They’re describing a system where people are responsible for results and the work is done in a repeatable way. That helps the shop perform the same across different employees and areas.
Minimum performance standards are the basic rules for how well each job has to be done. The idea is that everyone is held to the same expectations so the shop stays consistent.
It’s a checklist the service team uses to look at a bunch of common wear items and systems on your car. They use it to explain what they found and what you might need to fix.
Digital retailing means buying a car using online tools—like browsing inventory, getting quotes, and starting the deal digitally. It can also change how the dealership follows up with service and parts.
Protective Asset Protection is a company that sells add-on protection products to car dealers. The idea is to help dealers make extra money and help customers cover costs if something goes wrong.
Vehicle protection plans are extra coverage you can buy when you purchase a car. They’re meant to help pay for certain repairs after the factory coverage ends.
Guaranteed Asset Protection (GAP) helps cover the “gap” between your car’s value and what you still owe if the car is totaled or stolen. It’s most useful soon after buying a new car on a loan or lease.
Maintenance programs are plans that help pay for regular car services. They can make it easier to stay on top of routine maintenance without paying for each visit separately.
Limited warranties are coverage agreements that protect against certain failures or repair costs, but with specific limits and exclusions. Compared with a full warranty, they typically cover a narrower set of components or time/mileage ranges.
Hendrick Automotive Group is a big dealership company. In this segment, they’re used as an example of how a dealership group is changing its service and parts operations with new technology.
ADAS are the car’s safety features that help prevent crashes, like systems that warn you or help brake. After an accident, the car’s sensors may need to be handled correctly so those safety features work properly.
Company
Mr. Hendrick
This is the person behind the Hendrick dealership group. The speaker is saying the company invests in training and support for the people who do repairs.
Calibration is making sure the car’s sensors and safety systems are set up correctly after repairs. It helps the car “see” and “read” the road the way it’s supposed to.
OE certifications mean the automaker has checked that a shop can repair cars the “right way.” It usually involves specific training and approved repair procedures.
It means some shops focus mainly on fixing the car as cheaply as possible. The host is saying they prefer a method that follows the automaker’s rules instead.
BMW is the car brand mentioned here. The collision center is being opened alongside a BMW dealership, which often comes with brand-specific repair expectations.
A technician academy is an in-house or partner training program designed to develop entry-level technicians into fully capable collision and service workers. The speaker frames it as a way to accelerate learning and improve recruiting by building a pipeline from tech schools.
Term
entry level folks
This just means new workers who are starting out. The speaker is saying they hire beginners and train them up.
Concept
run their own body shops
This means some dealers do collision repairs themselves in their own shop. Others send repairs out, and the speaker is pointing out that not everyone keeps that work in-house.
Term
day to day operations
This just means the regular daily work of running a business—like managing employees and handling customers. The idea is that renting out the shop avoids that constant workload.
They’re basically leasing the body-shop operation to another company. That way, they don’t have to manage all the workers and daily operations themselves, but they can still earn money from the arrangement.
“Core competency” just means what a business does best. The point here is that dealers may want to focus on what they’re already good at instead of expanding into collision work.
Consolidation means dealership businesses are getting bigger and fewer—through mergers or expansion. It changes how companies decide what to run themselves versus outsource.
Concept
single-point dealerships
This is basically the idea of staying focused on a smaller number of locations instead of spreading everywhere. The speaker thinks smaller operators can still succeed by serving their local area well.
A used car supercenter is a dealership that specializes in selling lots of pre-owned cars. It’s set up to move inventory efficiently and can work alongside service and parts to keep customers coming back.
Concept
cars are getting more complex
Modern cars have more technology and systems than older ones. That can make repairs harder and more time-consuming, so shops need more training and better equipment.
Manufacturer certification means the shop is officially approved by the car maker. It usually involves special training and equipment so repairs—especially on newer cars—are done the way the automaker requires.
An insurance preferred shop is a repair shop that an insurance company has a deal with. That can influence the cost and how the claim is handled, including repair timing and approvals.
