M2 closure comes as surprise

Dave Brooks

A California auto body chain with a shop in Huntington Beach has

mysteriously folded , leaving 700 employees without paychecks and

more than 2,000 motorists temporarily stranded without their

vehicles.

Santa Monica-based M2 Automotive Inc. saw its assets seized by

creditors on April 18, forcing it to close its 27 locations,

including shops in Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley and Costa Mesa.

The Huntington Beach branch is now under the ownership of Aaron

and Maureen Holmes, who also bought branches in Riverside, Rancho

Santa Margarita, Burbank and Redlands.

Former employees worked busily to remove their tools and personal

items from the repair shop last week, but customers had to wait until

Monday and Tuesday to get their vehicles released, Mike Joncich of

Credit Managers Assn. of California said.

“Some of the vehicles are still disassembled, some of them haven’t

been paid for,” he said last week. “We need to get body-shop people

out here to help assess the situation.”

Joncich’s firm is charged with liquidating M2’s assets.

“They could not keep their doors open and needed someone to clean

up the mess,” he said.

The M2 collapse came just days after Irvine-based Caliber

Collision Centers backed out of a deal to buy the company.

Costa Mesa M2 manager Brian Bixby said he received a call April 15

that the company was folding.

“They told me that they were locking the doors Monday [April 18],

our assets were being liquidated and creditors were taking over,” he

said.

Many of the M2 employees had no idea the closure was coming.

“I just showed up for work on Monday and found that they were

closed,” technician Gerardo Lopez of the Huntington Beach branch

said. “Everything was normal on Friday. There were no signs of

anything like this happening.”

Lopez said he and the other nine employees were now all out of

work -- some employees without pay after their checks bounced.

“It’s a really unpleasant surprise,” he said. “It’s a tough

situation to find yourself in.”

Joncich’s liquidation firm held a sealed bid auction Friday of

M2’s assets at the company’s Santa Monica headquarters and split the

company between several new owners.

The entire episode is bad for the auto body industry, said Ray

Galvin, president of Skill Craft Body Shop in Huntington Beach.

“We’re not really highly regarded in the public eye anyway,” he

said. “The consumers see this kind of thing happen and begin to lose

trust in the body-shop industry.”