Thinking of Opening a Vintage Garage

[Bruzilla]

After listening to Mike Rowe preach the gospel of success as being to look for an under-served niche and fill it, I've started putting together a business plan to open a vintage car garage. After spending a couple of years with the collector car crowd in my area, one of the most frequent questions I hear is "where did you go to get that done?" Tune ups, brake jobs, alignments, springs, all the general service stuff that every shop in town used to do for our cars no one does anymore.

This is an old garage that is about a mile from my house. Looks like someplace that would know their way around a 8.75 rear end right?

Nope! I stopped there to see about getting the gears changed in a pulled 8.75 center. Nope, don't do any kind of rear end work here. Went there a few months ago to see about getting them to assemble my 440 and get it in the car, nope... don't do that stuff here. They are strictly a plug and play shop. You lose a box, they replace it. They don't repair anything, align anything, tune anything, just pull and replace.

So I'm drafting up a business plan to rent a garage building in Orange Park, FL and the focus of the business will be repair and maintenance of vintage cars. We're not gonna do restorations, p&b, etc., just repairs and maintenance such as tune ups, alignments, exhaust, carb rebuilds, gear changes, spring changes, cam swaps, intake swaps, and maybe some interior updates like carpet, headliners, and seat covers that everyone seems to be looking for good people to do lately.

So what I'm thinking is renovate the garage, make it look 60s-70s themed, I even found an old Sun engine analyzer that would be perfect and functional. Get all the old service and shop pubs on DVD and use ruggedized tablets and laptops for manuals, and set up a nice retro service lounge for customers to wait in. I'm also assuming by doing this I'm going to be hearing about lots of failed project cars that are lurking around, and I'll buy those, bring them in, get them running, and flip them.

I'm pretty confident I can find some old school wrench turners, but I'm also thinking about working with the area high schools, MikeRoweworks, and the state and private operations to get grants to hire kids to come in and become apprentices and journeymen mechs who will hopefully find a trade that'll keep them filling this niche market in the future.

 

[mattsmopars]

It is really tough to find some one that has the ability to work on our old cars if you can't do it your self. I have had to try to learn to do things myself and I am lucky enough to have the shop space to do so. I think it would be a great idea myself especially in a area like Florida that seems to have a large classic car market and a some what older or retired population that do not work on the cars or have the place to do bigger repairs.
It has always amazed me that as the older mechanics die out they take that wealth of knowledge with them and no one seems to be there to take there place.
Good luck!
Matt

 

[moparstuart]

Wish you Luck !!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Bruzilla]

I agree. There seems to be a convergence of two different performance curves coming. The guys who've been driving and working on these cars since they were new are getting older, crankier (at least I know I am), and less enthusiastic about doing a lot of maintenance ourselves, but we have to do it because there are scant shops out there that can do the work, or if they can do it they charge and arm and a leg and want to sell you a restoration. You can't just go in and say "hey, I need a tune and an alignment" anymore.

At the same time, more and more younger folks with little or no knowledge are coming into the market and need someplace they can go to get work done that they can't do themselves, and they're running into the same resource problem us old timers are dealing with.

There is a pretty extensive collector car owner population around here, and I'm hooking up with all the clubs in the north Florida area, and in talking to members I keep seeing everyone's having the same problem. Need an engine rebuilt? There are lots of shops to do it. Need P&B? Lots of shops. Need good, basic, general maintenance? If you can't do it yourself, you're out of luck pal.

 

[eagleone1983]

Awesome idea Bru. I really like the idea of the theming that alone should draw customers and probably the media for free advert. I agree with you at the age of 32 I didn't grow up with these cars but fell in love with them anyway. I learned to work on my car through this website, books, and you tube. Nobody was around to show me but even I have my limits. Just finding someone reliable for an alignment was a challenge and then once I did I had to make sure they new where it needed to be cause if they just pulled up the old Ma Mopar specs they'd be off cause we don't use Bias Ply anymore and some of us have tubular control arms that can allow further adjustment where we want. A shop like yours would know that information.