Collision repair is fixing a car after an accident. Newer cars have lots of sensors, so the shop often has to recalibrate systems to make sure everything works safely again.
Manufacturer certified parts are parts approved by the car maker. In many repairs—especially on newer cars—using the right approved parts helps ensure the car works correctly and safely after the fix.
“Totaling” a car means the insurer decides it’s not worth repairing. Instead, the car is treated as a total loss and typically goes through salvage or parts channels.
LIVE
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Hey, this is executive producer Jake Nier in Detroit.
Thanks for joining me for this bonus episode of Daily Drive.
This coming week, we at Automotive News will drop our annual top 100 dealership groups
by service and parts revenue ranking. We sat down with leaders from some of the top
performing groups to find out how they're driving growth in their fixed operations.
You already heard from one of them on Friday's episode of the show.
Here's a preview from our own Rudy Shork.
Automotive News has ranked the top 100 dealership groups based in the US by service and parts
and buy shop revenue. Our top 100 service and parts package is all about giving you the
insight into the realities of the automotive service industry.
We talk about how training and artificial intelligence are pushing growth in service
departments, about body shop revenue trends in 2025, and we give you a look behind the scenes of
how we make up our top 100 list. The average dealership body shop revenue fell in 2025,
according to this year's data. But we at Automotive News go beyond that,
giving you a glimpse into the reasons behind the drop. We also talk with dealers and service
and parts directors to find out what they're prioritizing and how they're finding growth
in the market. Retail reporter Gail Howe recently sat down with Matt Winston,
Fixed Operations Director for Vaughn Automotive, to discuss how the group has improved the
performance of its service and parts departments over the past year. They talk about investing
in training and culture, adopting a growth mindset, and focusing on customer retention
and affordability. Here's a glimpse into their conversation.
First of all, are you involved in also the body shop collision? And if so, where does
that stand in the organization? I know that some groups are kind of shedding their business while
others are maybe focusing on us. So tell me about Vaughn's situation when it comes to
body shop and collision. Love that you brought that up. We have three collision centers,
three different Toyota stores, the three in Texas. We don't have one in California yet,
that's our other store. But we currently have the number one ranked Toyota collision center
in Gulf States Toyota, which is in our region. So our body shops perform very well. We have this
one at Calvert very long, but it's been here ever since Vaughn Automotive took it over.
It wasn't performing at a high level, but we hired a very amazing collision director,
and he's really just built the culture and trained his people up. And he's done a phenomenal job
there and he rightfully earned the number one collision center in Gulf States Toyota.
So two things, is it number one based on revenue and what's the culture that he's built? Like,
what's the secret culture that works? Yeah, I mean, it's really training and accountability.
You know, they have a winning mentality. So they've been chasing this
number one spot for a few years now, and this is actually our second year of hitting it.
There's a lot of things that go into revenue as part of it. Training is another part of it.
Having your shop set up with the right tools and the right areas, it's on a point system,
so it's on a grid system. And yeah, he's beat it two years in a row now.
So what's the strategy to continue on this good path when it comes to
the collision business? What do you have to keep doing to stay on top?
Yeah, well, it's just like for service and parts and collision, we call it minimum
performance standards for every position that we have here. And that goes all the way to the
variable side. So we clearly define our expectations for every employee to ensure
accountability and consistency. Everybody knows exactly where they stand, including myself,
and how we're performing and areas that we need to improve at, areas of opportunity.
So we kind of mimic those performance standards reviews with daily, weekly, and monthly training.
So we always have ongoing development for our advisors, our technicians, our estimators,
our parts personnel. They're structured sessions and it's really just focused on
areas of opportunity. And depending on where they're at, if they're new or if they're experienced,
we have different training platforms for them. And for the service side, we do something pretty
cool. Well, we have yearly walk around certifications. So we certify every advisor every year on our
selling system, pretty much just maintaining a high standard for customer interaction and
make sure they know the process from start to finish. And it's even gone so far to where we
created a little thing called the Tournament of Champions. And it's a competition to reinforce
all our excellence between the stores with a healthy competition. We host it yearly,
we call it the Tournament of Champions, it's across all stores and each location will send
their top three service consultants to compete and the areas that are competing in are customer
greet and walk around with their presentations. They'll present a multi-point inspection with
some filled items on there, overcoming objections, subject and handling, and then active delivery.
