One of the ways some shops are coping with what they are finding is decreasing profits in collision repair work is adding services beyond body work: mechanical work, detailing, and spray-on bed liners. 

Others, however, say they're sticking with what they know best - autobody and paint work - but are looking beyond what most used to view as the most lucrative and sought-after form of that work: insurer-paid collision repair work.

Compared to direct repair work, for example, RV repair work is becoming increasingly attractive, says Darryl Burkhardt, owner of Custom Touch Collision Care in Gresham, Oregon.

"We started focusing on the RV niche seven or eight years ago," Burkhardt said. "It involves more labor than parts replacement, and our profit margins on labor are a little better."

He said several area dealers are referring RV work to his shop, which currently accounts for almost 15 percent of his business, and he's installing a new 50-foot paint booth in anticipation of that percentage growing.

While Burkhardt is certainly not parting ways with his company's insurer relationships, Johnnie Walker has. As recently as five years ago, Walker had more than 20 employees working at PJ's Auto Body Shop near Sacramento, a 30,000-sq. ft. facility producing collision repair work fed to the shop by three major insurers.

Today, because of increasing insurer demands, he's dropped all DRP agreements, leased out one-third of his shop's space, and focused with far few employees on vehicle customization work - which he finds more profitable and far more fulfilling.

"It's better now, I'm a lot happier," Walker said, inside the business he now calls "Johnnie Walker Performance Center." "This is what I want to do, and I love doing it."

"Pump up your tunes, trick up your ride," the company's cable television commercial suggests. "Johnnie Walker Performance Center is where art meets craftsmanship. Slam it, jack it, bag it go. At Johnnie Walker Performance Center, everything is possible."

The commercial, which Walker said generates 12 to 20 phone calls a week, definitely plays on the current popularity of vehicle customization television shows, with Walker and his team decked out like the crew from American Chopper.

In near-by Yuba City, California, Ken Pike also operates a facility where custom work makes up more than half of the company's business. Ken's Custom Auto Body has the usual body repair department and paint department in his shop. But the shop also has a third section, where technicians work on a dozen or more Cobra replica bodies as well as other classic and unique vehicles.

"Right now from a dollar standpoint, the custom work is probably about 60 percent of our business, with the rest being collision work," Pike said. "We focus on the Cobra replicas. That's sort of like our bread-and-butter. We do 60 to 70 of those cars a year."

The custom work comes in largely by word-of-mouth, he said. One of the Cobra kit car manufacturers refers customers to Ken's from as far away as Illinois and Michigan.

"I do a lot things to the car to eliminate the 'kit' out of the car," Pike said. "I make it look more like a hand-built car."