The Chevrolet Corvette is a fast and stylish sports car that people love to drive. It's been around for a long time and is famous for being powerful and fun, making it a popular choice for car lovers.
Aftermarket parts are parts made by other companies, not the original maker of your car. They can be cheaper but might not always fit as well or be as reliable as the original parts.
The Cadillac SRX is a type of luxury SUV made by Cadillac. It's designed to be comfortable and stylish, with plenty of space inside for passengers and cargo.
Insurance agents are people who help you with your insurance, which is a way to protect yourself from financial loss. If your car gets damaged, they help you get the money to fix it.
The Chevrolet Cavalier is a small, budget-friendly car that many people used for everyday driving. It was also dressed up to look like a fancy car for Cadillac, trying to attract buyers who wanted something more luxurious.
The MQB platform is a design framework used by Volkswagen to make different cars using the same parts. This helps save money and makes production easier.
Hillman is a car brand from the UK that made various models, including the Hillman Avenger. It was popular in the 1970s.
Car
Hillman Avenger
The Hillman Avenger is a small car made by the Hillman company in the 1970s. It was known for being a family car and had different versions sold under various names.
The Dodge Avenger is a car that looks sporty and is meant for everyday driving. It was made in two different times, and while it tries to be fun to drive, some people found it didn't perform as well as they hoped.
Plymouth is a car brand from the United States that made many different types of cars. It was popular for affordable vehicles until it was discontinued.
The Opel Antara is a compact SUV made by Opel, a car company in Germany. It is similar to the Chevrolet Captiva and was sold under different names in different places.
The Saturn Vue is a compact SUV made by Saturn, which was a part of General Motors. It shares many features with the Chevrolet Captiva and was sold mainly in the United States.
Car
Daewoo Windstorm Max
The Daewoo Windstorm Max is a type of SUV made by Daewoo in South Korea. Like other models, it was sold under different names in different countries.
The Suzuki Vitara is a small SUV made by Suzuki. It's popular for its ability to handle rough terrain and is used for both city driving and off-road adventures.
The Geo Prism is a small car that was made in the 1990s and is similar to another car called the Toyota Sprinter. It's known for being dependable and good on gas, making it a smart choice for people who want to save money.
The Suzuki Swift is a small car that is easy to drive and great on gas. The 5-door version means it has extra doors, making it easier for people to get in and out, especially in the back seats.
LIVE
Welcome to another in-wheel time podcast, the 30-minute, many version of the award-winning show, The Year's Live, every Saturday morning. We'll have an AM central. We're going to hum along. You do that. You and Jeff, we're doing it. Coming up, our auto story of the week recalls. No, we've already done all that. We've got guests coming up. And we do. It's the award coming up. We're going to talk to the founder of Auto,
fix it and how to find a reputable body shop later in Jeff's car culture, same cars,
different names. And Mars has 10 things to do with the Texas State Fair. Howdy, along
with Mike out of this world, Mars, right over there, frozen again. Over here to my left
is the fabulous. We always need more Jeff Zeke. Keep going. David Ainsley is joined us. He's
not in the house at the moment, but he's here in spirit. He's in here. He's in the bathroom.
I'm Don Armstrong. Glad you could join us today. It's been a comedy of errors. And I do mean
comedy. So we don't know what's going to happen in the next half hour or the next hour, half hour
after that. So you invite you to surprise the entertain. What? It's a surprise. Yeah. So do we
have Elon? Yes, sir. Okay. Well, let's pop him in there and say hello. Elon Mandel found
her of auto fix it, finding a reputable body shop. And I hope I didn't screw up your name
too much. Did I? Perfectly. Hi, gentlemen. Hi, it's pleasure to be with you. Thanks for joining us
today. Pleasure to be with you as well. Nice to meet you. So tell us about auto fix it. Now,
let me tell everybody, this is O T T O. Thank you. Not auto fix it, but auto fix it. The man's name.
