By Steve McLinden
With three distinct profit centers and several sub-specialties, Complete Autobody is aptly named. A collision shop, mechanic shop and paint supplier to other body shops all rolled into one, the operation stays busy week in and week out at its location in the middle of the Arlington, Texas, metro area, in a town-within-a-town called Pantego.
Despite the dozen or so other repair shops along this stretch of Pioneer Parkway (Hwy. 303), word-of-mouth about the shop’s efficiency, work ethic and versatility has created a loyal following over the years, said owner Tommy Nguyen.
It’s not unusual for customers to come in from the far reaches of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, such as Mesquite, Plano and Frisco, he said. In fact, one Google reviewer wrote that Complete Autobody is “by far the most honest mechanic, paint and body shop in the Metroplex,” adding that he has taken every car repair job to Tommy Nguyen and crew for the past dozen years.
“I drove my last car from Frisco, 61 miles away, to this shop,” the reviewer wrote. “When you find an honest group of guys to work on your car, you better stick with them, trust me.”
The shop, which has nine bays and 15,000 square feet, is an extension of a business founded on Arkansas Lane about a mile away 27 years ago by Thao Nguyen, Tommy’s dad. The younger Nguyen learned the trade early, popping into the shop after school and during summer vacations, starting at the age of 13. He took over the business at its present site in 1999. The elder Nguyen, who is retired, still works on cars and visits his son’s shop from time to time.
Since Automotive Report first visited the operation more than six years ago, it has become a direct repair (DRP) shop for insurer Texas Farm Bureau, though that was not the owner’s intent. An agent for Texas Farm brought his custom car to the shop one day and was so happy with his treatment and the results, he told Nguyen the insurer needed an efficient and conscientious go-to operation such as Complete Autobody for the specialized jobs that come along. The owner consented.
The shop has also added tens of thousands of dollars in equipment and has even taken to painting parts for Cessnas and other light aircraft from local commuter airports including Arlington Municipal Airport. Tools of the trade at the shop include a heavy-duty Chassis Liner frame rack, two cross-draft paint booths, and a Matco diagnostic scanner for the mechanic segment of the operation. The shop has added three new lifts in recent years as well as a second paint booth.
The mechanic part of the business was added when staffers came to realize that custom-car clients weren’t comfortable taking freshly-customized vehicles to regular mechanic shops, for fear of damage, Nguyen said: “It’s handy that we are a one-stop shop for our customers.”
While Complete Autobody has done innumerable custom jobs in its history, they constitute a dwindling percentage of the workload, replaced by more lucrative and less time-intensive insurance work on such high-end luxury cars as Ferraris, Rolls Royces and Aston Martin, Nguyen said. A 2014 Ferrari F-12, a Rolls Royce 250 and a 1993 Humvee were among the few dozen vehicles parked in the shop on a busy Friday morning in mid-July. The shop has routinely done work on Lamborghinis, Dodge Vipers and a litany of other high-dollar cars.
“We have built a name for ourselves for luxury cars, but we do a lot of Honda Civics and the like as part of our growing insurance work too,” Nguyen added.
While some competing shops resent Complete Autobody’s role as a paint supplier to the industry, the sideline is a natural adjunct to the business, said the owner. Besides representing another source of income, it also reduces paint costs at a time when they represent the fastest-rising material costs for shops, he added. About seven years ago, an old high-school buddy of Nguyen’s, Joe Benevides, was out of work, and the owner wanted to help him. It turns out Benevides had a background in selling auto paints, so the idea was born and has taken off. A large section of the shop office is devoted to the paint trade.
Business is decidedly on the uptick. The shop received a sizable chunk of repair work from major hailstorms in the area both this year and last and is seeing more and more insurance work in general.
“Our volume here has increased about 25 percent in the last four years,” said Assistant Manager Roman Satur, whom the owner praises as his “indispensable right-hand man; Roman is great front man and is excellent with the customers and very thorough.”
Satur, then a fresh college grad, came aboard about seven years ago after vainly seeking work in his two fields of study, English and political science. The owner took him on largely as a favor to a friend. Though Satur had tinkered with cars for years, he was relatively raw, remembers Nguyen.
“I just knew he wouldn’t last,” he said, laughing.
It is rare for any shop worker to quit. The owner has roughly the same staff he had back in 2010. Each worker is very efficient in his specialty but cross-trained to assume other roles in the event of an illness or other absence, said Nguyen, who lives in nearby Mansfield with his wife and three children, ages 11, 13 and 16.
The shop does virtually no advertising but has used the Dallas-based web-marketing firm The Skyline Agency to expand and enhance its website and its presence on Instagram, Facebook and other social media sites.
“They have done a fantastic job in helping us get the word out,” the owner said.
Nguyen said he has no plans to open a second location, noting his crew of six “will continue to grow our business by staying focused on what we already do well and concentrating on keeping our customers happy.” •
