Our story

Hi there! Thank you for visiting, my name is Austin Rath. I am the founder and primary operator at Auto Finesse in Roanoke Virginia. I started this business in 2016 with one goal in mind. “Provide quality paint repairs without the need of a costly body shop.”

Born and raised in NJ by a family who loved cars and motorcycles I quickly grew a passion for them both as well. When I received my drivers licence at the age of 17 that passion was taken to the next level. My brother and I began modifying, and detailing our vehicles at every chance we had. That soon grew in to a group of close friends that would cruise to shows almost every single weekend. If we were not at a show, we were working on our cars or hanging out and talking about cars. After a few short years working multiple jobs to support my hobby, I had the ability to purchase my dream car at the time. A 2011 Subaru STI. Shortly after this purchase I was given the opportunity to learn how to do basic body damage and paint repairs. I watched many TV shows about cars as a child and was always amazed the transformation some of these vehicles would go through and how the paint job could make or break the final product. Lets face it, the paint is the first thing everyone sees, so if that doesn’t look good, then how interested will anyone be to look closer at all of the other work that was done?

Although I had no experience, I realized that painters had an acute eye to detail. As a very detail oriented person who loves hands on tasks, I was eager to get first hand experience and learn what it really takes to produce a high quality paint job. I just had to jump on the opportunity to learn, and so that is what I did. Within a few short months I was servicing a vast array of car dealerships and fixing any damaged vehicle on their lot. Due to my passion for my own cars and bikes, this newly learned skill started to come in handy. I began testing on my own vehicles and pushing my skills to new levels, always wanting something to look better or different from the rest of the cars on the road. I started helping friends with their vehicles as well because we realized how costly it was to get anything painted on a car. Soon enough my eagerness to grow and get better led me to working on more and more high end vehicles, like Cadillac, BMW and Lexus dealerships just to name a few. It turns out that what i was doing is almost exclusive to dealerships. They turn over a lot of vehicles, and for them quantity is key. They need to flip vehicles fast while investing as little possible time and money to make it safe, sound and looking at its best in order to make profit when it sells. This means that body shops are not always their favorite option to fix minor damage because although they may do great work, (Sometimes. Different body shops vary greatly in quality) they have a long turn around time (usually a week or more) and are much more costly. Because of these reasons, many dealerships use mobile technicians to fix what they can. Ranging from wheels, interior cuts and other damage, dents and body and paint damage.

Typically, Body shops are still the only option to most every day consumers. Many shops can do great work, but they have extremely costly operating expenses, regulations and procedures that they have to follow in order to satisfy the EPA, insurance companies, motor manufactures and other companies that watch every move. This means that any small repair is going to be extremely costly to pay out of pocket so the only other option may be to make an insurance claim and have insurance pay to fix your car. Unfortunately, insurance claims do effect your policy, usually resulting in an increased premium even with accident forgiveness programs some companies have. I noticed that there were not many people who knew there was such a thing as a “mobile car painter.” I started seeing so many cars and trucks with cosmetic damage that were being driven “as is” because it was not effecting their vehicles safety or ability to operate and they did not want to pay astronomical prices or make an insurance claim to fix it. It still bothered them to look at every day though!

That got me thinking, I felt that this was a service that needed to be known by the every day hard working person, and so that led to the creation of Auto Finesse LLC. By having a quality and detail focused mobile paint repair service, the lack of regulation and overhead costs to run a body shop are dramatically reduced. This allows savings to be passed on directly to the consumer. Not only that, but by focusing on minor damage (see FAQ’s or the Gallery for more information and repair examples) we also provide a fast turn around time (usually 2-4 hours on most repairs) and have you back on the road that same day. No more Insurance increases or losing your car to a shop for a month for small damage. Just fast, high quality and affordable work done right to save you time, money and energy so you can focus on what matters most in your life.