The winner gets bragging rights, we give them a trophy, they win a trip to recognize our elite
performance and commitment to our processes, which sent them to Cabo San Lucas, we bought them a
cruise one year. So it's pretty cool. They really look forward to it and every year they're talking
about when the next competition is going to be and they're all trying to fight to compete for the
store. That's so cool. Where does it take place? Do you win a trip for you or are you in your
family or how does that work? It'd be whoever wins and their spouse, so it's a trip for two.
And then there's a total of four trips we gave out last year, so there's four winners.
We hosted last year's in Houston at the Gulf States Toyota Center,
their training center. They were gracious enough to loan us their training center and host event.
We've done one at the High Hill Country out in San Antonio and then we've also done one at our
Toyota Bernie store, so this will be our fourth year having this competition. Dealerships today
face tighter margins, shifting consumer expectations and affordability pressures tied to
broader economic uncertainty. At the same time, consolidation and digital retailing are changing
how products are sold and supported. That's why many dealers are reexamining how asset protection
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over time. If you're a dealer and interested in tapping new revenue streams through protection
products, get in touch. Visit ProtectiveAssetProtection.com slash AutomotiveNews. That's ProtectiveAssetProtection.com
slash AutomotiveNews. Many service and parts departments are implementing new technology
as a way to improve their processes. The tech ranges from vehicle inspection videos
to AI agents and all of it is changing the face of the service and parts department. How also
set down with Roger Miesemore, head of service and parts operations at Hendrick Automotive Group.
They talked about how the group is implementing technology to give their service and parts
department a competitive advantage. Take a look. I know that some of the big groups are shedding
collision and body shaft work. What's the Hendrick way when it comes to that? How are you making that
worth it? Well, if you buy it from us, we want to take care of you no matter what happens. We
certainly don't want you to end up in an accident, but we want to be there for the whole ownership
experience. The key to collision is the leadership and the whole commitment to fixing it by the OE
standards. It's pretty crash worthy is the term. That's very important. More important than ever
nowadays with the ADAS, which is the collision avoidance systems and everything. We have invested
because Mr. Hendrick allows us to and the very best as it pertains to collision and
pair and also that calibration piece for ADAS. Our thing is we have more OE certifications than
any other group in the country for collision. We play by that playbook rather than the traditional
how cheap can you fix it model. As far as the number of collision centers, if you could just
educate me, have you cut back at all on that work or the same pretty stable year over year from
last year to I guess what you're expecting this year? It's fluctuated a few here and there, but
we are opening a brand new collision center in McKinney, Texas with our BMW store. And then here
in Charlotte, we're combining two and two, a new one in Northlake, which is going to be the largest
in our system at 104,000 square feet. So we are continuing to grow in collision. We're also
looking at other markets where it makes sense. So we're not backing down. We want to be there for
the customers. Anything else that I haven't asked you about when it comes to Hendrick's service
and parts and body shop or collision? Have I missed anything that you think is really important?
Well, I don't think you've missed anything. We're so fortunate to work for Mr. Hendrick that
takes care of people and allows us to provide a lot of benefits to all of our teammates,
no matter what position that they have. And so you just can't beat a united, motivated team,
and we're allowed to build that culture and that working environment. So we're very grateful for
that. You know, one follow up question when it comes to that technician academy, is it hard to
find technicians or is that something that's kind of that you're good at because you have all of this
training? Well, so we have an incredible recruiting team and so they've helped us build relationships
with a lot of tech schools. Mr. Hendrick has been very generous with investing in a lot of
technician schools. And so through that, we've been able to cultivate those opportunities. And so
certainly if I wanted to go out and find a dozen ATEX today, that would be difficult. But we have a
lot of success with bringing in our entry level folks that we've already invested in and growing
them. And that academy that we're adding is really going to accelerate their learning curve and
curve. It's going to be exciting to watch. Some dealers don't even run their own body shops.
