What makes a good potential body shop to certify?

A good certified body shop starts with the customer service aspect. The criteria include ensuring high ratings on platforms like Google and Yelp. If they are a franchise body shop, you can locate the highest-rated ones within that system. Customer service is paramount.

Can you run me through the list of equipment and capital expenditure a body shop should put upfront to become aluminum certified?

Aluminum certified shops cost about $100,000. That was the expense, and it was a discount with Tesla helping to buy this equipment. For Mercedes, certification could go up to $250,000. If you worked on some of their high-end cars, you needed specialized equipment due to the different metals like titanium and zinc.

When we talk about the three main criteria you were looking at to potentially approach a shop and get it certified, it was customer service, whether or not it was aluminum certified, and whether or not they worked with aluminum cars before. How would you rank those in order of importance?

Customer service was the most important. Being aluminum certified was second, and working on a vehicle was third.