Carl's Collision Center

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Carl's Collision Center Family-owned collision repair & auto body on the SouthCoast since 1994, with shops in Fall River, Newport, and New Bedford.

I-CAR Gold Class, Tesla and Mercedes certified. We work with every insurance company and offer on-site rentals and free estimates.

Clocks go back a week from Sunday, and the drive home turns dark overnight.Two cheap things make a real difference. Clea...
10/23/2026

Clocks go back a week from Sunday, and the drive home turns dark overnight.

Two cheap things make a real difference. Clean the inside of your windshield, not just the outside, because that film of haze turns into a wall of white when the low sun hits it. And turn your actual headlights on at dusk instead of leaving it to the daytime running lights, which leave your taillights dark to the car behind you.

Then give yourself room. Late October into November is deer hit season here, and they move at dawn and dusk without looking. If one crosses in front of you, slow down and watch the tree line. There's usually a second.

carlscollision.com/blog/fall-driving-southcoast

"Can you just fix it?" Honest answer: let us see where it's bent first.A dent the size of a dinner plate sometimes gets ...
10/20/2026

"Can you just fix it?" Honest answer: let us see where it's bent first.

A dent the size of a dinner plate sometimes gets straightened in an afternoon. A crease half that size sometimes means the whole panel comes off. Size isn't what decides it. What decides it is where the metal is bent, what the panel is made of, whether the part does a safety job, and what actually gets your car back to how it left the factory.

Aluminum changes the call too. It doesn't take repeated bending the way steel does, so a creased aluminum panel is far more likely to be a replacement.

We broke the whole thing down here.

carlscollision.com/blog/repair-or-replace-panel

The last hour of a repair is the one nobody sees.Before a car goes back, two sets of eyes go over it in good light. Pane...
10/16/2026

The last hour of a repair is the one nobody sees.

Before a car goes back, two sets of eyes go over it in good light. Panel gaps and how the new finish reads against the old one. Every light and every safety system. If the repair touched a camera or a radar sensor, it gets recalibrated to factory spec so the automatic braking aims where the manufacturer set it. Then somebody actually drives it.

It adds time. It's also the difference between a car that looks fixed in the parking lot and one that's genuinely right.

carlscollision.com/blog/will-my-car-be-safe-after-collision-repair

A Ferrari 488 came through the booth this month.Here's the part that matters though: the process behind it is the same o...
10/13/2026

A Ferrari 488 came through the booth this month.

Here's the part that matters though: the process behind it is the same one your Accord gets. Same measuring, same manufacturer repair procedures, same paint system, same final check before anyone hands back a key. The badge on the hood doesn't change the standard, it just changes how nervous people are when they drop it off.

If you want to see what that process looks like start to finish, we wrote it up.

carlscollision.com/blog/collision-repair-process-explained

Happy Columbus Day from all of us at Carl's Collision.We're open and working today. If the long weekend has you headed o...
10/12/2026

Happy Columbus Day from all of us at Carl's Collision.

We're open and working today. If the long weekend has you headed out, the fall color along Route 24 and out toward the coast is hard to beat right now.

A note for the season: wet leaves hide the painted lines and the sun sits low this time of year, so the roads get a little less forgiving. Give yourself some extra room and some extra time. Drive safe out there.

How do you pick a body shop you can actually trust? Most people start in the wrong place.The question almost nobody asks...
10/09/2026

How do you pick a body shop you can actually trust? Most people start in the wrong place.

The question almost nobody asks first: is the shop certified to fix your exact car? A 2024 Tesla and a 2015 Civic are not the same repair, and a shop set up for one isn't automatically set up for the other. From there, look at the training (I-CAR Gold Class, ASE-certified technicians) and whether they own the equipment a modern car needs, like in-house ADAS sensor calibration so your automatic braking aims where the factory set it. Then the simple stuff. Do they show you the estimate and explain it. Do they stand behind the work.

Worth knowing: in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, you choose the shop, not your insurer. We wrote the full checklist out so you can run it on anyone you're considering, including us.

carlscollision.com/blog/how-to-choose-a-collision-repair-shop

"Why did my repair price go up after the first quote?" We hear this one a lot. The short version: the first number is wr...
10/06/2026

"Why did my repair price go up after the first quote?" We hear this one a lot. The short version: the first number is written off the damage we can see while the car is still bolted together. It's an honest read, but it's a read from the outside.

Once the car comes in and we pull the bumper or fender off, we find what the curb-side look couldn't. A cracked bumper absorber. A reinforcement bar bent behind it, sometimes worse than anyone could tell from the lot. The added line that covers that work is called a supplement, and on a real collision it shows up on almost every repair. Your insurer expects it. In Massachusetts and Rhode Island an appraiser can only write for damage that's actually visible, so the true number lives on the supplement, after teardown, not on the first sheet.

Nothing went wrong if your estimate changed. That's the process working the way it should. And you hear about it from us before any of it gets ordered, not when you come to pick the car up. We broke the whole thing down here: carlscollision.com/blog/estimates-and-supplements

Hearing "your car is a total loss" feels like the door slamming on a decision you didn't get to make. It doesn't have to...
10/02/2026

Hearing "your car is a total loss" feels like the door slamming on a decision you didn't get to make. It doesn't have to.

A total loss just means the cost to fix the car came in higher than what the insurer says the car is worth. You still have moves. You can question the value they put on it, since the number should reflect the actual car you were driving, with its real mileage and condition, instead of a generic average. You can ask how the offer was built. And if you're owed a rental while you sort out a replacement, that shouldn't get cut off the second the check clears.

We've walked a lot of SouthCoast and Newport drivers through this. We'll tell you straight whether fighting the number is worth it or whether taking the settlement and moving on is the smarter play.

We wrote up your options here: https://carlscollision.com/blog/car-totaled-now-what

If you've seen a white Silverado around Fall River with our name on the doors, that's ours.It wears two names, because w...
09/29/2026

If you've seen a white Silverado around Fall River with our name on the doors, that's ours.

It wears two names, because we run two businesses out of the same flagship on Bay Street: Carl's Collision for repair, and LINE-X of Fall River for spray-on bedliners and protective coatings. Same building, same people, same standard.

carlscollision.com/blog/auto-body-shop-fall-river

Fall is when the deer move, and the SouthCoast sees more of them this time of year. Dawn and dusk on Route 24, the back ...
09/25/2026

Fall is when the deer move, and the SouthCoast sees more of them this time of year. Dawn and dusk on Route 24, the back roads out toward Westport, the wooded stretches near Tiverton. If one steps out and you can't stop in time, you hit it. It happens to careful drivers every fall.

If you do hit a deer, get somewhere safe, call it in, and take a few photos when it's safe to do so. The damage usually goes on the comprehensive part of your policy, the same coverage for things like storms and falling branches, and a comprehensive claim doesn't get treated as your fault. We work with every insurance company and handle the claim from the first call to the keys back in your hand. Deer hits often look worse than they are once we get the front end apart, and every repair we do carries our lifetime warranty.

Here's what to do if it happens to you: carlscollision.com/blog/hit-a-deer-what-to-do

Address

1591 Bay Street
Fall River, MA
02724

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 5pm
Saturday 9am - 12pm

Telephone

+15086755422

Website

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