Getting someone to help me tune the car...forget it. I just had to tinker and tinker until I got it how it should be. Could it be better, probably and your shop could figure that out to. I like it, I wish more would think about that kind of stuff. I wish you were in Utah so I could get some things done on my car that I just can't seem the find the time to get to. Things like my tranny leak, I'm starting to get a slow oil leak somewhere aft of the pan so I don't know where that's coming from, and I burned up my heater motor.

 

[steve from staten island]

Your smart enough to pull this off but id only offer this. Overhead. Can you swing a few months or longer of being in the red until things catch up. Im sure you could find older knowledgeable mechanics that would jump at the chance to work on older cars. But again hiring people is another thing. Tax issues, workers comp,liability insurance all the headaches of owning your business. Still it sounds great and that garage looks nice

 

[furyus]

Well, it's a good idea. I had the same one. Built a garage, installed a lift, mig and tig welders, etc. Trying to work a full time job, then come home and start working again, was very tiring. The customers were the worst part. Most of them think with their wallets, even though my labor rate was low. $25 an hour, they acted like I was robbing them. Then when you say; The best way to do this is"X" they would do the exact opposite, mostly because it was cheaper. Then there's the ones that think they own you, calling you constantly over every minor thing. I had enough.

 

[steve from staten island]

BTW if you need a old worn out welder from january to april,I'm available. I will work for free all i want is a room in the back of the shop. LOL

 

[Bruzilla]

This is a Precision Tune that's on San Jose Blvd in Jacksonville. I honestly think it's the last one in existence. I know it's the only one around here.

I was pretty shocked to see one of these places still in business. Everyone I knew used to go there to get tune-ups in the 1970s and 1980s. I stopped by to see if they still do them and found out no, they don't. They primarily do oil changes and A/C recharges. The closest thing they do to a tune-up is replace spark plugs and wires. Since the advent of computer-controlled ignitions, there's just no need for a tuner anymore.

 

[Mr Gorsky]

Find yourself some old Mopar guys and stick to fixing pentastar products.

There's no need to do Chevys, etc.....you'll have plenty to do staying loyal to Mother.

 

[747mopar]

Great idea, sounds pretty fun to be honest. I really enjoy working on these old cars and think just the job itself working on these cars will be a perk to the employees. Good luck

 

[Bruzilla]

Awesome idea Bru. I really like the idea of the theming that alone should draw customers and probably the media for free advert. I agree with you at the age of 32 I didn't grow up with these cars but fell in love with them anyway. I learned to work on my car through this website, books, and you tube. Nobody was around to show me but even I have my limits. Just finding someone reliable for an alignment was a challenge and then once I did I had to make sure they new where it needed to be cause if they just pulled up the old Ma Mopar specs they'd be off cause we don't use Bias Ply anymore and some of us have tubular control arms that can allow further adjustment where we want. A shop like yours would know that information.

Getting someone to help me tune the car...forget it. I just had to tinker and tinker until I got it how it should be. Could it be better, probably and your shop could figure that out to. I like it, I wish more would think about that kind of stuff. I wish you were in Utah so I could get some things done on my car that I just can't seem the find the time to get to. Things like my tranny leak, I'm starting to get a slow oil leak somewhere aft of the pan so I don't know where that's coming from, and I burned up my heater motor.

