Bristol, Tennessee collision shop has roots in custom paint

 “We started off doing custom work kind of exclusively,” explains Allen Adkins. Started in 1999, the brothers’ first major patron was a drag racer who drove in Pro Mod and Funny Car. It was a package deal; the brothers painted the team’s vehicles and also served on the pit crew. This gave them great exposure in the motorsports community, bringing them even more business. At one time their facility, about a mile from the fabled Bristol Motor Speedway, was clogged with race vehicles ranging from dragsters to giant pulling tractors.

“Any tractor pulling fans out there will know Stan Shelton,” says Allen. “We paint all of Stan’s stuff, the General Tire truck, the Sawblade truck.” They also branched out into street rods and Harleys, and finished a couple of project cars for the old Street Rodder television show on ESPN2.

It is the integration of paint schemes with airbrush work that catches the eye and creates Illusions’ unique look. Car bodies can appear to be clad in rusting steel plates and rivets; menacing clowns seem to burst through sheetmetal panels; entire cityscapes are wrapped around a vehicle’s perimeter. It is their ability to turn conception into fully-rendered reality which gives Illusions their well-earned reputation.

“We’ve also done murals of Carroll Shelby,” Allen continues. “We’ve done graphics—everybody remembers the (Pro Mod) AMS jackhammer cars, Von Smith and Howard Moon and the Dr. Rage stuff; we really ran the gamut. We really didn’t specialize in this or that, anything somebody wanted, we put it on a car body.”

But with the economic downturn of the last decade, motorsports patronage started to dry up, and the brothers decided it was time to diversify. “We knew in order for us to succeed long term as a business here,” comments Allen, “we needed to get into collision repair.”

They already had some of the best equipment. “We’ve got a Quick Liner frame machine,” lists Allen. “We’ve got two booths; a side draft Accu-Cure and a downdraft Accudraft that we just purchased in 2010. Paint-wise we’ve got the complete PPG line, and the complete line of the Vibrant custom colors that they offer. If we get something with suspension damage or anything that needs a lift, we have two above ground ones in the Rod Shop.”

Their collision business has grown significantly over the years. What is now the 7500 square foot Rod Shop was once their sole building; they nearly tripled in size when they bought the 12,000 square foot building next door, which became the collision shop. But all of this was back from the road behind another row of businesses, so in 2008 they purchased the one nearest their drive “to give us more access and be more visible to customers.” Fronting on Volunteer Parkway, it’s now where customers drop off and pick-up their vehicles. It has a couple of bays, one used to inspect vehicles and write up estimates; the other is for washing and detailing.

“I would say we’re definitely one of the bigger shops,” says Adkins of the area’s facilities. “A 12,000 square foot body shop with 7 to 8 guys is fairly big. Right now we’ve got four body men, one painter, one prepper, while in the office here we’ve got Ron Street and his son Austin, who’s the parts manager, and one detail guy who cleans our cars. Mark is the production manager down in the shop; me and Ron run things up front.”

So how do the Adkins brothers balance the custom work with the collision work? “When we have a wreck come in it automatically becomes a priority,” Allen explains. “If we are working on a custom project at the same time, one of big things now is we never have but two or three of them in here at once. We schedule them one at a time, that way we’re able to flow the collision with it so we’re able to get the custom stuff out also. We’ll do eight or nine custom cars a year now; back in the day we were probably doing 40 or 50 a year.”

Their custom work gets them projects from all over the country: New York, California, etc., but for collision work their market extends out about 50 to 60 miles, which includes Virginia since Bristol is situated right on the TN-VA line. In regards to marketing, Adkins says they’ve dabbled in a few things, “but to be perfectly honest, word of mouth has really been the way we’ve grown. I haven’t spent a lot of money on advertising, but we’ve had some billboards up, we’ve done a couple radio ads, a few things like that.”

A unique opportunity arose when a season of Motorhead Garage (Motor Trend Network) was shot in the Rod Shop. “People would stop by and ask about putting running boards on a pickup truck, stuff like that,” recalls Adkins, “and they’d say they saw it on Motorhead Garage. We’ve definitely had some people stop in because of that show.”

So whether you’re bringing in a BMW with rear fascia damage, a hot rod which requires suspension upgrades, or a fiberglass funny car body that needs a whole new paint scheme designed around the logo of a new sponsor, Illusions Custom Paint and Body is uniquely staffed and equipped to provide precisely that.