By Steve McLinden
A body shop institution in the historic Fair Park area of Dallas, Excalibur Collision Center, and its eight repair “knights” are gallantly bending steel and practicing customer-service chivalry on a day-to-day basis. And like King Arthur’s legendary Excalibur sword, they perform a little magic — on the repair projects they confront each day, that is.
Owner Alex Gonzalez opened his shop in the Fair Park neighborhood on the outskirts of downtown Dallas in 1991 at a time when it was a dangerous, crime-ridden area. Over the years, he watched as it slowly transformed into a renovated community peopled by young adults spurning suburbia to return to the urban core.
“We have a lot of Millennial customers, and they are very demanding, so we have our work cut out for us,” Gonzalez said.
A native of nearby Mesquite, Gonzalez cut his teeth in the repair trade when he was a lad of 14 at his father’s now-defunct Dallas body shop. He’s remained enamored of the industry ever since and said he can’t picture himself doing any else.
Gonzalez’s four brothers also gravitated to various forms of automotive repair.
Clicking along at pace of more than 100 vehicle repairs a month, including several fleet accounts, the shop, at 710 Exposition Ave., was buzzing on a recent Friday morning in January, tending to a full house of jobs. Return trade is a huge repair-job generator, the owner said.
The local counterculture weekly, the Dallas Observer, ordained Excalibur the “Best Auto Body Shop” in the city in it’s annual “Best of Dallas” listings way back in 2003. The shop must have made an impression, because the paper hasn’t presented the award since. “Fair quotes. Nice, quick work. No false salesmanship,” the paper observed. “What more could you ask for in your vehicle’s time of need?” The shop “is spotless,” the paper added. “Owner Alex Gonzalez set up in this up-and-coming neighborhood back in the dark days of 1991. Chances are he’s the guy you’ll meet when you drive up.”
Indeed. Walk into the still-spotless shop in 2018 and there he’ll be. And when the phone rings, it’s usually Gonzales who answers it.
“It’s all about accountability,” he said. “And I love meeting with the customers.”
Early on, Gonzalez made high-end German cars the focus of his shop, an interest spurred by his work in the 1980s for a local shop that repaired nothing but BMWs, Mercedes, Porsches, Audis and other German luxury vehicles. Gonzales is still known for his expertise in that niche, but the shop has since adopted a more generalized approach to generate more insurance work, he said.
Excalibur sets up shop in two separate structures, totaling about 10,000 square feet, separated by a warehouse. Gonzalez bought his present 4,000-square-foot body-shop building, once an office and distribution center for Cabell’s Dairy, back in 1990. His 6,000-square-foot paint-and-alignment building sits a few blocks away.
Gonzales had hoped a find a building or buildable site in the neighborhood to join both elements, but developers and investors have snapped up all the prime spaces as property values steadily rise. The owner receives regular offers for the building, which he owns free and clear, but Gonzalez “isn’t selling,” he said.
On the second floor of the main building is a small apartment that Gonzales used to inhabit before he was married. (He is now married and has two daughters in college.) The apartment is currently occupied by one of the shop workers.
“He doesn’t miss too much work,” joked Gonzalez. “We know where to find him.”
Excalibur customers patronize the shop from throughout the Dallas area, including downtown, Lakewood, North Dallas, Highland Park and the shop’s home neighborhood of Fair Park, where the 23-day State Fair of Texas is held annually two blocks away. While the fair can be a little bit of a headache, because fairgoers occupy all the nearby street parking spaces, it can also be a boon, said Gonzalez.
“My business around the fair actually increases, because of the exposure we get,” he said. “People discover us walking by.”
Redevelopment in the area has included new residences, rows of quaint shops, comprehensive street repairs, and two major restorations of the 227-acre Fair Park, which is also home to the Cotton Bowl stadium and the largest collection of Art Deco buildings in the world.
Once a direct-repair shop for three insurance companies, Excalibur opted out of those programs, in part because of all the concessions that insurers demanded of him, Gonzalez said. But much of the equipment he invested in to win the DRP trade more than a decade ago has paid off in shop efficiency, he said.
The shop has a pair of Colmet downdraft paint booths, a computerized estimating system, a Hunter digital imaging alignment system, Car-O-Tronic measuring system, and aluminum, bronze and silver welders. A new addition is the shop’s 1234YF recover, recycle and recharge machine used for the new air-conditioning refrigerant required by law. Excalibur is one of the few repair shops around that has the pricey new freon machine. The shop can do most mechanical jobs in the context of a repair, such as body and alignment work, but doesn’t offer basic service work, such as oil changes. Several staffers are I-CAR trained, but the new vehicles and technologies mean Gonzalez and staff are always “hitting the books,” said the owner. “I feel like I am working on a continuing education every day.”
The shop’s marketing costs are virtually nothing, thanks to the virtual world. At the same time, amateur reviewers on the social media tend to skewer business owners if even the smallest thing goes wrong, say Gonzalez and other area collision-center owners.
“They can be merciless,” he said.
Nonetheless, Google, Yelp and other social media sites have high praise for Excalibur.
“I can honestly say it’s the best body shop I’ve ever taken my car into; I was in and out with an estimate in 10 minutes…and the work was all done for a very reasonable price,” noted one customer on Google.
“Being a young lady and going in by myself, I didn’t want to get taken advantage of, but the guys here were so helpful and professional. Definitely highly recommended.”
Another reviewer, on Yelp, wrote: “I was really impressed by the personal attention of the owner. It seemed they had plenty of projects going on, but owner Alex (personally) took the time to talk with me and look the car over.”
Continuing fiscal challenges at the shop include rising paint costs and higher business-insurance and equipment expenses, not to mention spiraling healthcare costs for Gonzalez, who unlike many shops offers his workers a health plan.
“Healthcare costs have triple over the last three years,” he said. “Unfortunately, I am going to have to ask the employees if they can’t contribute a little more to make it work.”
Despite his 27 years as owner of the shop and an additional 17 in the auto-repair trade, the 58-year-old Gonzalez has no plans to retire.
“At least any time soon,” he added. “I enjoy the way this business provides a way to make a living, I enjoy the people and I still like getting up and coming to work every day.” •
