We pride ourselves in professionalism, and are proud of our story!
We are fully trained, licenced, and insured to work on all aspects of vehicle A/C systems, R12, R134a, HFO-1234yf, including Electric Vehicles (EV) and Hybrid Vehicles.
Whether you have a family run-around, or a £1m Formula GT Race car (yes we do these too!) and everything in-between, including farmers tractors, HGV’s and large Plant Machinery we do it all!
We were formed in 2004, as a family business intending to provide a Specialist Service into the Motor Trade and Motorsport industry.
My journey started in 2001, when I spotted an emerging gap in the Automotive Aftermarket, after having my first ‘Luxury Car’, a Vauxhall Omega MV6.
I thought I was in heaven enjoying my motoring experience, when the first hot period of the year came along.
It was soon apparent by the temperature inside of my car, that I had a problem with the A/C, and I started looking for someone to help fix it, as although I had been working and repairing cars since a teenager, I knew nothing about car air conditioning.
I had several visits to good independent garages, and Fast-Fit centres, and was always met with a lot of frustrated faces and ‘shrugging of shoulders’. Eventually, I had two visits to the Vauxhall Main Dealer (who some years later became one of my many customers), and like some kind of ‘Black Magic’ behind big silver closed doors, and a £1000 bill later, my A/C System was fixed and I was back to Bee’ing Cool in my car again!
This started my inquisitive mind off in wanting to know more about the ‘Black Art’ of car A/C systems.
Knowledge was hard to come by, but I made it my goal to academically study every Textbook and Technical Course I could find, and I was fascinated finding out that the number of cars now being factory fitted with A/C systems was growing exponentially year on year.
You will see our sign-written Smart Cars that we originally used to advertise and travel to our customers garages in our photo gallery.
In 2007, we realised that there was a significant market for a ‘Mobile Service’ to visit our retail customers both at home, and their place of work, whilst still servicing our Trade and Motorsport clients.
We invested significantly in custom built ‘Mobile Workshops’ enabling us to carry out almost every aspect of our specialised trade on site, from our base in Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire.
A word from the founder…
“We soon realised that within two years of being open, we had outgrown our previous workshop at Burton Latimer, and after a lot of time looking for a new location, found our new workshop which enabled us to double in size to 5 vehicle bays, and much better customer facilities. In 2017 we again doubled our capacity to give us 11 vehicle Bays, and we are very excited about our future…….
In March 2015, we were voted into the Top 5 Independent Workshops in the country by our customers, then in 2017 winning in the National Workshop Awards, and then in 2018 collecting Garage of the Year for Technology Innovation. We are very humbled, but never lose sight of becoming the best in the business! We will look after every car as if it was a £1m Race car, and look forward to the opportunity of looking after yours.”
David Fry
In 2013, bucking the poor economic trend, we invested into the opening of our new workshop and service centre in Burton Latimer within the heart of Northamptonshire.
This was officially opened on the 2nd April 2013 by the Rt. Hon. Philip Hollobone MP.
In May 2015, we again made a significant investment opening a new Service Centre at Cunliffe Drive, in the heart of Kettering. These premises are 1 mile from the Town Centre, and 5 mins drive from the A14. Our new Premises offer 5 servicing bays, as well as the very latest in car servicing technologies. You can wait in our Air-Conditioned Customer Waiting Room, have a Costa Coffee, and use our free Wi-Fi while we look after your car.
In 2017 we opened our second unit, and Sister Business under a different brand, Bee Cool Performance & Motorsport specialising in servicing and maintaining High Performance Marques such as Ferrari, Bentley, and Lamborghini, etc., as well as being the only UK Sales & Servicing Dealer for Keating Supercars, and are fast establishing ourselves as one of the leaders in our field. You can see more about this on the website here; http://www.bee-cool-performance-motorsport.co.uk/
In late 2017 we won ‘Highly Commended’ in the National Workshop Awards, and in 2018 we won Garage Of The Year for ‘Technology Innovation’. In late 2018 we became an ‘AA Approved’ Workshop, an accreditation that only a selected few garages can achieve.
In 2019 we continue to grow from strength to strength, we are now appointed Prototype Contractors for A/C Cooling Systems for some of the biggest names in the Car Industry, and have successfully completed many projects to date for, Jaguar Land Rover, Tata, The Geeley Group (London Taxi Co., Lotus, Saab UK), Maclaren Cars, David Brown Automotive, F1, Toyota just to name a few!
We have also continued to pick up more National Awards, as we were awarded Garage Of The Year 2019 For ‘Outstanding Achievement’, and no doubt there will be more before 2019 comes to a close.
In 2020, Industry statistics show that 98% of all vehicles (cars, vans, HGV, coaches, agricultural, etc,) produced have factory fitted A/C systems. We now also have the new HFO-1234 A/C systems with engine heat exchangers, and electric vehicles that use A/C to cool the batteries and axles to deal with as well.
In 2020, the Bee Cool took the exciting step to launch our own licencing and franchise deal, meaning you too could become a Bee Cool Air Conditioning workshop. More information about this can be found at Bee Cool Franchises.
In early 2021, we once again made a significant investment, and moved our complete operation to a prestigious former car Main Dealer site, which was officially opened by the Rt. Hon. Phillip Hollobone MP, on 7th June 2021. You will see the photos of our new building featured here on our website. We establish our new brands; Eurorepar Kettering for our general Servicing, Repair & MOT work (www.Euroreparkettering.co.uk) and PetrolHeadonism Performance & Motorsport, for our Prestige Marques Servicing and Upgrades (www.PetrolheadonismPerformance.co.uk).
In 2021, we appointed Brett Hay as our Operations Director, looking after the day-to day running of the workshops, and Customer Service. We were also very proud that in 2021/2023, two of our Apprentices, Andre Albanese, and John Tufnail qualified as Level 3 Vehicle Technicians, joining our expanding team of experienced Technicians.
In September 2022, we were honoured to be awarded with the prestigious award from the IGA of Independent Garage Of The Year.
In 2023, we were nominated for more awards; ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ for Services to the Automotive Industry, in the IAAF Awards, we won ‘Highly Commended’ in the 2023 ‘British Speciality Workshop Of The Year’ at the IGA Awards, and were the winner of the IGA BIG Awards for ‘Outstanding Achievement’.
At the end of 2023, Taigan Fry joined our team to head up the Front of House, and Customer Service role, bringing her wealth of experience from other sectors to improve this department for us. Taigan is now the 4th family member within our business, making us a true Family Business.
In June 2024, David Fry our Managing Director was awarded the very prestigious IAAF ‘Lifetime Achievement’ Award for Services to the Automotive Industry, and Bee Cool ACS Ltd was nominated as a Finalist in the IGA Garage Of The Year Award.
- We can now say with 100% Confidence that you can trust us to look after all your car’s needs from beginning to end!