So tell me how this all came about. Yeah. So I'm a technology guy in background. And I decided
to just build an app to connect to drivers with auto body shops about a year ago just because
I felt like there was a lot of lack of transparency as far as where drivers can go to get the
car fixed and how much they should be paying. They don't really know ultimately until the
cars usually in the shop already. And I wanted to just give drivers multiple options. So I create
a mobile app. And it's also a website. And basically you take a photo of your car and you get
a AI driven estimate, which is admittedly, you know, it can never be super precise because
there's always a lot of damage in collision in collision damage. That's maybe under the hood,
so to speak. But it gives them an initial sense of how much they should be paying just off of
that AI estimate. And then what we do is we connect people to auto body shops in their area.
So the auto body shop can give them a more comprehensive estimate. So it does two things. It gives
people some price transparency. And it's we're also creating new leads for auto body shops, which
upon talking a lot of auto body shops, they really need because no one's very happy with
Yelp or Google. No one's getting good leads from other platforms these days.
Well, it's interesting you should say that because my my background long time ago was in
car dealership. And they had a very extensive auto body repair shop in the back.
They also had a separate Corvette body shop repair place next to it. And
what little I learned is that it's pretty much, and I don't want to say a guessing game because
that really is not true. Most auto repair guys that do the estimates for the most part are
generally pretty schooled. But as you mentioned, and I think it's really important to point out
here that when you take your car in to get an estimate, it is just that an estimate. Because what
they can see and what the actual mechanic that is doing the work sees could be completely different
because there's so many other hidden parts that are not visible to the eye. Yes, supplemental
that you have to fix this. You have to have that bracket, that mount, whatever the case may be
that's bent damaged somehow is messed up for me to get that fender aligned properly to the rest of
the hood, the bumper, all of that, I've got to have that bracket. And that bracket may be,
it may be a hundred dollars, it may be five thousand dollars because it involves other things
and other parts. Yes, go ahead. And because the price of the job is not set in stone until the
job is actually finished because even when you get the car in the shop, you haven't taken it
apart and you don't know all the complexities of the job until it's done. There's no real harm in
my opinion in giving a person an initial estimate off of a photo, given the fact that it's going to
change anyways. And the real problem here is just the fact that nobody or at least the average
person who's not a car enthusiast has even a shadow of an understanding of how much they probably
should be paying going in. And so what we're doing is we're saying, okay, you have, let's say a
dent on the back panel above your wheel, like that's probably going to cost you somewhere in the range
of $1,500 to $1,000. And then they can start thinking about a lot about actually I go through
insurance and other questions like that. We've gotten some pushback. I will admit that we've
gotten some pushback when it comes to generating estimates based off of photos. But the reality is
we've just tell customers that these estimates are subject to change upon the in-person inspection.
So we're really just giving people options. And the other thing I'll just quickly note is their
shops' labor rates are very different. And so what we're seeing is that we are providing people
with recommendations to reputable shops that where the prices change somewhat significantly. And so,
you know, depending on the person's car or what quality of repair they're really looking for,
they're only looking for OEM parts, or they're okay with just certified aftermarket parts,
they might decide to go for a slightly cheaper job and we want to give them that option.
Well, there's also after the service after the repair because you might have, you get your vehicle
back on a Tuesday and next Saturday for there's a little rattle, there's something not right,
something that doesn't drive correctly. That also has to go back and then there's probably more
money added to that. Well, Jeff has a perfect example. I mean his Cadillac SRX
got bashed in. Oh, pretty bad. That T-bone. Yeah, T-bone. And then somebody stepped up to the
plane and says, oh, I can fix it for this amount. Yeah, it was actually Cadillac dealer.
The Cadillac dealer? Yeah, their collision service. Yeah. And you tell the story. And the vehicle
ended up, it went down the road sideways. It was the paint was wrong. This was back in 2013.
Paint was wrong. It was a wrong color of different shade. The car ran for like a dog
down the road dog. Grab and down the road. And so I wasn't satisfied. And they kept saying,
no, no, no, we'll fix it. So I took it to another dealer and I had the insurance agents meet me
there. And of course the claim with the guys, the insurance company for the person to hit me.
And they said, look, we've looked at the car up. The car was bent. There was frame pieces that were
just not right. And they ended up buying the car back. And I got out of the car out of it.
I'm surprised in that instance, they didn't just declare it total bad.
Well, and that was the original thought behind the initial accident while this is pretty bad.