Well, I'm planning on applying the same practices I've learned over the years on cars to this business. Namely, it's always better to spend other peoples' money. Having spent 24 years as a sleazy defense contractor, I have a doctorate in that regard. There is boatloads of money already earmarked from the SBA and other organizations for developing small businesses, but I also know the unsolicited proposal market pretty well too, and I know the VA is sitting on boatloads of money they are looking to drop on anything to help vets. My Roadrunner was initially bought with VA funds that were provided to a young Marine who was injured by an IED and working on cars was part of his physical therapy regimen. I can develop a proposal to take to the VA, show them I'm going to be hiring and training vets, and they'll write the checks. Same deal with hiring and training high school kids. It's more cost effective to send me $200,000 a year to bring on kids for three to six months than to spend $500,000 a year to staff, equip, and maintain a shop in a single school. There's lots of money and consulting assistance available if you know how to get it. It also helps when one of your brothers-in-law is one of the premier business attorneys in the state.

I think the toughest part is gonna be location, location, location. I need a place that's been around and looks old, but is fully functional and has five or six bays ready to go. I also need space to store and show cars, and hopefully have some adjacent space to support car shows and other events. I remember the Dairy Queen in Odenton that had a parking lot bigger than a Walmart's to support all the car shows they sponsored.

But for every problem there is a solution.

 

[Richard Cranium]

Sounds like a good idea, but it will take time to find decent help and build a reputation. Then there are those pesky insurances and regulations that Steve mentioned.

I personally think that the best business to open is a barber shop. People always need their hair cut and all you really need is a small place and a couple of chairs, scissors, combs razors, talcum powder & a comb (low overhead). Most people pay cash and once you close the door at night, no one is going to be bugging you with business phone calls and emails. If you want to go on vacation you can just hang a sign on the door that says "back in a week" and once you come back, just unlock the door and resume business.

 

[Bruzilla]

Well, it's a good idea. I had the same one. Built a garage, installed a lift, mig and tig welders, etc. Trying to work a full time job, then come home and start working again, was very tiring. The customers were the worst part. Most of them think with their wallets, even though my labor rate was low. $25 an hour, they acted like I was robbing them. Then when you say; The best way to do this is"X" they would do the exact opposite, mostly because it was cheaper. Then there's the ones that think they own you, calling you constantly over every minor thing. I had enough.

Yep, I saw a lot of that when I was working for Ford. Whenever a customer in nice clothes, nice jewelry, and a nice car drove up, the salesmen all hid, which seemed counter-intuitive to me. Then they explained the folks with the big wallets are the biggest pain in the asses to deal with. They want the world and they want it cheap.

I can understand some of what you were describing because I generally don't like going to shops because most of the time you're getting ripped off or scammed. Upselling is a fact of life in the chain shops, and it's becoming one at every service vendor these days. The experience that I want is I bring my car in, the work I want gets done, and I leave without anyone saying "hey, you know your doo-dad needs replacing. Want me to get that for you?" Trust me, I know my doo-dad needs replacing, and if I wanted it replaced I would have asked you to do it.

This is why I want to steer well clear of doing anything remotely restoration related. There's too much competition in that market, and I don't want to be competing in it. I want this to be a garage, not a resto shop. If you're looking to spend thousands of dollars, I'll point you to a shop that'll want your business (and pay me a referral fee.) You're looking for someplace to do a quick repair, we're your place.

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Sounds like a good idea, but it will take time to find decent help and build a reputation. Then there are those pesky insurances and regulations that Steve mentioned.

I personally think that the best business to open is a barber shop. People always need their hair cut and all you really need is a small place and a couple of chairs, scissors, combs razors, talcum powder & a comb (low overhead). Most people pay cash and once you close the door at night, no one is going to be bugging you with business phone calls and emails. If you want to go on vacation you can just hang a sign on the door that says "back in a week" and once you come back, just unlock the door and resume business.

It all goes down to how you market yourself. You go in like like a business mogul, you're having to fight and scratch your way through regulatory nightmare after nightmare. You go in as a warm-hearted, helping humanity, it's all about the vets and kids kinda guy, you have people falling over themselves to help you. I'm also guessing that a lot of the owners in the collector car market are connected out the ***, and will be able to assist me with getting through the rough spots.

