As some of you know, since late 2010 I have taken my current/former cars (2010 C63 AMG, 2012 CLS63 AMG, 2013 M3 and 2013 M5) to ACG Automotive (formerly Automotive Connoisseur Group) to have various modifications done. I have spent a lot of money with them. And for the most part, there were no problems with modifications I ordered through and had installed by ACG. As a whole, ACG is a company made up of honest, pleasant and well-intentioned individuals. But in those 3 years of doing business with ACG, there has been one consistent issue that, with the latest one I unearthed today, has brought me to a point where my patience has fully deteriorated and now I feel it is incumbent on me to write a post to warn individuals who are considering ACG to install modifications on their car. All of these mistakes/errors/problems were previously brought to the attention of ACG, and to their credit they handled it for the most part. This post is not about calling anyone a crook or liar, because that isn’t what ACG is. But what I have found is another thing ACG isn’t: meticulous. And this isn’t about me wanting everything to be perfect…this is about carefully installing products and making sure that when the newly modified car returns to the customer, there are no problems due to carelessness or oversight. I don’t expect anyone to be perfect, but when one problem follows another which follows another, it becomes inexcusable – despite a litany of apologies and credits/refunds/make-goods.

The history of issues:
- 2011: HRE wheels mounted and balanced on my C63 after my newly painted calipers arrived. The lugs on one of my rear wheels wasn’t tightened, as I was driving down the freeway to my house on the 805/163 South …I noticed major vibration. As I drove back up to ACG to see what the problem was, I started to see lugs fly off my car. (ACG credited me for my calipers)

- 2011: While I was waiting for my calipers to be painted, my car was at ACG overnight. The HRE wheels were stood up overnight, and by the morning one of them had fallen on their face. (ACG had the wheels refinished)

- 2012: I got a quote to have silver piping throughout my C63’s upholstery and door panels. I agreed to the quote and paid for the install and labor. I was in Alabama taking a deposition while the installation process was occurring. I then get a call that the seats had been re-done but that the company ACG brought my car to for the upholstery couldn’t do the door panels (even though I my quote included the door panels); and that if I wanted the door panels to be done they would have to take it to another shop and it would probably cost about $2000 extra. I was told that the reason they did the seats first is because they wanted to get the car back to me ASAP and didn’t realize until after that the upholstery shop could not do the doors as originally planned. I decided not to have the door panels re-done and expressed my frustration that I didn’t want my car completed fast, but rather completed correctly.

- 2012: ACG installs HRE P43SCs on my CLS63. They did not test drive the car before giving it back to me. When I get it back, on my drive downtown to my house, it is clear the car is rubbing on the front. The shop had already closed, but because I just gone out to dinner with them and the techs, I gave the techs $100 each as a Xmas present if they would take the car back that night and readjust the suspension; which they did. Nonetheless, I was told by ACG that they gave me the car back originally without testing it because they knew I was waiting a while for them to go pick up the wheels and install them, they didn’t want me to wait any longer. Again, I repeated the now repetitive mantra that I always want my car back with modifications installed correctly (and tested) instead of quickly.

- 2012: ACG installs a Brabus exhaust for my CLS63. They return the car to me. One of the sides of the exhaust is clearly uneven. I was told that it might have just been the angle I was looking at them from. I then sent the picture to Brabus and right away they said that one side was higher than it should have been. My stereo installer noticed it too. I brought the car back to have ACG realign the exhaust.

- 2013: I order a second set of HREs for my CLS63. I was quoted a price and gave ACG a 50% deposit. A week goes by and I eventually get a call that the pricing structure for HRE retailers had changed and the price of my wheels were now going to go up by over $1000. Now, the pricing structure change occurred about a month prior – but apparently the entire shop was not aware until the day after I placed the order. But that means there was still a week that went by that the entire shop knew the price of my wheels went up over $1000 but no one told me. I told ACG to cancel my order and since then I have never ordered another new set of wheels from them.

- 2013: I went up to LA to have my stock wheels removed from my F10 M5 and install my HRE Flow forms. At this point the only shop that has taken the wheels off my car since I leased it was ACG to install my H&R Springs. Before we even had the Flow Forms installed, both I and my wheel shop noticed a giant scratch on my front driver’s side caliper. Now, if that scratch was on my caliper before ACG installed my springs and they noticed it, I know they would have notified me about it so I would be sure not to assign blame to them. And how do I know it wasn’t my new wheel shop that did it? Because ACG took the stock wheel locks out of my car and placed it into a bag filled with my stock components. So after driving up to LA to have the stock wheels removed, I realized that I did not have the stock wheel locks in the car; and had to drive all the way back to San Diego to find them in the bag of stock components ACG had put in my trunk a couple weeks prior. Why would anyone take a wheel lock key from inside a car and put it in a bag with other components for the customer to possibly take it out of the car? Thus, while I cannot say with 100% certainty that ACG scratched my caliper…prior experience overwhelmingly leads me to that conclusion.

- 2013: I noticed the ride quality of my M5 had started to suffer. So I ordered KWV3s and had them installed by MRF Engineering in Lake Forrest. He noticed that there was fluid leaking all over my rear H&R springs (that had about 4k miles on them and never ones did I hit anything hard enough to bend any of my wheels, let alone dislodge "seals" from my springs/struts) and that the seal over the strut had broken. He also noticed that the prior installer – ACG – left a rag/microfiber in my car’s shock tower. When I talked to ACG about it and asked the process they followed in installing the H&R’s, I was told that their techs used prior experience on other cars (they had done two other F10 M5s prior to mine) and a “DIY” post from the Bimmerpost forum as a partial guide. This was disturbing to say the least.


