Chuck Sulkala

Chuck Sulkala spent five decades in collision repair after taking over his family’s business, Acme Body and Paint in Jamaica Plain, Mass., in the early 1970s. He founded the National Auto Body Council in 1994 and served as its first president and executive director until retiring at the end of 2017. He chaired I-CAR, I-CAR Canada, the Society of Collision Repair Specialists and the Collision Industry Conference, and was president of the Massachusetts Auto Body Association. He was vice chairman of the I-CAR Education Foundation, now the Collision Repair Education Foundation, and served on the Collision Industry Foundation board. He led more than 150 three-day seminars in the 3M/ARMS Management Workshop program. He was the first recipient of the CIC Chairman’s Award and received I-CAR’s Lifetime Contribution Award in 2017. His son, Chad Sulkala, was inducted in 2025.