General Info

Mathews-Carlsen Body Works is a an auto body repair shop in Palo Alto, California, on the San Francisco Bay Area peninsula, in the heart of Silicon Valley. We have been in business since 1955 and continue to stand behind our quality work on all types of cars. We work most especially on European cars such as Porshe, Audi, Volkswagen, Volvo, BMW, Mercedes and Saab. But we work on other models as well. One of the shop's namesakes, Marshall Mathews, was known in several collector car circles, including the Nickel Age Touring club, the Packard club and the Ferrari club of North America. He also contributed and displayed cars in many of the local Concours D'Elegance shows. He participated in the London to Brighton Run many times in his red 1902 Packard. He kept a beautifully restored collection of cars which is owned by his family. We are associated with the Carlsen motor group in that Carl Carlsen was the original shop owner who originally brought in Marshall Mathews as a partner. As Mr. Carlsen later retired, Marshall partnered with J. R. Montelongo. J. R. & Marshall worked together at Mathews-Carlsen for 25 years. Sadly, Marshall Mathews died from ALS ( known to many as Lou Gherig's disease ) in October of 2003. We miss him very much. To read more about Marshall, please read the excellent article about him written by David Boyce for the Almanac. J. R. and Mrs. Mathews are now the owners of the shop and still adhere to the values and practices that Mr. Carlsen and Marshall brought to this business so many years ago.