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THe North shore weekend
10/25 – 10/26/14
Auto repair chief may also be the guy under the hood ■ by simon murray A black Maybach sits in the garage like a relic, the equivalent of a pile of T-Rex bones lashed together into a grinning skeleton looming over a museum hall. Except, of course, that no one in his or her right mind expects a T-Rex to be able to be ridden, let alone driven over 80 miles per hour. But the owner of the Maybach inevitably does — or at least 55 mph, which is the speed limit on Route 41, where Benz of Highland Park is located. Fred Crudele, the president of Benz of Highland Park and a Mercedes-Benz master-certified technician, wheels in an SL-Class Roadster, so new it looks as if it’s practically just exited the lot. He’s going to start working on repairs. Though the two cars could not be further apart —one, a continuation of the parent company Daimler AG’s vision; the other an end of an era —the contrast speaks to Crudele’s extensive experience as a trained technician in luxury cars. But Crudele doesn’t want to operate behind a closed garage door. In fact, it’s the reason he resigned after 16 years of working with Knauz Continental Autos, a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Lake Bluff. Instead, his business, which opened on April 1 at 3080 Skokie Valley Road, has
been founded on the premise of transparency: a breath of fresh air in auto repair. Want to know why, exactly, your car has been making that strange noise? Need an explanation on a faulty light on the dashboard? Crudele is obliged to open up the hood and point out exactly what’s going on for his customers. And the customers also know whom it is (Crudele) that’s working on their car. No mysterious technician. No phantom charges in the invoice. Just a one-on-one relationship between the customer and the repairman. Crudele first started working on cars in college, where he was studying business. He realized that his hobby had quickly become a passion. And he still remembers the first car he ever worked on. It was a Ford Crown Victoria LTD ’84. “It was not firing on all cylinders. It was running really rough,” recalls Crudele. At Knauz he was trained by the senior technicians, but he felt separated from the customer. He realized that without speaking to them directly, the opportunity was lost to incorporate a teaching lesson — if desired — as well as building trust with the client. “When you’re not dealing directly with the customer, a lot of times the message isn’t put to them clearly as to what’s wrong
Fred Crudele photography
by joel lerner
with their car,” says Crudele. “I can deal with them directly, and they really like that
service — being connected to the guy that’s working on their car.” ■
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