And I said, no, we can fix it. So yeah, that was a story. And you know, there are reputable
car dealers and some are questionable. And this was not in the Houston market. This was in
another market on Corpus Christi. Yeah. And all I can think of is, hey, you know, they wanted the
business. It was, it was a big job, but clearly if it was two-bone, big dealership too.
Yeah. And so they took the job on not thinking that anybody would ever take it back and go,
hey, it's crabbing down the road. That's a major damage. Well, this is on the dealer because,
you know, we all have standards and quality that we go by. It was just not a quality follow-up.
They, they, there was a bunch of things that went wrong from the beginning, the estimate,
the people that were working on it, the stories they were telling and how they could do it. So
it all compiled and eventually they bought the car back. So this is interesting. Without
going into too much detail, the way I see the landscape of auto body shops is just kind of like
three levels. The top level is those certified shops that are certified by a manufacturer,
like a BMW manufacturer, a BMW certified shop or a Cadillac, in your example, certified shop.
And in my experience, those shops are the highest quality. They're only using the
oil bars. And they're also the repair jobs are at the highest price tag. So that's,
that's sort of tier one. And then tier two is maybe the shops that have four or five locations
throughout a city. And they're only using certified parts. And then the bottom tier and a lot of
these bottom tier, I don't want to say bottom tier, but they're not necessarily using certified
parts. And it can be hit or miss depending on the shop. The independence, the independence.
And a lot of them are great, by the way. So I don't want to like speak ill of them.
Oh, and some of that depends on the insurance company can can kind of force some of that.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Consider it as a good, better best.
Exactly. Exactly. And so the way that I go about deciding like what shops to recommend to folks
using my app is based off of Google and Yelp reviews. So I'm just saying I'm not going to
recommend the shop that has less than four and a half stars out of five and has fewer than
a hundred reviews. Because that's just sort of like a grassroots way of determining if a shop's
shop's been getting good reviews in the past. Yeah, you got to have a base to start with.
But even that's not scientific because anybody could load up one of those sites pretty easily.
What do you mean load it up? Go in and go in and manipulate it. It's a great, this is a great
dealership and then hey, you've got a buddy that does the same thing. I mean, you could be a
business unto itself. So there's nothing really foolproof about anything. Which is why I'm
very shy about recommending shops. I'd rather just give people the options. And so I'm saying,
okay, these are four different shops that got quotes from this is the different prices that they're
giving me for your for your damage case. And then you you can decide and I try to steer people
depending on their car. Like I might say like, okay, you have brand new 2025 BMW. You should
probably care about getting those OEM parts and going to a certified shop. Whereas maybe if
your car is worth $7,000, you don't really want to be paying top dollar for new OEM parts and you
can go to a shop that maybe is just using certified parts. So it depends on the customer. But I want
people to make the decisions that are going to make based off of their financial circumstances,
their car, etc. I just want to give them the options because right now there's there's no tool
out there that says, you know, across these four shops, these are the four prices they think it'll
cost. And that's what I really liked about looking at it. Because one of my granddaughters wrecked her
car. Now, you know, 150,000 mile car going back forth to school. Anyway, the way it got wrecked,
I didn't have any idea what it was going to cost. You know, is this something we really want to fix
or is this car totaled or whatever and go the inter. So to me, the information that you can get
from this auto-fixit app by the pictures and stuff gives you a little more information to start
your decision process. And then you start talking about going to the shops and looking at them.
Yeah. And again, I tell people that AI is as good as the technology is these days. Take a photo and
it's going to give you an estimate and we've trained it to be pretty good. And just to give you
you guys a little bit information about it, like we always aim high on the estimate that we create.
But the real estimates are what you're going to get from shops. So the real value that we're
creating is connecting people to shops and whatever zip code they give us. And so we're serving as
like a price transparency tool, but also just a shop discovery tool. You know, like Google has
a bunch of shops, but we're tailoring shops based off of our filtering criteria, like the four
and a half stars in the shops we know. Right. I'm based in LA. So we've already started to build
out a network of shops out here. How are things in LA today? So when it comes to the auto-body market,
I've talked to nearly a hundred years. It's jacked up. Is that what you're going to tell me?
