Delmar Kanton has been working on cars for a very long time, and now, his independent restoration shop is reaching 15 years in business. It’s quite a benchmark in the age of start-ups and large franchises, but according to Kanton, these things come easy if you’ve got a passion for your work. According to recent reports by the Small Business Association (SBA), most newly-founded companies fail to take off in just their first year. A third of businesses that make it to their first birthday shut their doors by the 5 year mark. To make it past that as a small business, especially in a niche field like automotive restoration, is impressive. To triple it is even more impressive, and a testament to the masterful workmanship done by Kanton. His work is really quite impressive, and he says that his dedication to a job is one of the many things that keep bringing him customers from all around the country. For one job, on a rare 1960s Chevy, he cut a vehicle completely in half in order to remove all of the rust. “This car was completely cut in half and mounted on a jig for all the rust repairs,” says Kanton, “I had to block sand it 5 times and when it was done, it was finished with a beautiful glossy black paint-job.” May 4, 2017
If you thought paints were expensive before, wait till you see the price on the new Rolls-Royce ‘Ghost Elegance’. The Ghost, which regularly starts at just under $400,000, is about to get quite a price-hike, thanks to a new paint-job announced by the Company. The Ghost is a car that even under normal conditions could only be described as “pure luxury”, featuring a twin-turbocharged 6.6 litre v12, a butter-smooth 8-speed transmission, and over 560 horsepower, the Ghost is already guaranteed to turn heads wherever it goes, but the ‘WOW’ factor of the car, and it’s price-tag, are about to jump exponentially with the revealing of the Rolls-Royce Ghost Elegance April 13, 2017
If you live in a large urban centre, you might have an easier time getting around in the coming years, thanks to a new project lead by popular post-secondary learning service Udacity. The project-company, named ‘Voyage’, seeks to put fully autonomous taxis on the road in the next 5 years, saving money for consumers, but also putting traditional drivers out of work. Udacity is a continuously growing for-profit education company that offers degrees at a cheaper rate than traditional colleges, and also offers free courses to students. Though it may seem like a “too good to be true” proposition, they’ve actually been actively backed and supported by companies like Google, NVidia, Facebook, Bosch, and most recently, Mercedes Benz, who have just pledged to support a Self-Driving-Car engineer and repair program. In addition to that degree, they offer qualifications in Data analysis, web marketing, VR development, AI, robotics and more. April 6, 2017
Saint Paul, Minnesota: A Saint Paul Autobody and Mechanical program run for high-schoolers has been burglarized, leaving the program without $30,000 worth of tools that had been locked up safely in the garage the night before, alongside a Toyota Camry which belonged to the school’s principle. ‘Central Service Station’, the garage which was broken into, served as an entry-way for young people into the autobody or mechanical trades, and youths in the program spent their time learning how to fix cars and do collision repair. The industry is experiencing quite a lull in young workers, so something such as this, which dissuades young potential techs from going into the field, is incedibly unsettling. March 24, 2017
If you’re worried, as a collision repairer, about exploding batteries, fire-prone wiring, or the cold-war connotations of “Hydrogen” as a prefix to anything, don’t be. As Toyota amongst others reveal their hydrogen powered and more heavily developed electric vehicles, questions arise as to whether or not the same old tricks work with these new technologies? Thankfully, for the most part, replacing, or welding, a new body panel or frame or what-have-you will pretty much always be the same. Since the earliest days of Collision Repair, body panels, frame straightening and the like have gone through some major changes, but the fundamental act of what you are doing – fixing or replacing a part – hasn’t much changed. The same is true looking into the future for hydrogen and electronic vehicles. March 20, 2017
