Fort Mitchell Garage was the 2025 Reader’s Choice winner for Body Shop. The business has been in operation for over 100 years, but it has never actually been in Fort Mitchell, according to owner Ron Stamm. The original business started as a blacksmith shop at the corner of Kyles Lane and Dixie Highway in what eventually became Fort Wright. Today the garage is located in Park Hills at 1420 Dixie Highway.
Stamm’s great grandfather, Joseph Kuchle, came from Germany in the late 1800s as a blacksmith’s apprentice and worked through his journeyman level in Ohio before settling in Northern Kentucky in about 1897. From there he opened a blacksmith’s shop shoeing horses and repairing carriages. The shop didn’t work on cars until the 1920s, adding a building specifically for automobile repair around 1926. By then, he said, the younger people in the family were more interested in the “horseless carriages.”
“Back in the day, the only people who could afford automobiles were people who lived in Fort Mitchell. It was thought that the city would ultimately expand and annex the area they were in. So, the name made sense back when they started working on cars, because the people who had the cars were those in Fort Mitchell,” said Stamm.”
By the 1970s the family split up the business with Ron Kuchle continuing in the original location until the property was sold to become a Walgreens. Two other descendants, Tom and Leo Stamm, purchased the corporation name and set up the shop in the Park Hills location.
Full service shop
Stamm said his father, Tom, was most interested in collision repair and body work, while his uncle gravitated toward mechanics. Today the business reflects the interests of both.
“We do both collision repair and mechanical repair. So if you’re looking at our building from the highway, Dixie Highway on the left side of the building, that’s all mechanical and service, tune ups and breaks and tires and heating and air, all the routine maintenance, oil changes and transmission service with just about anything related to mechanical repairs. We do a lot of electrical and electronic diagnosis and repair,” Stamm said.
“And then, on the right side of the building, we have a full service collision shop. We have the most recent technology and painting and spray booths and all that sort of thing. So we pretty much cover anything you would need on your automobile.”
Stamm said they strive for what the industry calls “zero comebacks.” In other words, if they fix a car they want it to stay fixed. While they don’t like to disappoint customers, he said, sometimes the news isn’t what the customer wants to hear.
There are times when the fix is not a long term solution or may just not be worth what it would cost. Sometimes, Stamm said, he has to be the herald of bad news.
Keeping up with technology
Car technology has changed by leaps and bounds, said Stamm. Keeping up with the latest in automotive technology is a challenge, and having the right diagnostic equipment is key, he said. He said he wonders what his grandfather would have thought about how cars and the automotive repair industry has changed.
“A lot of what we do now is diagnosis. So many things that go wrong with a car are difficult to diagnose because they’ve complicated with things like electronics. There’s a lot of test equipment you have to have. You just cannot, literally cannot, diagnose without good test equipment, and then you have to know how to operate those devices,” he said.
“We spend a lot of time in training and trying to keep up with industry trends … To our doctor friends, we always tell them ‘Look, your model hasn’t changed in 20,000 years. Ours changes every year. Sometimes it’ll change in the middle of the year. So we have to keep up with more than you do!’”
The garage has 14 people on staff, and Stamm does have a couple of apprentices. Yet, he said, it’s getting difficult to find people interested in the automobile repair business. One of the big challenges is the requirements of the job.
“Today when you repair an automobile, you have to savvy with your mind and you have to be savvy with your hands. You have to have an innate interest in both. You can’t say, ‘well, I’m just a computer guy.’ You still have to dig into an automobile. You still have to do disassembly just to test a component,” said Stamm.
Technicians must do constant education on new machines, new techniques. In his business, Stamm added, if you are not leaning something new about the trade every day, you could be in deep trouble. You must stay on top of things. The best technicians, he said, work at the garage during the day and go home, work on their own cars, and do more research at night.
Care maintenance tips
Stamm said he had a lot of advice for car owners but two points come first to mind. First, with the high automobile prices today, he knows most people opt for used vehicles.
“One thing that we strongly recommend is to bring in a used car before you buy it, before you put any money down. Bring the car to us, or to a reputable company, to have the car inspected thoroughly to ensure that the car is not going to give them trouble that could be uncovered before they buy it,” Stamm said.
The other piece of advice Stamm gave was to have your oil checked and changed ideally after every 3,000 miles. Despite what a lot of manufacturer’s manuals say today, once a car gets past 4,500 or so miles without servicing, additives begin to fail to protect the engine.
Our area with it’s many hills, and stop-and-start driving conditions adds to the issue, he said. It’s what the industry calls a severe service condition area. Yet, he said there’s a trend for manufacturers to recommend oil checks and changes at much greater intervals than in the past, at 7,500 or even 10,000 miles.
“What we’re finding is that this is not a good idea. We are seeing cars that come in with major engine trouble and transmission trouble long before they’re due for those kinds of problems,” Stamm said. “We’re finding that at more than 3,000 miles all of the additives that are put in the oil are consumed up before the oil has 4,000 or 5,000 miles on it… Anything after that you’re basically running crude oil in your engine.”
Stamm tells his customers, to preserve their automobile, they should cut in half the time the manufacturers’ service manual recommends for oil changes.
On collision repairs, beware
Stamm recommends car owners be especially careful and wary when it comes to collision repairs. Insurance companies have pushed for saving money by using “after market” parts that don’t always fit properly. And, he said, a good shiny coat of paint can had a lot of issues.
“We always recommend, if someone is involved in an accident or car needs repair, they vet the body shop to make sure they’re going to follow factory recommended procedures and use quality parts,” he said.
Some insurance companies try to force the use of after market parts made mostly in China, he added. These are reverse engineered. Sometimes they fit, but sometimes they don’t. And in an effort to skirt around patent laws, a part may be changed slightly and won’t fit exactly as it should.
“The consumer would never know the difference in a lot of cases, but those of us who are trying to do an excellent job and strive for a repair that’s basically invisible…it can’t be done easily, or in some cases at all, using after market parts. So that’s a real thorn in the side of the collision repair industry,” Stamm said.
Honored by the win
When asked about his “best of” designation, Stamm said he was honored.
“We hope our customers have identified us as number one because we are competent in what we do and treat them in such a way that they feel respected. They feel we’ve given them good value and that we’ve looked at the automobile they bring us in their best interest,” he said. The garage is located at 1420 Dixie Highway in Park Hills. To learn more, check out the Fort Mitchell Garage website.