Well, you know, prices are all over the place. So as far as jacked up, you know,
the prices are all over the place. But when it comes to the shop owners, they're all telling me
that it's a drought right now. No one's getting customers. It's really tough out there. And then I
asked them why and they're saying, well, we think it's a combination of inflation and tariffs.
You know, tariffs are making their their costs higher and inflation is making people less money
in their pockets. But I'm getting a lot of positive reception to my app on the supply side on the
shop side just because everyone's needing new customer inflow. I just don't know where to go. Yeah.
Yeah, it's just tough out here. And again, like people have said that in the auto-body industry,
have said very to be honest, bad things about Yelp. And Google everyone's sort of like 50-50 on,
just indifferent. Yelp though, I mean, they're paying and they're not getting any quality leads.
You know, Yelp and Google are providing people leads, providing shops leads for people that might
not even have card image in the first place. So it's like, why are they paying for those leads?
And I would think the businesses would like your app to the point in my mind. The customer comes in,
they've been on your app, they've got an idea that this is, AI says this is $7,000 repair. He looks at
it and he says, okay, it's really a 10. It's a whole lot of issues to explain going from 7 to 10
because of buried sensors, things that the AI can't see. Then it is to go from, if they come in
thinking, well, this is only going to be $1,500. And now it's 10. So to me, I think it would help them
explain and help them deal with their customer a little bit better, too.
Yeah, though, I will admit, I would prefer that we tell them 10 and then the shop tells them 7.
Well, yeah, yeah. And so what we've ended up programming is for our technology to always
guess high and also to create a range. So the ranges that we're putting, depending on the base
number might be as much as like $1,000 or $500 in each direction, just because it's impossible
to be certain. But we would much rather tell a customer it's going to be $3,000 just to set
expectations and then have shops come in around 1900. That's great. Is it auto fix it?
OTTO fix it. F-I-X-I-T dot com. That's the website and from our website, you can download that.
Cool. Very good. Well, this is great information and hey, best of luck to you. It sounds like
you got a hit on your hands. So let's see how it works out. I might be going down the street over
here and find out that I've been referred by auto fix it. Thank you guys. I appreciate the time.
No problem. Thank you. We appreciate you. Yeah. Hey, just ahead, Jeff's car culture. And this week
it's same car. Different names. Plus, Mr. Mars has 10 things to do at the state fair. Is that
open next week? It's open right now. Yeah. Thank you for this Thursday. Yeah, County Fair is
welcoming. Yeah. Yeah. County Fair is this. Or Bank County. Yeah. But we're not we're talking about
the Big D. Yeah. All right. That's coming up things 10 things to do at the state fair this year.
After this quick break here on the in-wheel time car talk show stay with us.
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I like it.
Mr. Moore, can you say?
Well, I think I know the guy. I don't know, with the guy on the minibike.
I don't know the old one. The old guy that was in the old guy.
There's like seven. With the Dr. Spockwave.
Thanks for being with us today in Wheel Time. I invite you to join us.
10 to noon, central time every Saturday for our live show about all things automotive
and personal behavioral suggestions. Thanks for being with us today. Time now for Jeff's
Cart culture. Same car, different names. Yeah, it's sort of like a Cadillac SRX that turned
into a V. I remember that sort of. So for decades, car manufacturers have confused buyers
by offering models with an array of identities. Now, that picture right there,
that is a Land Rover. It's 11 different names that that vehicle has been on over the years.
Really? It's a practice known as badge engineering, not to be confused with platform sharing
or joint ventures. All of which have become increasingly common in recent years. Some car
companies have over-indulged, while others know better than to mess with their branding.
Six decades of badge engineering cars. And you'll see that some automakers crop up from time to
time. You'll see that in this whole segment. So here we go, Michael, push the button.
Number one, Simmeron Cadillac. In 1982, there were two models of this vehicle. When GM raised it
in the early 80s, that BMW and Mercedes were stealing sales and parts for the luxury car market,
it stuck Cadillac badges onto Chevrolet Cavaliers in a bid to compete with the smaller luxury cars.
