The latest expansion move and membership services upgrade for the National Auto Auction Association came Thursday: NAAA announced it has acquired an information technology company known as Kink Or Bend LLC that can help auction members determine if they need to disclose quarter panel replacement on a vehicle.

The company’s specialty is in developing online resources for auto structure types, and it has compiled all OEM information into one database.

As such, Kink Or Bend has built a search engine on its website based on integrated statistics on 500 vehicle frame parts.

This data is now being offered to NAAA’s more than 300 members for free. NAAA is providing this information to members to help them comply with the structural damage disclosure policy.

The site can be accessed via kinkorbend.com or naaa.com.

The decision to make a structural damage announcement is not one to take lightly, given how it can lead to branding the vehicle’s history report permanently and high costs for the seller. In fact, Kink Or Bend research indicates that a structural damage announcement costs a seller an average of $2,500.

“Because it can have a direct impact on vehicle values we wanted to provide our members with an efficient tool for making the decision on structural damage disclosures,” said NAAA president Jack Neshe. “Kink Or Bend offered a search engine that streamlined the process, making it faster and easier to comply.”

With a recent revision of the NAAA Structural Damage Policy regarding quarter panels, an announcement of such damage is only required if it is deemed structural per the OEM.

Otherwise, NAAA said, no disclosure is needed.

“And finding out you don’t have to make that announcement can result in significant savings,” Neshe noted.

NAAA chief executive officer Frank Hackett said NAAA is currently transferring the data and website administration to Auto Auction Services Corp. (known as AutoIMS).

“The kinkorbend.com website will shut down later this year and the data will be managed by AutoIMS — the No. 1 supplier of inventory management systems to commercial accounts and auctions in North America,” Hackett added. “We’re working closely with AutoIMS to make the transition seamless and will make a joint announcement at the NAAA Convention in Boston next month.”

Also clarified and defined within NAAA’s Structural Damage Policy are the various terminology associated with structural damage. It also specifies the seller’s disclosure requirements for cars up for sale at NAAA affiliated auctions.

The intent of the policy is to provide the buyer adequate disclosure so he or she can make an informed purchase decision, and it also intends to limit arbitrations for the seller, NAAA said.

“We’d been discussing the idea of creating a service to help our members with meeting the structural damage disclosure requirements but the cost of assembling a database and building our own search engine from scratch was substantial,” Hackett explained.

“So after months of negotiations, we finalized the purchase of Kink Or Bend,” he added. “It was the right thing to do because we couldn’t have duplicated all their work for the amount we paid and the wealth of information we could make available to our members almost immediately.”