Position Statements From Vehicle Manufacturers

“Position Statements” are written by vehicle manufacturers to summarize and highlight certain aspects of their repair procedures. They are not being written and published to reveal new information; they are reiteration and reinforcement of information that is already in the company’s service and repair information manuals and bulletins. They serve a purpose by gathering information from barely accessible locations, summarizing it and putting it forward in a clear format.

One could think that these position statements are written to educate the repair industry about a particularly important aspect of repair, but the reality is that they are written to minimize arguments between progressive repairers and insurance adjusters. 

A valid interpretation of a position statement would be:

“that thing on line 12 on page 47; we really mean it and you do have to do it for a complete repair.”

Unfortunately this did not work as hoped because insurance companies decided that only those repair procedures rewritten in positon statements had to be followed. In response to this at least one manufacturer has stopped writing position statements and has instead pointed to their overall repair instructions and said that they all have to be followed.