Instead, they rent them out so that they can avoid managing staffing and day to day operations
while making money on rent and parts and sales. Dan Shine, senior editor overseeing
service and parts coverage at Automotive News, recently sat down with John Massano,
dealer principal of Massano Auto Group, which owns four dealerships in Pennsylvania. They used to own
an operate a collision center for all of their dealerships. But Massano recently decided to
rent it out to a third party. Here's how it's going.
To find your own path and seep their own level with this. And it really becomes a
realization. Can you run this body shop? Can you scale it? That was another decision that we had
to make. Are we going to scale this? Are we going to add 23 or four? And that's when I made
this decision too. We don't want to go that way, but we went this way. I think the more that dealers
look at this, they'll look at maybe concentrating on their core competency, which is sales and
service and parts. Yeah. I know I've talked to people in the collision business. Maybe
for the stories last year. And one of them, I always would think of this,
quote he said to me, if you're going to be in the collision business, you got to be in the
collision business. It's a hard work. It can be profitable and it can be rewarding,
but you can't half-ass it. Now, and you know, it's interesting. It's automotive and in a sense,
it's service, but it's not the tradition that we know. Automotive service. It's a different
type of business. It also reminds me a little bit of the rental business that we were in a while
back. Of course, rentals is cars, et cetera, but that's a different business on the peripheral
end of it too. And we were in the business since the early eighties and went through a lot. It was
just time, was right, the consolidation. Hey, there's consolidation and obviously the dealership
world. Absolutely. But I think there's spots for single-point dealerships. We have three
dealerships plus a used car supercenter and we're in the town of Redding, Pennsylvania,
so we feel we can carve out a nice knit for ourselves in that area.
And I think also cars are getting more complex. Putting them back together
is more complex. It takes more sophisticated equipment, a little more patience. I mean,
everything has to be just right for all those sensors and everything else to work again and
that's very labor-intensive. And that's also why we move forward to manufacturer certification
versus insurance preferred shop because we were going to take a shot at that because we realized
that was going to be the tip of the very top of automotive collision repair to carve out that
niche in our world. But the problem that happens, which I'm sure you're seeing from maybe being so
close to the industry, total out these cars. So if we have a BMW or Mercedes, hey, it's great,
we're certified for it and it was a $40,000 repair, but obviously you have to use manufacturer
certified parts, which is great. And you've got to absolutely get these cars back. Perfect.
Because of all the sensors, they're looking at the time the consumer and the consumer waiting,
put them in a rental car and they're saying, you know what, let's just total these out.
I don't know where they go after they're totaled out. I could surmise they go to an area or a
country that doesn't need all of the sensors going on and maybe if a light's on in the dash,
they just clip that little light. Refuse. That's not for me to worry about, but that's
that was really in this kind of strategic chess match. That was the checkmate that made us say,
listen, we're going to sell because the consolidators are better at that than us. They know that
business. For a deeper dive into what's driving growth in the service and parts departments
at top dealership groups, overall revenue trends, and the full rankings, visit AutoNews.com.
Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of Daily Drive. Come back on Monday for a brand new full episode of the show.
About this episode
Automotive News previews its annual top 100 dealership groups ranking by service and parts revenue, then zooms in on what separates the leaders in fixed operations. Collision performance comes down to training, accountability, and standardized measurement—plus OEM standards, ADAS calibration, and a technician pipeline. The discussion also covers how dealers adapt to tighter margins and digital retailing, including outsourcing collision operations and the friction between manufacturer-certified repairs and insurer “total out” decisions.
A preview of Automotive News’ Top 100 dealership groups ranked by service and parts and body shop revenue. Hear from leaders at Vaughan Automotive, Hendrick Automotive Group, and Masano Auto Group about training, technology, and the tough decisions around collision centers.
