Car dealers in Olds and area are still recovering from the damage inflicted by a savage hailstorm, although some got hit a lot harder than others.
For example, Hildebrand Motors and Cam Clark Ford each saw about 100 vehicles get pelted by hailstones inflicting up to $8,000 damage, while out by Highway 2, Mountain View Dodge saw only a handful of vehicles suffer a few hundred dollars' worth of damage.
The hailstorm slammed into Olds around 7 p.m. on July 28.
Hildebrand Motors owner Paul Hildebrand says about 100 of the 114 vehicles on his lot were hit by hail and damaged to varying degrees when the storm unleashed hailstones slightly smaller than Ping-Pong balls.
He says staff saw a storm looming at around 5 p.m. that day. They managed to move 14 vehicles that had been sold indoors, but were unable to save the remaining 100 that sat out on the lot.
"Everything that was out there got hit," he says.
Hildebrand says the degree of damage inflicted varies widely.
"It ranges, you know," Hildebrand says. "It's kind of funny with hail. You can have three vehicles sitting side by side and have different amounts on every one of them. Even if they're virtually the same truck."
He estimates damage inflicted per vehicle ranges from $600 to about $8,000.
While he waits for the insurance paperwork on the damage, Hildebrand plans to hold a hail damage sale to sell as many vehicles as possible.
"Some people don't care about it and we can pass along some savings to them if they're OK with it," he says.
Hildebrand is taking the hail damage philosophically.
"Everybody around us ñ I mean, Airdrie has been hit numerous times; Didsbury, Sundre, Bowden ñ you know, everybody's been hit numerous times. This time it got Olds," he says.
Hildebrand says this hailstorm inflicted the largest amount of damage on his dealership he can remember.
"We've been here since 1989. We've had one hail claim. It was about 14 or 15 years ago and it was only seven units that actually got damage. So this is far and away the most significant hail we've had since 1989 at our particular store," he says.
Cam Clark Ford Olds sales manager Mike Speiran says about 100 vehicles were damaged by the hailstorm at that dealership. He figures most of those vehicles suffered between $3,000 and $5,000 damage.
"Everything that was on the lot was touched," he says.
Speiran says within a couple of days after the storm, crews had been dispatched to assess the damage and begin repairs.
He says since then, they've been repairing about eight vehicles a day. They worked right through the long weekend ñ up to 8 p.m. Speiran anticipates the work to be completed by the end of the month.
"Essentially all our new vehicles, we are covered under Ford's insurance, so they will all be fixed up to 100 per cent. Ninety-five per cent of the vehicles just sustained a lot of minor dents, so it can all be fixed by what they call PDR (paintless dent repair)," he says.
Speiran says they'll figure out a solution for used vehicles that have been damaged as well.
On the other side of the spectrum, Mountain View Dodge was hardly affected at all, according to sales manager Jason Banks.
He says the storm appears to have hit hardest on the west end of Olds.
"Some of our cars maybe have a couple of hundred bucks worth of damage and some of them didn't get hit at all," he says.
Because of that, Banks says the dealership isn't planning to hold a hail damage sale per se, but "(for) the ones that have the few hundred dollars' damage and stuff, we'll just discount 'em and away we go."
"Everything that was out there got hit."PAUL HILDEBRAND OWNER HILDEBRAND MOTORS