I agree about the finding help thing, but thanks to about 20% or so of the population being out of work right now, I think I can find some good folks. The nice thing is most wrench turners I know love to work. Most of the P&B guys I know don't. They get enough money to live for a couple of months on and they stop coming to work.

Since my background is in human performance and training, I've got plenty of experience with developing documentation and job aids that I think will really make the difference in this business. As we all know, there's the way the manual says to do things and there's the way the old timers used to do it, and that's the info I can capture, document, and disseminate to get the non-old school mechs up to speed as quickly as possible.

As for reputation, that's always an issue for auto shops in general, but this won't be a general shop. When you've got your pick of 30 shops that all do the same thing, sifting through reputations is important. When you're essentially a one-of-one business, customers will seek you out and your reputation is more for sustaining the customer base than expanding it, which is a great thing.

 

[furyus]

Well, I'm planning on applying the same practices I've learned over the years on cars to this business. Namely, it's always better to spend other peoples' money. Having spent 24 years as a sleazy defense contractor, I have a doctorate in that regard. There is boatloads of money already earmarked from the SBA and other organizations for developing small businesses, but I also know the unsolicited proposal market pretty well too, and I know the VA is sitting on boatloads of money they are looking to drop on anything to help vets. My Roadrunner was initially bought with VA funds that were provided to a young Marine who was injured by an IED and working on cars was part of his physical therapy regimen. I can develop a proposal to take to the VA, show them I'm going to be hiring and training vets, and they'll write the checks. Same deal with hiring and training high school kids. It's more cost effective to send me $200,000 a year to bring on kids for three to six months than to spend $500,000 a year to staff, equip, and maintain a shop in a single school. There's lots of money and consulting assistance available if you know how to get it. It also helps when one of your brothers-in-law is one of the premier business attorneys in the state.

I think the toughest part is gonna be location, location, location. I need a place that's been around and looks old, but is fully functional and has five or six bays ready to go. I also need space to store and show cars, and hopefully have some adjacent space to support car shows and other events. I remember the Dairy Queen in Odenton that had a parking lot bigger than a Walmart's to support all the car shows they sponsored.

But for every problem there is a solution.

The thing that killed the Odenton Dairy Queen cruise in was they had a very small lot, so they got permission to use the lot across the very busy road. Made it very dangerous. Plus, they used those yellow sodium lights. You couldn't tell what color the cars were. Dennis, the DQ owner wanted to enlarge his lot, but it never worked out. That's when they started having the cruise in Glen Burnie. It's the unexpected little things that gets you.

 

[Richard Cranium]

It all goes down to how you market yourself.

That is very true. the problem with a lot of repair shop and body shop owners is that they may be good at their trades, but there are many that are lousy businessmen. It takes a special talent to be very good at both.

I think a good retirement business to have up here is to be in the winter storage business. People up here are always looking for a secure place to put their cars & boats for the winter and also generall overflow storage. A warehouse building stuffed with all sorts of toys and having an office/living room to hang out in sounds like a good job to me.

 

[black64]

Sounds like a good business ideal to me. For one plenty of the classics out there are owned by older people me being one of them and even though they use to do the work it is getting difficult to get under a car unless you have a lift. Having the knowledge to do the work is one thing but physically able is another. I know I would use a shop if I knew they were primarily a classic repair facility especially at my age crawling under my car to do suspension work is a thing of the past.

 

[Cranky]

crankier

Hey, I resemble that remark! :grin:

Your smart enough to pull this off but id only offer this. Overhead. Can you swing a few months or longer of being in the red until things catch up. Im sure you could find older knowledgeable mechanics that would jump at the chance to work on older cars. But again hiring people is another thing. Tax issues, workers comp,liability insurance all the headaches of owning your business. Still it sounds great and that garage looks nice

Could people be hired as independent contractors?