But the high prices and four-cylinder engines made the Simmeron, which is pictured here,
a laughing stock, even in the introduction of a V6 in 1985. It did nothing to make the car
more sellable, shame on them. The next one is a Lancia Delta. It's a 2011 model.
There were two models. That's a Chrysler. When Fiat merged with Chrysler, it
proved how shameless it could be with its abuse of brands. First, we got the Lancia Delta,
then we got the Lancia Ipsilon. Rebatch is a Chrysler for the UK, sort of like a Manage de Toilet.
Oh my God, for the new car.
Hopelessly ambitious premium pricing in the Chrysler 200, which is pictured here, and Grand Voyager
were rebatches Lancia's. The former sold as the Flavia and was notably unaccessed.
The Flavia Lancia, I guess. That's something to do with the verbs.
There you go. Speaking of Manage de Toilet, check this one out.
Three, Volkswagen 2011. There were three models. Now, check this out. The Volkswagen
rules the rules when it comes to rebatching. It's first generation of the MQB platform,
fuel 15 different models, but sometimes we get the same car wearing different badges instead.
With no attempt to separate them, which is why Volkswagen pictured on the right,
the right bottom one, also came up virtually identical to the seat
My, which is pictured center, and the SCOTA sit-go, which is pictured left.
Most global markets apart from North America, so they weren't sold here, but they were in other
SCOTA. It's a SCOTA. Isn't that a Swedish company?
I think a SCOTA? A vodka drink, isn't it?
By all, that's it. It could be.
The Hillman Avenger, in 1970, there were six models of this bad boy.
Britain's race group. Look at the family.
They had it again in the rear-wheel drive family car that arrived in 1970.
Originally sold as the Hillman Avenger, there was also the Talbot, the sunbeam,
and the Dodge versions of it, while in the US, it sold as a Plymouth Cricket,
which is pictured there. In Argentina, it sold as a Volkswagen.
Wait a minute. A Plymouth Cricket.
Plymouth Cricket.
I remember that. What year?
80? 70s and 70s.
70s.
And then, of course, now it would be rebashed into a fight.
I think that's the 72 of the place that played on it with the 70s.
Pretty close. Michael, the next one is a Chevy Captiva.
It's a sport model. And it's in 2006, and there were seven versions of this.
Seven, of course.
General Motors gave this car a different identity all over the world.
Australia got it as a hold in Captivia, Captiva.
And in the UK, it was a Vox Hill and Terra.
Vox Hall.
While elsewhere in Europe, it was the Opel and Terra.
Sold as the Saturn view in North America,
in South America, it was the Chevrolet Captiva, which is pictured here.
And in South Korea, it was the Daywoo Windstorm Max.
Daywoo.
No, there's a big name.
Automotive history.
That's past five times.
Michael, the last one we got for you, buddy, is the Suzuki Vittara.
Four models of this, depending on the markets in the Vittara,
which is pictured here, was sold as a Suzuki sidekick.
Chevrolet did it as a tracker and the Geo tracker.
GM's Geo brand from 89 to 2016,
consisted entirely of rebadging cars made by other companies.
The prism was really a Toyota Sprinter.
Look at that.
That's right in front of a renamed crackerbarrow.
Exactly.
He was a Toyota Sprinter.
The storm was in his, the Susu Pulse, Chiquito.
And the spectrum was in a Susu I mark.
And the Metro, as we all see, was rebadged as a, what?
Suzuki Swift.
Hey, Mars, what was the name of that?
It was a Swiftie.
Yeah.
Mars, what was the name of that car that you had last hour?
That car that you talked about, that we, we all,
The Tata car?
The Tata, yeah.
Yeah, but what, but what was it?
What was the name of it that you called it?
Oh, no, that was the A4 to Spire.
A Spire.
Yeah, yeah.
A Spire.
A Spire.
You called it A Spire.
A Spire.
Got more, got more.
These Texas train in there.
Uh-huh, from the Tata Motor Company.
The A Spire.
Made by Capcomville.
Oh my god.
There you go.
Re-badged.
Re-named.
Okay, um, it's time now for Mr. Mars driving destinations.
Tim things to do at the State Fair of Texas.
Yes, sir.
Let me get right back over here.
