Collision repair and refinishing on East Main — in the same building since 1983.

Where the shop came from

Auto Body Center started out as a body repair shop in the 1950s, under a different name and a different owner, on the same stretch of East Main. In 1983 it became the Auto Body Center — the name on the building today, in the building it has occupied ever since. Downtown Bozeman has been rebuilt around us more than once in that time. The shop has stayed where it is.

That matters for a practical reason rather than a sentimental one. A body shop that has been in one place for forty‑three years is a shop you can come back to. If something is not right six months after you collect the car, we are still on East Main and the same people are still here.

It is your car, so it is your choice of shop

It is common for most insurance companies to direct you to the auto shop of their choice, but we feel that decision belongs to the person who owns the car. An insurer can recommend. It is your repair, your vehicle and your money at the end of it, and you are entitled to have the work done where you want it done.

Practically, that means you do not have to argue with anyone before you call us. Bring us the claim number and we will write the estimate, send it through, and deal with the adjuster directly so you are not relaying messages between two parties who both have your car in their file.

• Bring the claim number and the adjuster's name if you already have them.
• If the claim has not been opened yet, call us first — a written estimate helps that conversation.
• We will tell you plainly if a repair is not worth making against the value of the car.

Waterborne paint, and what happens to the waste

We refinish with PPG waterborne paint. The reason to care about that as a customer is colour: modern factory finishes — pearls, tri‑coats, the metallics that shift under Montana light — are mixed and matched far more accurately in a waterborne system than in the solvent paints a shop of this age started out using. A repaired panel that reads as a slightly different colour in daylight is the most common way a body repair announces itself, and it is avoidable.

The second reason is that it produces far less solvent. What waste we do generate goes out through Safety‑Kleen rather than into a drain behind the building. That is not a marketing line, it is a contract with a disposal company, and it is one of the few things about a body shop you can actually verify.

What we are actually trying to achieve

At Auto Body Center we stand by our work. We love to see the smiles on our customers' faces when they walk round the car and cannot find where the damage was. That is the whole job, described honestly: the repair is finished when the car looks like the accident did not happen.

Nobody arrives at a body shop in a good mood. Somebody has hit you, or you have hit something, and there is a week of phone calls in front of you. The part of this we can control is that you get told what is happening, when it will be ready, and what it will cost — and then that the car comes back the way it was.