By Hannah Curran, Editor
IRONDALE — Classic Car Motoring, Inc. is a family-owned and operated collision repair and automotive storage facility located in Irondale. They have been Alabama’s Luxury & Exotic Specialists for over 40 years.
Founded in 1978, it all started with a vision of providing exceptional service and repair for the planet’s most exquisite automobiles. Today, Classic Car Motoring has built on that vision and is renowned throughout the country as “The Company” to get your precious auto back on the road in the exact conditions it left the factory.
Classic Car Motoring is for the discriminating car owner. Their customers expect and get original equipment, parts, and meticulous work. Their staff makes sure it “sweats the small stuff” like replacing factory decals under the hood, using tender loving care during repair, and finishing the job with a detail for that glorious ride home.
Jeff Baggett, owner of Classic Car Motoring in Irondale, has always loved cars starting the business small and growing to where it is today, but the road to success wasn’t easy.
Before preparing to open up the 140,000-square-foot Irondale location, a wrench was thrown into their plans. The coronavirus was ravaging the world, and Baggett, already experiencing health problems, began to get sick. It wasn’t an easy battle for him; with the coronavirus being so new, doctors were cautious with administering tests. It wasn’t until his condition worsened that he was diagnosed with COVID-19.
“They kept telling me, ‘you don’t have the symptoms.’ I tried to get them to give me the COVID tests, but they wouldn’t give it to me,” Baggett said.
Baggett ended up getting a home health care nurse and was put on oxygen and had IVs, alternating arms, for three and a half weeks. Finally, he was prescribed medication that aided in his recovery. Still, after five and half weeks of being sick, the impact on the opening of Classic Car Motoring in Irondale was evident.
“I missed five and a half weeks and had to shut this project down, send all my contractors home because I couldn’t be here,” Baggett said. “It looked bad. I didn’t think I was going to make it through.”
However, Baggett is a fighter and now has a newfound appreciation for life, he wanted to make sure he stuck around to provide for his family and his employees, and that’s exactly what he did.
“I think it happened for a reason; it changed my perspective on life and changed how I think about things and what I think the future really means,” Baggett said. “There’s a bigger purpose; I realized how important I was because I don’t value myself as being important, but the people in my life, my family, and my employees do.”
The battle wasn’t over yet because not long after Baggett’s recovery, the company was shaken by a fire that resulted in $11 million worth of damage.
“A lady’s car came in on a wrecker,” Baggett said. “We never it touched; it had a short inside the car and caught on fire. It ended up burning seven cars up.”
While the sprinkler system contained the fire, the smoke damage continues to cause problems to this day.
“Here we are in July of 2022, and they’re still working on the building and getting everything replaced,” Baggett said. “That soot and battery acid, the brake fluid from those cars in that soot traveled and got in some of these control boxes. So now it’s causing a lot of things to short out. Everything in the building was brand new, our phones, computers, everything had to get replaced. Everything was new, not even a month old.”
Now, the company is being impacted by supply shortages due to the pandemic.
“We’re fighting terrible problems right now,” Baggett said. “We cannot get parts for our customers, and we’re 14 people short of where we need to be. Obviously, the parts problem makes it hard to hire the people; I can’t hire them when I got cars sitting here I can’t work on. It’s a difficult time for everybody.”
However, Baggett refuses to give up, he continues to fight for his company, and while times are tough, he knows they can overcome any obstacle.
“The good Lord has a will for some reason for us to be here,” Baggett said. “I would have been taken out COVID, but I wasn’t. So we have a story; I think it’s more than just what we do. We’ve been in business for a long time, so it’s not something new. We just got bigger, and now we’re the largest collision shop in the United States. I’m passionate about it, and we will survive.”
Classic Car Motoring is also heavily involved in the community and participates in a lot of charity work.
“We have a Corvette show for Magic Moments coming up on September 10; about 3,000 people will be here for that big event, about 500 cars,” Baggett said. “We do a lot of charity events; we just got through doing the cornhole tournament for the Wounded Warrior program here about two weeks ago; we did the Barbers sale auction the same weekend.”
On Saturday, July 16, veterans from World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War will be honored at Classic Car Motoring. The veterans will arrive in buses with a police escort at 10:30 a.m. In addition, there will be local police and fire departments from Irondale, Mountain Brook, Trussville, Leeds, and other local areas, as well as state troopers, on-site to line the entrance for them. Over 80 veterans are expected to attend the event.
The special guest speaker will be Congressman Gary Palmer. Following the event, there will be refreshments sponsored by Chick-fil-A Eastwood Village.
The company values each and every client and has built a reputation of honesty and superior craftsmanship.
To learn more about Classic Car Motoring, Inc., visit www.classiccarmotoring.com.