Garage news

Mini is aiming to take a piece of the service, maintenance and repair market away from the independent aftermarket in the same vein as Mercedes. It has launched its own free recovery service for motorists involved in an accident, which is available to all Mini owners irrespective of age of the vehicle.

The Institute of the Motoring Industry (IMI) has been nominated for the award of WorldSkills UK Partner of the Year. It is in recognition for the delivery of its SkillAuto competition last year and joins the British Florist Association and the National Skills Academy for Social Care on the shortlist, with the winner being announced at a ceremony on February 12.

The Parts Alliance has become a founder member of a new international distribution group called Nexus Automotive International. Branded as N!, the group covers Europe, the Middle East and Africa and will have its first suppliers conference in Geneva on March 5

TMD Friction has won the accolade of Supplier of the Year 2013 from Autoparts UK. The large independent motor factor, which is part of the Arnold Clark Group, announced the winner of the trophy at its Burns Night celebrations, where Richard Gleghorn, Sales Manager at TMD Friction UK, picked up the commemorative award and a bottle of malt whisky.

First Line has expanded the range by stocking a range protection for catalytic converters. An exclusive deal has been struck with CatLoc, the catalytic converter protection expert that allows The All Makes Specialist to stock 20 references to distribute to motor factors.

Remy has added 44 new rotating electric products to its range, which has seen it launch 250 new references in the last six months. The new additions will see 14 starter motors and 28 alternators increase Remy’s range to more than 4000 parts covering over 35,000 vehicle applications.

Garages in Sussex and Surrey are benefiting from better margins by simply trading up the cabin air filters on vehicles they service says Corteco. It adds that technicians simply offering its micronAir filters could give their margins a timely boost.

The Independent Automotive Aftermarket Federation has issued a rallying call for businesses to get behind the organisation ahead of an active 2014. The call came from President Graham Knight following the organisation’s annual general meeting where he said that the IAAF is ready and able to take on any challenges and embrace opportunities that face the aftermarket this year.

The Ecobat group in the UK has created a closed recycling process for scrap automotive batteries. Manbat, G&P Batteries and HJ Enthoven, all members of Ecobat, have joined together to maximise the materials recycled and reused from batteries.

TRW has called for shock absorbers to be classed as a safety critical item and should be scrutinised in the MOT.
It believes attention should be paid to shocks in the same way as other safety parts and have its own specific test, as it estimates more than 25 percent of vehicles in Europe are putting their owners at risk by having at least one defective shock absorber.