And we are, we have to do it.
I think that you just need to concentrate on putting all this stuff up.
Just not even paying any attention to us.
Well, I don't.
Did I start?
I'm sorry.
You've never started paying attention to us.
Nice.
Yeah, so so this week, Texas State Fair started
so we're going to take a quick look at 10,
there's a lot of things to do.
But there's 10 things you need to be sure and do.
Big text, towers more than 50 feet.
It greets everybody coming into the, uh,
fairgrounds.
That's the one that burned up.
Yeah, he's got a lot of fire a couple of years ago.
Yeah, he's got a much darker tan now.
But he's been greeting Spire growers since 1952.
It's got a Spire.
Then, uh, and of course, if you're there,
one of the things that you're going to do is
the annual fried food competition.
No, not good food.
Fried food.
No matter what.
And, uh, they also have some
separate drink entries this year.
You can taste all the finalists.
Cast your own.
What is that a pickle with?
What is that?
A pickle with cereal on it or is that?
That's a Mexican like a corn.
I don't know.
It talks about it.
Well, but they're really uh,
a vacant devil egg sliders,
deep fried deli tacos.
I'm like, I think that's a banana in it.
No, I don't know.
Didn't ask.
Going on the Texas Ferris wheel.
Now, this thing is two hundred and twelve feet tall.
So it's not necessarily for, um, me.
Yeah, for people that aren't,
don't want to get up high,
but you can get some really panoramic views of Dallas,
itself on a good clear night as well as Fair Park.
It's 44 gambolas so they can carry a lot of people
and they really lighted up at night.
Now, moving on to speaking of rides,
the midway rides and games are over
70 rides down on the midway from kid rides
up to the more, uh, adult type rides
that kids can't get on.
Like the 500 foot top of Texas tower.
There's the 1914 Denzel carousel
and they've also had Denzel Washington no doubt.
I could be.
They have the 177 foot portable swing tower.
They'll give you some serious aerial
thrills, I believe, but here's one.
Now, Don, this is for you.
Is this an aspire?
No, this is inside the creative arts building.
Visitors will find displays of fine arts,
photography, quilting, home,
and the world famous butter sculptures.
Now, this is historical tradition
and you can get all these different,
all these things right here.
This is just, for example,
of butter sculptures including the mayor's home.
Look, there's Jeff over there on the right,
lower right hand side.
Hey, yeah, with my mullet.
I don't know how they keep it from all melting,
but I did not know that was there,
and so I've never been there and seen it.
Yeah, when you go inside,
then you have to put it,
make it a sweat of weather kind of visit.
And the display, the display next to it is toast.
Yeah, they give you a knife when you go in.
Yeah, you go.
So moving on to the auto show.
Now, this is one of the big things.
This is generally where I go whenever I go up there.
So they've got all kinds of.
You have been seen there in years.
When I have been,
but you can go through and guess you've got vehicles on the outside,
on the inside,
they've actually got a few places
that you can actually drive them around some tracks.
Look, it's got an Aspire right there in the middle.
Right there in the orange one, right there again.
Then if you want some other things with a little more active,
you can also go to the rodeo.
They've got the Lidali livestock shows judging.
Full rodeos with bull riding,
barrel racing and roping events.
Got FKJ, I mean, 4-H and FFA participants.
So you can do, go through all the barns
and do the rodeos in the evening under the lights.
And one another one I did not know was there.
They actually have Lagoon Park.
And this was not there the last time I was there for sure.
This is part of their family friendly attractions.
They're anantronic dinosaur exhibits
and interactive shows.
Put it in the Lagoon setting to make it more realistic.
Then if you're interested in stuff that's more sports
because they are right there by the football stadium,
they have the Women's Soccer Championship there.
They have the State Fair Classic,
which is an HBCU football game
between Prairie View A&M and Grambling inside the Cotton Bowl.
And of course, the big one, the Red River rivalry,
where Texas and Oklahoma play,
which I believe is going on today.
And of course, they have again, back to the rodeo stuff.
There's lots of things to do up there,
but this is just 10 of the bigger things.
Some of them I didn't even know existed.
Well, there you go.
Once again, we don't know what we don't know.
