much insurance work you do compared to restoration jobs.
“You can't go into it thinking you're going to turn out tonnes and tonnes of crash repair jobs because then you would neglect your private customers.”
At least half of Auto Transformers’ insurance work comes from Shannons and involves repairing classics. “From a beat up old Holden to a Lamborghini,” Andrew smiles.
Many of the Shannons crash repair jobs lead to additional work on the vehicle privately, to be done during the time they are there for crash repairs, which often allows the team to give the car back better than it was before the accident.
“Because we’re not a volume shop we’re able to treat every job that comes here with the highest attention to detail. Quality comes first no matter what vehicle we are working on,” Andrew says. “We have built our reputation on quality and honesty.”
Auto Transformers has a female manager, Kylie Peck, and along with its female administration staff, the business is very much a “female friendly operation”, which Andrew believes “goes a long way in making our female crash repair customers feel at ease with the whole process of repairs”.
“There's a hell of a lot of women who come to the door. Without even trying, we've just become this very female friendly business and we look after them, and then they refer their friends.”
The vehicles Auto Transformers works on are quite varied, from every day cars for insurance to prestige cars as well as Australian and American muscle cars, classics from the 1950s to ’90s of all types of hotrods, customs and motorbikes.
“We also build many custom vehicles and turn out around four to five major project builds per year,” Andrew says.
“These major builds are generally a full strip back to bare shell metal, repair all the steel, full panel and paint (often with custom mods), new motors and drivelines, all new components and upgrades, full custom interiors, etc.”
All work is done in house except sandblasting and chroming.
“We also take care of the engineering process and roadworthy compliance, to hand over a complete drive away vehicle.”
Over the years Auto Transformers has turned out many classics, but Andrew does have a couple of favourite builds, including an orange ’57 Chevy. “That's been a pretty high-end build for us and it’s taken out some awards.”
Another favourite is a ’71 Plymouth Coda, which Andrew built for his wheelchair-bound brother.“It's all hand controls. And again, it's taken out loads of awards. It's got a 6.4 Hemi; everything's brand new all through it; all the latest injected motor, transmission, air-conditioning – the whole lot.”
Andrew says his biggest challenges usually involve managing customers’ expectations. “Once we sandblast them it often becomes obvious that they are going to take a lot of work and a lot of rust repairs. I think that becomes a challenge in itself, because you're dealing with a customer who might not have realised how bad their car was prior to having it all sandblasted and stripped back and the customer is usually in shock. I have said, ‘Look, I think you should stop as this is a little too far gone’. But very often their pride doesn't allow them to do that. They look at it and go, ‘Well, I've had this car for a while and I've committed and I've got to move forward’.”
Andrew says that communicating with customers is a key to his success. “For a customer to choose to undertake a full restoration or custom build is a big commitment, and we understand this fully – they put a lot of trust in us,” he explains.
“For this reason, our communication to them throughout the process is of the utmost importance to us. Every customer receives a weekly update on the status of their vehicle with up to date account on parts and labour. We also encourage them to be involved in the process.”
Auto Transformers-built cars have also won numerous awards at car shows.
“We are proud that eight of our vehicles have made it to the finals in the Meguiar’s MotorEx Superstars in Melbourne. The Superstars finalists each year are chosen as the top 20 vehicles in Australia.
“We are lucky to have a great crew with some amazing skills. We are a PPG paint shop and our senior painters have had the privilege to paint some vehicles in amazing designs and colours, including many candy paint jobs.”
Andrew clearly is a man who has found his passion in life. “We have made some great friends along the way. And our reward is to see the customer on stage collecting a trophy with the biggest smile – or to see them out driving around town, again with the biggest of smiles on their faces.” ●