Five sections of work

NAICS 811121 is automotive body, paint and interior repair and maintenance. These five are how that divides up in practice. The numbers are this document’s own and are not statute numbers.

No. 101

Collision repair

The ordinary case: something hit the car, or the car hit something, and panels, lights and the structure behind them have to come back to specification.

Most of what makes a collision repair good or bad is decided before anybody picks up a tool: whether the car was properly taken apart, whether what was found was written down and agreed, and whether the parts on the order are the parts on the estimate.

Section 101 in detail

What you should receive at the end

—: The final estimate, including every supplement, with the part-type letter visible on each parts line.
—: Parts invoices or a parts list, if you ask for them. You are paying for the parts; you may see what they were.
—: Any calibration or scan reports produced before and after the repair. These are printouts, not opinions.

No. 102

Structural & frame

When the hit reached past the panels. Straight is a measurement against the manufacturer's specification, in millimetres, not a judgement made by eye.

A modern car is not a frame with a body on it. It is a shell in which specific areas are designed to fold in a specific order, and specific areas are designed not to fold at all. Repairing one correctly is a matter of returning measured points to published figures.

Section 102 in detail

Questions that separate a structural repair from a cosmetic one

—: Was the car measured before the pull, and is there a printout?
—: Was it measured again after, and is there a second printout?
—: Was sectioning used, and does the manufacturer permit it at that location?

No. 103

Paint & refinish

Colour match, blend, clear and cure. Paint has a minimum time that cannot be compressed, which is the single most common reason a delivery date moves.

A paint code does not give you your colour. It gives you a formula, which the factory then applied in batches that drifted, onto a car that has since spent years in Wisconsin weather. Matching is therefore a measurement of your car, not a lookup.

Section 103 in detail

After you collect the car

—: Fresh paint keeps curing for a while after delivery. Treat it gently for the first stretch and ask how long for the products used.
—: Avoid automatic car washes with brushes for the period you are told, and avoid waxing until it is cured.
—: Look at it in daylight, not under shop lights, and look along the panel rather than at it.

No. 104

Sensors & calibration

The cameras and radar that run automatic braking and lane keeping sit behind the panels that get hit. A panel replaced without recalibration leaves a system aimed somewhere it is not.

This is the newest part of the trade and the part most likely to be quietly skipped, because nothing on the dashboard necessarily complains. A camera behind a replaced windscreen, or a radar behind a replaced bumper cover, can be a few degrees out and still show no warning light at all.

Section 104 in detail

How to check it actually happened

—: Ask for the pre-repair scan and the post-repair scan. They are printouts with a date and a VIN.
—: Ask whether calibration was static, dynamic or both, because the manufacturer specifies which.
—: An absent warning light is not evidence. That is the entire problem with this item.

No. 105

Dents, trim & interior

The smaller end of 811121: paintless dent repair where the paint survived, bumper and trim work, and interior repair after a break-in or a deployment.

Not everything needs a full refinish, and saying so costs us money, which is roughly the standard this site is trying to hold itself to. Where the paint is intact and the metal is merely displaced, the cheaper repair is usually also the better one, because the factory finish is the best finish the car will ever have.

Section 105 in detail

A short honest list

—: If the paint is unbroken, ask about paintless repair first. It is faster, it is cheaper, and it keeps the factory finish.
—: A bumper cover that is scuffed is usually repairable; one that is cracked through usually is not.
—: After a break-in, the glass is the quick part. The cleanup is the long part, and tempered glass fragments travel further into a car than anybody expects.

Whichever section you need, you choose where

Each of the five pages above carries the subsection of § 632.375 that bears on that particular work. This is the one they have in common.

All four subsections

§ 632.375(2)(a)Motor vehicle repair practices[No required facility]

For purposes of this section, a consumer has the right to select the motor vehicle repair facility of his or her choice.

Wis. Stat. § 632.375(2)(a) History: 2015 a. 93. Read it at the source

Statutory passages on this page are quoted from the Wisconsin Statutes and were last checked in October 2026 against docs.legis.wisconsin.gov. Statutes are amended. This is general information about a public law, not legal advice, and it is not a statement about your particular claim. Read the section yourself, or ask a lawyer.

Not sure which of these you need?

Most people are not, and it does not matter. Describe what happened on the telephone and somebody will tell you what the work actually involves.

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