GRAYDON MOTORS Open Day

On the 10 March 2010 Graydon Motors threw open their doors to an open day for the Clifton Rotary Club in Bristol to come along and see for themselves the processes involved with repairing today’s modern motor vehicles. This visit had been in the planning stage for a considerable period of time and was the initial concept of Rotary Club chairman Mr David Garrett who unfortunately was involved in an accident with his Mercedes back in June 2009.

He was so impressed with the quality of repair and service received that he approached proprietor Mr Raymond Hill with the initial idea of seeing exactly how we go about repairing vehicles. Ray was very keen to promote his business and was already very much aware of bodyshops having “open days” to promote business but in the majority of cases this was happening over a weekend period when shops would not normally be actively repairing but more likely to be demonstrating the principle repair techniques and processes.

To actually bring a party of guests into an active working environment would be something else and would certainly raise issues with insurance and liability issues. Ray became undeterred by this and approached his insurance company, to which he was able to secure coverage for a limited time period.

At 2:30 pm on 10 March 2010 David Garrett and his members arrived on site and were met by Ray and all the staff at Graydon Motors, to which after introductions, were given a full tour of the site and noticeably a great deal of attention focused on the repair of the Lotus Elises that were currently being repaired in the workshop. These vehicles receive a totally different approach to repair due to their GRP and composite material construction and the fact that the whole of the front and rear clam assemblies had been removed from two Lotus Elises, rendered the vehicles to look more suitable as lunar landing modules, making it even more intriguing for the uninitiated.

A photo session completed the day, and having received a hard copy of the photos, the disc was copied and sent to David to show his members some of the aspects of their visit.

David has since responded thanking us for an interesting insight and opinion of today’s vehicle body repair industry. Please click the image on the left to view a thankyou letter from the club.