Insights
Diagnostics Systems Key to Proper and Safe Repairs for Fountain Valley Body Shop
4 MIN READ
Since opening his Fountain Valley body shop over 40 years ago, owner Dave March has had a front row seat witnessing the evolution of the collision repair industry. In 1974 when his shop opened, only one automobile manufacturer offered airbags, and the NHTSA was still five years away from crash-testing popular cars to encourage manufacturers to improve the safety of their vehicles.
January 2018 Used Vehicle Market Conditions
3 MIN READ
Wholesale used vehicle prices started the year in the pattern that characterized much of 2017 in the months prior to hurricane season. Namely, car prices tended to fall while truck prices provided a boost to average wholesale values. In January, car prices continued to show year-over-year price declines, while truck prices did the opposite, but that situation is moving towards parity, as indicated by strong month-over-month increases in car prices.
Average Length of Rental for Repairable Vehicles: Q4 2017
4 MIN READ
Average Length of Rental (LOR) for Q4 2017 landed at 12.4 days in the United States, a decrease of .1 days compared to Q4 2016. This produced a final LOR for Calendar 2017 of 12.04 days, up slightly from 11.98 in 2016. Once again, there was very little consistency between regions and states, suggesting that the quarterly result for the U.S. is not reflective of a genuine national trend.
Mitchell Collision Repair Industry Data: Q4 2017
6 MIN READ
The initial average appraisal value, calculated by combining data from all first and third-party repairable vehicle appraisals uploaded through Mitchell systems in Q4 2017, was $3,151. Continued development suggests a final Q4 2017 average appraisal value of $3,184, which represents an increase of $67 compared to the same quarter last year.
Total Loss: Q4 2017
1 MIN READ
Total loss data for both vehicle age and actual cash value of total loss vehicles processed through Mitchell servers.
Canadian Collision Summary: Q4 2017
3 MIN READ
The average gross initial appraisal value, calculated by combining data from all first and third party repairable vehicle appraisals uploaded through Mitchell Canadian systems in Q4 2017, was $4,184, a $43 increase from Q4 2016. Factoring for development yields an anticipated increase to $4,229.
The New Repair Network
6 MIN READ
The repair network of today is not your grandfather’s or your father’s repair network; in fact it may not even be your older brother’s repair network. Vehicles are becoming more sophisticated with every new model that rolls off the production line. They’re no longer merely a mode of transportation—they’re complex computer networks on wheels.