Estimating
Estimating exotic and European damage
Most estimating tools were built against the cars that fill an average lot. The ones that fill this shop are not those cars, and almost everything that makes an estimate accurate changes.
The part number is the whole job
On a mass-market car the wrong trim costs you a hundred dollars and an afternoon. On a European car it can be four figures, because the same panel comes in variants that look identical in a photograph and are not interchangeable. The VIN gets decoded to the specific trim before any part is priced, and where a number cannot be corroborated against a catalogue the line says so rather than presenting a guess as fact.
There is often no aftermarket
A carrier asking for aftermarket or recycled parts is making a reasonable request on a five-year-old sedan. On a low-volume car there frequently is no aftermarket panel and no recycled one that is not from a wrecked example of the same rare vehicle. That is not a negotiating position, it is a fact about supply, and it is easier to hold when the estimate names the specific OEM part for the decoded trim rather than asserting that no alternative exists. The product does not check live parts availability and does not claim to.
Tri-coat and matte are different work
A pearl or tri-coat finish is not a colour, it is a process, and the refinish time is not comparable to a solid. Matte is worse: it cannot be polished, so a repair that would be corrected on any other car has to be right the first time. Any figure drawn from a corpus of mainstream repairs understates both, which is a limitation worth stating rather than hiding.
Carbon is not sheet metal
Carbon fibre panels do not dent, they delaminate and crack, and the repair-or-replace question has a different answer than it does for steel or aluminium. A visual assessment can identify the damage. It cannot certify the structure, and it should not pretend to.
Before you ask
Is the carrier rate data valid for exotic work?
It tells you what each carrier pays, and on exotic losses that is often more than the volume rate. Most carriers hold body labor near $56, but on the Ferrari Purosangue published on this site Auto-Owners allowed the shop’s own $125. Every estimate is priced at your rate and at each carrier’s, so you see both before the adjuster calls.
Why build this in a shop that works on exotics?
Because the cost of a wrong number is highest there, which makes it the hardest place to build it and the best place to find out whether it works.
Built in a shop that repairs these cars
Scan the VIN and it decodes the trim, names OEM part numbers where it has them, and shows the job at your rate and at every carrier’s. Free for four estimates a month, no card.