144 - From Ferrari Roots to Modern Shop Leadership with Chris Prieto
September 9, 2025 - 00:39:20

 

Show Summary:

Miami-based JSB Autoworks’ Chris Prieto shares how a family shop evolved from basic maintenance into a three-division operation handling European/exotics, collision, and full restorations. Starting at age 12 stripping auction cars, Chris grew into leadership, discovering his passion for people, process, and the administrative side. He helped scale a prior “hole in the wall” shop from 1 bay to 8, then returned to modernize JSB with structure, tech, and DVIs. A forced relocation shrank their footprint but improved efficiency and clarity. Today he manages ~10 floor employees across 10 lifts, emphasizing attitude-first hiring, productivity tracking, and clear communication. He credits Shop-Ware and rigorous documentation for transparency and trust. Chris’s “magic wand” wish: more passionate technicians who diagnose root causes, preserving the dying art of true mechanical understanding, especially on classics.

 

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

 

Guest(s):

Chris Prieto, Shop Manager of JSB Autoworks

 

Show Highlights:

[00:00:58 ] - Family roots: a Ferrari racing/restoration past and a pivot from service-only to high-line European, collision, and full restorations.

[00:02:58 ] - Grew up wrenching. At 12, tearing down crashed Mercedes for parts sparked an engineer’s curiosity about how things work.

[00:06:28 ] - Extreme builds: from a Diablo VT restoration to a C4 Corvette resto-mod pushing ~1,000 wheel horsepower with a modern driveline.

[00:07:20 ] - Discovered the “people and process” side at a Mercedes-Benz dealership and fell in love with service management.

[00:09:11 ] - Helped scale an independent shop from 1 bay/3 lifts to an 8-bay operation, then learned to manage flow with lean tech counts.

[00:15:59 ] - Forced move from 22k sq ft to ~8–9k sq ft became a blessing—purged clutter, restructured, and boosted productivity.

[00:18:10 ] - Current setup: 10 lifts, 6 mechanical techs, 3 collision techs, and one lube/helper: with Chris as the sole service advisor.

[00:23:43 ] - Structure prevents profit leaks, track every part on restoration projects or money vanishes through the cracks.

[00:26:14 ] - Tech-forward transparency: Shop-Ware DVIs with photos (old vs. new) drive trust, approvals, and technician productivity.

[00:34:14 ] - Magic wand: cultivate techs who diagnose “why,” not just swap parts, keeping old-school craftsmanship alive for rare vehicles.

 

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.

 

Episode Transcript:

Jimmy Lea: Good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight. Welcome to the Leading Edge podcast. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. Joining me today is Chris Pedo from JSB Autoworks out of Miami, Florida. Chris, how the heck are you, brother?

Chris Prieto: I'm doing fantastic. I'm doing fantastic as always.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, always. I love to hear that brother. That's awesome. Hey Miami is getting a little bit of rain right now. Hey.

Chris Prieto: Yes, sir. We're getting we got a little storm over us right now. It's been raining the last couple days, but it's been good. It's a normal here. It'll be nice and bright, sunny in the morning, and then a full blown hurricane in the afternoon.

Chris Prieto: It just, it's just like that here.

Jimmy Lea: Right. Florida. Don't, you don't like the weather. Wait five minutes. We'll give you something new.

Chris Prieto: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, definitely don't get tired of it, that's for sure. That's for sure.

Jimmy Lea: Well, that's awesome. Well, Chris, gimme a little background of you and JSB and, you know, how did you get into the industry?

Chris Prieto: So, JSB Autoworks is a family owned business that's owned by my father and my mother. Okay. They started back, my father goes way back, you know, into the sixties and the seventies. He used to work for Ferrari Racing team restoring vintage Ferrari back in the day. My mother was in dentistry, complete different industry but they, you know, crossed paths and, you know, my dad was so passionate about cars.

Chris Prieto: He used to have a dealership as well and used to buy and sell cars. And then the crash of oh four happened, and, you know, things got turned upside down, so he had to kind of. Figure out what he wanted to do next. And you know, when my mom and him got together, they got into the service side. So they started with Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and as they grew, you know, the demand grew for other things.

Chris Prieto: They got into. From where they started was just service, you know, regular, just maintenance, you know, air filters, brakes, tires, you know, just regular light stuff. Now we have scaled so far that we not only specialize in Mercedes-Benz, BMW, we also specialize in Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche, McLaren, Lamborghini, Ferrari.

Chris Prieto: And you know, we do all regular service repair, maintenance. Full transmission jobs, engine rebuilds in that department. And the reason I say that department is because we do that, we also have our collision side, that we do collision work for regular, everyday like insurances for customers that just have, you know, minor fender benders all the way to having to pull a complete car.

Chris Prieto: And then we have that department and then we have our restoration department. So we do restore cars here. We do full-blown restorations. Custom rest ides. You know, anything vintage pretty much. So we do, we have a lot of different aspects of our business. Right now. I started when I was 12 years old.

Chris Prieto: Right. I remember. Yeah. I remember my dad used to buy a lot of cars from the auction. A lot of Mercedes that were crashed for parts 'cause they were hard to come by at that time. So I remember at 12 years old, for one of my birthdays, he bought me a toolbox, like a 112 piece set or whatever. Yes.

Chris Prieto: And on the weekends all I did was take apart all these cars from the auction and I just started taking apart cars and taking apart cars, and that's how I got into it. I was always, at a young age, I was very. I had an engineer's mind. Like, I didn't like the fact of what was working. I liked how it worked.

Chris Prieto: I wanted to know how it worked. I remember when I got toys and to this day, my brother would even tell me, I would get all these toys for Christmas, and I would use 'em once, and then I would take 'em all apart, you know, because I didn't love figuring out how things worked. And as you know, time got on. I love cars and I got into cars.

Chris Prieto: You know, went to school for it. I'm a C certified. You know, I have all the certificates that you can pretty much think of. And now I manage the place. My parents are semi-retired, so they're doing their own thing. And I basically run the shop with the rest of my family that's with us now.

Jimmy Lea: Dude.

Jimmy Lea: It was totally in your blood. Yeah. Your, you have taken apart your toys as a little kid, and then at 12 years old it pops and saying, Hey, you know, just take all these parts out. So did you just have a, like a bin of starters? A bin of alternators?

Chris Prieto: Everything. I mean, I had starters, steering wheel control modules, dashes I mean I took out whole electrical wire harnesses from cars 'cause they would keep all the connectors and stuff like that.

Chris Prieto: Sure. Just in case they burn up or something. So I was, I mean, gutting cars completely, like, completely gutting them.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. How quickly could you disassemble a car and have it in the bins? It,

Chris Prieto: it, it depends on the car nowadays, you know, 'cause every car is different. Some cars have more electronics than others, so it varies.

Chris Prieto: You know, if you give me a Mercedes, an old four Mercedes, that, that's what I was working on back in the day. Yeah. I'm pretty sure I have it all taken apart in pretty much a day.

Jimmy Lea: Oh my gosh, that's so fast.

Chris Prieto: That's amazing.

Jimmy Lea: That is so coo