Hampton Roads Club Mini

Hello Everyone at HRMINI,

My name is John Santiago, a.k.a. MD_IN_UK.

I'd like to take this opprotunity to introduce myself in a slightly different manner.

I am a MINIHOLIC!!!!!

Now that I have that out of the way, I'd like to inform one and all that I have recently taken over the reigns at Stans Collision & Refinish Center. I am the manager/estimator/painter/bodytechnician, and anything else Dale Blankenship may be able to conjure up 

Stan and Tina have given me the full go ahead with doing whatever it takes to stir up some business here at the shop and the first thing I thought of was my many MINI friends here at HRMINI.

So I'm inviting all of you to come by and see me should you need any type of body and or paint repair. The majority of owners here have had there Mini/MINI for some time now, and I'm certain theres a few odd dings and scratches somewhere that you may want to get taken care of.

I have done work on several MINIs and of course my own classic so if you would like to see some of my work, Bertie, as I call him will soon be available again. ( Still adding goodies ). Some folks here have had theres done by me as well. I'll let them speak for themselves.


Call me at 757-877-1100, Monday thru Friday from 8am to 5:30pm. I'll be happy to help. 

John that list is only about one third of what we have to do during a day! Good luck, Stan's no idiot (Let me rethink that ) and he wouldn't turn the shop over to you if he didn't have confidence you can do the job. When he and I ran the Yorktown Maaco it was one of the busiest shops in the chain. I know he's wanted to step back from the day to day hassle of running the shop for a while now. Of course you're getting this opportunity at one of the worse times I've seen in my 27 years in the business. When one of the biggest dealership's body shop manager calls me and tells me he's only got 8 cars in the shop there's a problem. And that's with 32 employees! Smaller shops like yours should be able to compete simply because of less overhead.

Good luck and if you need anything don't hesitate to holler

I see as of this moment there have been 42 hits on this subject. That by itself makes me feel like some of you will keep me in mind for when the time is right.

I thank  those of you who replied with your compliments and look forward to helping all the others when it's needed.

BTW, we added up the the number of years experience that just 3 of us have, and added it up. Geez, I'm showing some age now. 85 years. If I add in the youngest players with there totals, it's just a bit over 90. These youngsters are pretty incredible. They learn fast and have motivation like nothing I've seen in a long time.

I'll be expanding my detail shop after this week. We'll be having some good "Training" going on with one of our vendors.