Well, it's a good idea. I had the same one. Built a garage, installed a lift, mig and tig welders, etc. Trying to work a full time job, then come home and start working again, was very tiring. The customers were the worst part. Most of them think with their wallets, even though my labor rate was low. $25 an hour, they acted like I was robbing them. Then when you say; The best way to do this is"X" they would do the exact opposite, mostly because it was cheaper. Then there's the ones that think they own you, calling you constantly over every minor thing. I had enough.

That's exactly why I quit building engines for individuals but kept doing rear end work. Most have no idea about them and setting up gears is like witch craft to a lot of people lol so that worked out pretty good but every now and then I'd get some moron telling me that my prices were too high and I have low overhead because I'm working out of my backyard shop and yada yada yada. Those got told to call the rear end shop 20 miles away and get a quote from them then call me back if they decided if my prices were more to their liking. The shop usually is always 3 times higher than me.

Some years back, I planned to open a shop with several independent bays....one for AC work; one for state inspection; starters and alternators; alignment and so on but couldn't get anyone else to go in with me on it. I was working a full time job at the time and trying to start up a business isn't exactly easy by yourself and even harder if you can't be there when you're needed the most.

 

[Bruzilla]

That is very true. the problem with a lot of repair shop and body shop owners is that they may be good at their trades, but there are many that are lousy businessmen. It takes a special talent to be very good at both.

I think a good retirement business to have up here is to be in the winter storage business. People up here are always looking for a secure place to put their cars & boats for the winter and also generall overflow storage. A warehouse building stuffed with all sorts of toys and having an office/living room to hang out in sounds like a good job to me.

Like barber shops, there are a lot of storage places around here. It's probably because we are a huge military market with lots of guys going on deployment and they don't want to pay rent for an apartment while they are gone and just store everything in a rental place until they get back. I know I did that for the three years I was based at Bermuda. It was cheaper to pay $21/month to store my cars.

Going back to Rowe's observations, to be successful you have to find a market that's underserved, and I can't think of one that's more underserved than basic collector car maintenance. Lots of speed shops, lots of machine shops, lots of resto shops, lots of trans shops, lots of brakes and tire stores, but not many places where you can get reliable general maintenance on an old car done. That's a niche!

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The thing that killed the Odenton Dairy Queen cruise in was they had a very small lot, so they got permission to use the lot across the very busy road. Made it very dangerous. Plus, they used those yellow sodium lights. You couldn't tell what color the cars were. Dennis, the DQ owner wanted to enlarge his lot, but it never worked out. That's when they started having the cruise in Glen Burnie. It's the unexpected little things that gets you.

When I was there in the late 80s they had a huge parking lot to the right of the DQ. The only folks I remember parked across 301 were the cops.

- - - Updated - - -

Sounds like a good business ideal to me. For one plenty of the classics out there are owned by older people me being one of them and even though they use to do the work it is getting difficult to get under a car unless you have a lift. Having the knowledge to do the work is one thing but physically able is another. I know I would use a shop if I knew they were primarily a classic repair facility especially at my age crawling under my car to do suspension work is a thing of the past.

Yep, and I think a LOT of us are either at that point or getting there. I know when I was replacing leaf springs yesterday I was thinking "man... if I could find someone to do this...", but the last spring shop in Jacksonville, the largest city in the frigging country size-wise, closed up three or four years ago.

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Hey, I resemble that remark! :grin:

Could people be hired as independent contractors?

That;s how most shops operate these days. Your employees are 10-99 contractors who are responsible for paying their own taxes, insurance, etc. Many shops even require they provide their own tools. Since this is going to be old school work only, that means a lot less requirements for specialized tools and test equipment, so that lowers start-up costs, and I'm not really a fan of 10-99 work but I know a lot of guys who are, so I'm kinda on the fence about it.

 

[69a100]

They are strictly a plug and play shop. You lose a box, they replace it. They don't repair anything, align anything, tune anything, just pull and replace.

And I bet they charge $100 @ hr. labor to do that. Yeah, I'm in the wrong biz too. Good Luck