Winding road
By ANDREA ESTRADASouth Coast Beacon
When as a high school student he tinkered with bicycles and cars, Dave Scholl had no idea he was preparing himself for business. The owner of Dave Scholl Automotive, a Volvo repair shop, didn’t intend to make a career of automotive repair, but that’s what has happened.
“I was going to take some time off and then go to college, but one thing led to another and there I was,” he said.
Having begun working in someone else’s shop, Scholl went on to open his own place on leased property on Quarantina St. in Santa Barbara and then, last summer, he purchased the site.
“I started (working on cars) in 1976 and started my own business in 1995. I was at Oswald’s,” he said, another auto repair shop specializing in volvo service.
Scholl happened upon Volvo repair quite by accident, but considering the course his career took, it was a serendipitous encounter. “I just fell into it actually,” he explained. “I was working at the gas station where Oswald opened up. He hired me from the gas station.”
Nearly two decades after honing his skills with Oswald, Scholl set up a shop of his own with his wife, Terri, overseeing the administrative functions. Scholl has one additional employee, an automotive assistant.
“We’ll work on just about anything, really,” Scholl said, “and we can do pretty much anything on a Volvo.”
For continuing education he looks to trade journals, factory service bulletins and fellow mechanics.
“A lot of the after-market training available is for American cars,” he said. “Very little is available for imports. So you have to learn what you can through trade magazines and other people in the industry.”
Not many out-of-the-ordinary vehicles pass through his shop, but Scholl does work on a couple of 1960s Volvos.
“Volvo doesn’t have a lot of limited production cars made in small quantity so we don’t see a lot of unusual stuff.”
Clad in a blue jumpsuit with a cellular phone tucked into his pocket, Scholl greets customers personally and listens intently as they share their automotive woes. His garage is small, with room enough to accommodate only a couple of vehicles at a time.
A convoluted series of events brought Scholl to this particular piece of property, which he purchased last summer.
“In February of 1995 I came here and this place was vacant. The lady who owned it was working in the little office here and the rest was empty. I talked with her and was waiting to rent it. I was waiting on a loan and a couple of days before it came through someone else came in and rented the place,” he recalled. “All of a sudden I had the money but no place to open the business. I looked around but couldn’t find anything.”
One day, as Scholl walked into a bank, he bumped into the woman as she was leaving.
“I asked her how her tenant was working out and she told me the tenant was leaving and she needed to rent it out again. I made arrangements to meet with her and pretty much rented it as soon as that guy left.”
Scholl hasn’t gained any square footage since last summer’s purchase, although he ,expanded his office into the space she had used for her own.
“And we sublease a spot in the back to a water softener company,” he said.