The private equity-backed body shop buyer Driving Force Collision wants to make its mark, but not in the ways others might expect.

Some things — like Colorado weather or pickleball — are more easily experienced than explained.

Consider Driving Force Collision. Most watchers could call it a new private equity-backed MSO and move on. They wouldn’t be wrong.

The money is Michigan-based TRP Capital Partners, a successor investor to the circa-1990s Penske Capital Partners. The buyer’s C-Suite includes CEO and COO , who separately built and ran regional groups for Service King and Crash Champions over a few decades. Their new platform has four locations in about six months, in New York and Pennsylvania.

So far, so normie.

But during a recent interview, DuVall and Foulke pause often — indeed, sometimes balk — on other common details. They take patient pains to say well, no, it’s not quite like that … umm, OK, yes, but not really because we’re more thus and so.

They’re not wrong either.

It’s a so-far regional owner saying it won’t be tied to one place. After years at consolidators, Driving Force Collision’s principals kick at the limits, not to mention baggage, of that label. They’re numbers guys who won’t mention certain numbers.

Darren DuVall.

“The Northeast is planting the flag, but we’re not constrained,” DuVall said. “Could be national. We’re looking everywhere.” To size he said, “We want to pivot, deliberately away from [ideas of] ‘consolidator’ and ‘MSO’, seeing the future differently than our peers and catering to people that share our vision.”

It’s like the cliché, “location, location… wait. Sorta. Never mind.”

“We believe companies have built a legacy” over decades, DuVall said. “In a sub-market with a family-owned business, nobody cares about Driving Force.”

So the locale matters, but where that site is in the U.S. might not.

The umbrella group styles itself a “collision repair network” but might follow a local branding approach a la Quality Collision Group. DuVall and QCG CEO are acquainted in fact and the term “OEM” has pride-of-place on a recent call.

“We love the OE side,” DuVall said. “Our network is going to be very disciplined.”

It makes sense. People who work with and for the big guys might be most ready to do it differently and on their own. And who’s less likely to discuss numbers than those intimately aware of them?

Not everything here is a cryptic French film from the 1960s dubbed into Arabic with the last reel missing.

DuVall and Foulke in different regions worked with Service King and Crash Champions over several decades. Each grew their regions, the former hitting 220 locations in the middle of the country, the latter, handling up to nearly 100 in some dozen states in the east.

DuVall began as an intern “at a very small Service King in Dallas / Fort Worth,” while Foulke “came into the industry 30 years ago, with no intention of staying.” Eventually Foulke had operations experience in each role at a shop — “the full gamut. It’s definitely a plus to grow up in the business: it keeps you level, you remember what it was like.”

Certified Collision of Long Island was part of Driving Force Collision's purchase in late 2024.

Each has run multiple shops, bought and sold them, and been acquired. They met through Service King. The numbers are on their resumes but not necessarily on their dance cards. A press release from headhunters McDermott + Bull when they helped place CFO with Driving Force Collision said the MSO is built to hit 50 locations in five years — but that doesn’t mean they will.

“We do have some target numbers, a pipeline of things we like,” DuVall said. Industry sources like sell-side brokers and Peter Alexopoulos, who represented the three-shop New York MSO Driving Force bought last November, no doubt expect an aggressive push from a new player looking, one might reasonably assume, to make a splash.

But Driving Force has other ideas at the fore. A bulleted, mini-think piece DuVall forwarded to Autobody News is peppered with words like ego-free, high integrity, humility, transparency, care and respect.

Could Driving Force buy a 10-unit MSO? Sure, DuVall said. But also and alas, they might not.
It’s not, they say, the point.

OK, what can we say? Less about numbers, for one.

“Not a certain size but a certain quality,” DuVall said. He mentions “restricted-part OEMs, shops that follow OE guidelines,” while adding Driving Force Collision’s next likely deal “doesn’t have formal OEs” but has dealership ties. It could come in June, but such things always take longer than scheduled — and anyway, a date would be a number.

Still, “we love that. Dealerships that want to divest their collision business. They take that capital and use that to sell cars, service and parts, and we can run that collision center.” Their most recent acquisition, a collision center connected to Tom Masano Auto Group in Reading, PA, is an example. Do dealer shops get a rebrand?

Maybe.

A bigger question: do we serve?

“We want to learn from our past in the MSO world,” DuVall said, with a “servant attitude at the front lines.”

Company materials do note a focus on “luxury, EV and other high-tech, certification-intensive platforms” at shops run by “precision operators — those who embrace complexity, certifications, continuous improvement.”

But DuVall said it boils down to why buy a business if all you want is to change everything about it?

“We want to honor that business,” he said. “Give 20 guys paintbrushes to paint different pictures. Everyone is saying ‘we have great culture’” but they’re just imposing their own.

“We nurture what people have, carry that ‘unique’ forward. We do not want to be the focal point,” DuVall added.

The company website asks just two initial inquiries for prospective “partners” — that is, potential acquisitions. List your OE certifications, and why do you want us to buy you? Tell your story.