- Today: I have the rear diffuser of my E92 M3 removed. Not only are there pieces broken and mutilated from when ACG originally installed it and then tried to have it fit better on my rear bumper…but now there is a scratch that will not come off and cannot be properly touched up (I have already been in contact with my body shop). Can I live with the scratch? Yes? Should I have to? I think it’s pretty clear what the answer is.

Now some of you may say, if ACG had these mess-ups, why would you keep going back? Well, because ACG always apologized and offered to (and sometimes did) resolve them, the answer is I just kept chalking these mishaps to the old “well nobody’s perfect” maxim. Also, as I wrote previously, ACG has always been honest and this is not about being overcharged, waiting on refunds, etc. This is about a shop that – at least in my extensive experience – has not taken extensive care with all of their customers’ cars. I don’t write on behalf of anyone but myself, but after spending probably close to $100k with them over the past 3 years, I feel like my experiences cannot be attributed to fluke accidents or Murphy’s Law.
Some of you may ask, well if they apologized and offered to resolve or did resolve these issues, why write this post? The answer is simple. Would you go to a doctor simply because he/she seemed cool and are the type of person you would go have a beer with? Would you hire an attorney because they were big sports fans like you or liked the same music? I would hope the answer would be “no” to all of these questions. Well, despite my personal affinity for the people at ACG, that does not mean the quality of their work/customer service is excellent. Nobody is perfect, but I felt it was time that as someone who extensively mods my own cars, to alert others that are thinking of doing the same and potentially bring their car(s) to ACG.
I stand behind everything I write here and provided the details of my past experiences so as to demonstrate that I am not some disgruntled customer who is being unreasonable. What I am is a car enthusiast that doesn’t want to see fellow enthusiasts experience the negative issues/problems I did when taking my cars to ACG.

Some of the recent pics from my M3/M5 "experiences":

 

The carbon fiber I can understand it's fragile and tech was in a rush but the shock holy moly wtf did they do! They should provide replacement for the carbon fiber!

 

Yeah the shocks was a mind blower. That's what made me stop going to them. The other problems with the m3 was stuff I had installed prior. I think with the carbon fiber stuff what bugs me is the scratch and then I think about them scratching my M5s caliper and it just gets me heated. But I didn't learn my lesson soon enough and now all I can do is warn others!

 

Despite the apologies and well meaning folks that they may be, quite frankly, you went back there 6 or 7 times too many. Leaving lug nuts loose is a serious, serious oversight. I had a shop in Hawaii forget to latch my hood properly, leaving my engine cover wedged on top of the intake. They apologized, but I never went back.

 

My question would be, why did you keep going back to them over and over after so many fu*ck up's?

 

Glad you moved on...

 

+1

 

Because they happened over a short period of time, I got suckered in by accepting repeated apologies..I was a moron! Looking back I have no clue why! I think it's easier to walk away from a company because they've scammed you as opposed to "mistakes". ACG never scammed me and I think I convinced myself the "nobody's perfect" axion needed to be constantly applied when in hindsight it didn't!

 

I would never go back. That's a lot of mess and caused you lots of $$$

 

From what I heard, they are expensive.

 

Peter was nice and cool to me the one time i purchased from him. But if he has incompetent or careless installers not being detail oriented and careful, no excuses for that. You're too nice and give benefit of doubt to them too many times.

 

i was in San Diego recently this summer and i didn't hear pleasant things said about them from past customers / shops.

 

Kudos to a well written honest review. It's hard to give a good review about a shop with out starting a war. A lot of local shops here in MA have made mistakes but when anyone writes a review it becomes a battle of he said she said. One of the shops hands out NDA every time they fix a screw up, it's scary

 

Peter left ACG sometime last year. James was the one I dealt with mostly.

 

Thanks! Yeah I wanted to make sure this wasn't viewed as a slam piece or that I had some underlying motive. I'm an attorney and don't work for any competing shops. I am not looking for a refund or anything financial back from ACG. And I think this is clearly not a situation where I am "jumping the gun" on leaving a brutally honest, yet scathing review.

After I brought up the incident to ACG about the H&R Springs I was told that they had parted ways with the tech who did the install because there were just too many mistakes happening.

 

It actually didn't cost me a lot of money, because as I wrote in my original post, ACG had my damaged HRE wheels refinished at their expense (WHICH THEY SHOULD HAVE). I was already going to go with KWs on my M5, but the H&R mishap made it so that I really had no other choice but to change my suspension.

What did it cost me most? My overall faith in aftermarket shops and the aftermarket industry. I remember when I was going to Group 5 and ordered a Evosport Power Package for my E55 pulley, intercooler, throttle bodies). I was given a 4-6 week estimate for delivery. Took Evosport 3
Months. Why? Because they didn't have all the parts in stock, and "accidentally" sold some of the ones they did that were reserved for my order while waiting on the back ordered items. A giant Cluster-F&$@!!!

But that's what happens when you mod your car, and I am fully aware of the risks. This is not a "woe is me" post where I want people to feel sorry for me. No, this is a "learn from my experiences" and "take your car somewhere else" post!

 

Nice heads-up. We have a shop very similar to this here in the Phoenix area. However, I learned my lesson the first time and never went back. I didn't want to start a forum war but I privately steered at least a $100k in business away from that shop by telling my first hand horror stories. Some places need to stick to internet sales and leave customer's cars alone!

 

I have had recent problems with them as well.. Won't go into details but I am considering a move come the first of the year... I too spent a little coin with them over the last year or so....

James, Sean, Tal, care to chime in????

 

And for the record, about 2 hours prior to posting my original thread, I texted Sean and emailed James and wrote to both of them that I was going to detail my unhappiness on the forums. I also texted with Sean this past saturday evening and said I had posted on MBworld and sent him a couple screen shots of responses.

I just wanted to clear the air that this wasn't some sneak attack I planned.