April 2019

John Tinham competed last time, where he won for the umpteenth time, with me as runner up after having already won. We enjoyed it anyway." Clive was something of a serial winner in his competition days: "I started off doing one of the first competitions that was ever brought into the motor trade, which was Crypton Technician of the Year. I won that twice in a row. Then I went from Crypton to using Bosch equipment, and the business achieved second place in the Bosch World Cup in 2002. That was quite a big achievement for us in quite a small garage. Then I went on to do Top Technician. I competed quite a few times and I enjoyed it." Clive is a great advocate for Top Technician: "It certainly makes you analyse your knowledge, and taking part certainly tests your abilities, there's no doubt about that. I think it is a good thing for the industry." Predictions Looking ahead, the skills shortage is not the only challenge the industry faces according to Clive: "A few years ago I could usually see which way the trade was going and what was the best route to follow. Now though, it is very unpredictable. Even manufacturers don't seem to know where they are going, apart from that they are going to go predominantly electric. Even they seem unsure." Increasing specialisation is where Clive thinks things may be heading: "With the onset of so much electronic content, and the sheer knowledge that you need for each individual brand to repair it very well, I can't see how you can cover multi-brand at that level and keep on top of if you are a very small business. If you had a technician for each manufacturer who was trained and had the right equipment, that might work, but you have to work with it and you are talking about some serious investment in time and money. Where do you find those technicians that are trained to that level? It is very hard at the moment to predict. I think brand specialisation will become a big thing. " Looking ahead for the business, Clive concluded: "Our plan is to carry on adapting to whatever the future holds. This has always been my philosophy; Constant improvement through training and investment." APRIL 2019 AFTERMARKET 53 www.aftermarketonline.net are now, which was pretty much an empty shell and we converted that into a new workshop where we could put a rolling road in. That shows how the business changed over the years." Workshop Today, CAT Automotive operates out of a 2,000 sq 2 workshop with two ramps. About a third of the space is taken up by a sound-proof airflow cell where Clive keeps his pride and joy; A four wheel drive dyno: "The rolling road is something we have been involved in for 27 years. We started with a two-wheel drive, then four wheel drive, then we built this custom set-up about 12 years ago. As a result of having it we do a lot of classic race cars particularly, and that type of work. "I just put the phone down a few minutes ago after speaking to a customer who just bought a MGC that he is now going to race. We are not too sure what has been done to it, it has triple webers and cams in it. He is bringing it in the week after next for a check on the dyno to see what he has actually bought and what it is like. There is also a Jaguar race team we do a lot with that has E-types. That is the type of thing we get. We do get ordinary classic road cars as well, but we do a lot of race stuff.” Specialist It is one of many niches that CAT Automotive excels within. The business is also a German car specialist, leaning particularly strongly towards the VW group: "Equipment- wise, we have in the last few years gone down the dealer tooling route. We use the Volkswagen/Audi dealer tool. We also have the dealer tool for BMW. "We used to be a Bosch Car Service Agent. We started off in the 1990s as a Jet-Tronic agent, if anyone can remember that. Then we came out of it and went back into it with Bosch Car Service. We left that about two years ago now. We are totally independent again. However we still use Bosch equipment, such as Bosch KTS. We have also got a raft of other dealer tools which we probably don't use very much now because we have tried to guide the business down a Volkswagen/Audi route. Over the last two and a half to three years we have chosen to specialise, we thought that was a better route to follow. As you might imagine, Clive is not alone all day in the workshop. Along with his wife Jean providing part-time front-of-house services, Clive also has back-up in the form of 26 year old technician Dale: "He has been with me about six years now, " explained Clive, I trained him from scratch." The team was not always quite so bijou though: "At one point there was four of us, including me. In the last four to five years, one key member of staff left and started his own business. We never replaced him, we just carried on. We were quite happy to do that." The skills shortage is the problem: "I have looked around to try and find a technician who is skilled enough to come straight into the business, but I have not found one yet. So instead I have just run it very lean. "The skills gap seems to get wider every year. We do quite a lot of work for other garages and also quite a lot of bodyshop programming on their cars. The standards of work we see coming through the door is quite shocking really." Top Technician Speaking of standards, as we mentioned earlier, Clive won Top Technician in 2007. If that's not enough, he also came second in 2011. These days you wouldn't be able to do it in that order. "I know," laughed Clive, "they changed the rules after myself and Below: CAT Automotive’s rolling road