"After we got here, the fire was put out, there wasn't anything left," said Dowand Malone, who worked at the body shop with his brother Eric.
Malone says this isn't the first fire incident he and his brothers have experienced.
"It really bothered me," he said. "My brother he had three fires at his house, the same type of thing happened at my house, my car was burned."
Remnants of the fire paint a dark picture of the popular body shop -- twisted steel beams, melted by hot flames and frames of several racing cars. Malone believes what happened to his brothers is an act of envy.
"It's always people in the world who are jealous of things that people have," he added.
Agents from the ATF, the state fire marshal's office and the Florence Police Department are trying to determine if this was a fire first and then an explosion, or vice versa.
"It was a fire first and then it blew up," said eyewitness Matt Lawler. He called 911 shortly after 4 AM Sunday. He was just yards away from the burning building.
"It was small when I first seen it, after it blew up, when the corner came off the building that's when it flamed up and started burning," said Lawler, looking over the charred remains.
As an employee closes the fence on the shop, the Malone brothers say they hope police will soon be able to close this case.
The Malones have contacted most of the owners of the cars that were destroyed in the fire. Of those that have been contacted, all of them have car insurance. A fourth client was still out of town as of Monday afternoon.
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