Exactly.
All right, well, thank you, sir.
And real-time car talk has continued
right after this quick break.
Let's see how...
You own a car you love.
Why not let Gulf Coast Auto Shield protect it?
Houstonian John Gray invites you to his state-of-the-art facility
to introduce you to his specialist team of auto enthusiasts.
We promise you'll be impressed.
Whether you're looking to massage your original paint
to a like-new appearance, apply a ceramic coating,
install a paint protection film,
nanosuramic window tent, or a new windshield protection
called ExoShield, Gulf Coast Auto Shield
is where Houston's car people go.
Curved your wheels?
Instead of buying new one, I'd have them repaired.
How about a professionally installed radar detector?
Gulf Coast Auto Shield does that, too.
Get a peek inside the shop and look at the services offered
by getting online and heading to GCautoshield.com.
Better yet, stop by their facility
at 11275 South Sam Houston Tullway,
just south of the Southwest Freeway,
and get a personal tour.
Gulf Coast Auto Shield is your place to go
for all things exterior.
Call them today, 832-930-5655
or GCautoshield.com.
Rev up your engines as time to roll back in style
at the back to the past car show.
Join the Spring Branch Senior High School Foundation
Saturday, October 18th at Cornerstone Academy,
1916 Westview Drive in Houston.
Classic cars, trucks and motorcycles,
family, fun, food, music and memories.
There is something for everyone
proceeds benefit local students and programs.
Don't miss the shine, the chrome and the nostalgia.
10-2 Saturday, October 18th,
back to the past car show.
Springbranchbearers.com slash car show
for more information in real time will be there, too.
That's it for this podcast episode
of the Inwheel Time Car Show.
I'm Don Armstrong.
Inviting you to join us for our live show
every Saturday morning on Facebook,
YouTube, Twitch, and our inwheeltime.com website.
Podcasts are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Stitcher, I Heart Podcasts, Podcast Addict,
Tune in Pandora and Amazon Music.
Keep listening and we'll see you soon.
About this episode
Exploring the challenges of finding trustworthy auto body shops, this episode features Elon Mandel, founder of Auto Fix It, who discusses his app that uses AI to provide initial repair estimates based on photos. The conversation highlights the importance of transparency in repair costs and the varying quality of body shops. Listeners will hear real-life stories about repair experiences, the complexities of estimating damage, and how the app connects users with reputable shops. The episode also touches on the impact of inflation and tariffs on the auto body industry.
Navigating the murky waters of auto body repairs just got easier thanks to an innovative approach that puts transparency and consumer choice at the forefront. Ilan Mandil, founder of OttoFixIt, joins us to unveil how AI technology is revolutionizing the way drivers approach collision repair estimates. By simply snapping photos of vehicle damage, consumers can now receive preliminary cost projections before setting foot in a body shop – finally addressing the anxiety-inducing question: "How much is this going to cost me?"
The conversation dives deep into the stratified world of auto body shops, from manufacturer-certified facilities using exclusively OEM parts to independent shops with varying quality standards. Mandil expertly breaks down how OttoFixIt vets repair facilities (requiring 4.5+ star ratings across hundreds of reviews) and why having multiple quotes empowers consumers to make informed decisions based on their specific circumstances and vehicle value. Jeff shares a cautionary tale about his Cadillac SRX repair gone wrong, highlighting exactly why finding reputable repair shops matters.
Our journey through automotive culture continues with Jeff's fascinating exploration of badge engineering – the practice of selling identical vehicles under different brand names. From the embarrassing Cadillac Cimarron (a glorified Chevrolet Cavalier) to Volkswagen's triple-identity vehicles and GM's global rebadging strategies, we uncover how manufacturers have sometimes confused consumers with their marketing sleight of hand. The episode rounds out with Marrs' entertaining guide to the Texas State Fair, featuring everything from the iconic Big Tex statue to butter sculptures, thrilling rides, and of course, the comprehensive auto show. Whether you're dealing with collision repair decisions or simply curious about automotive culture, this episode delivers valuable insights with our signature blend of expertise and entertainment. Subscribe now and join our community of car enthusiasts who understand that knowledge is power when it comes to all things automotive!
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
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