news-record.com

Pete Oliphant can’t remember when hanging around a car repair shop wasn’t a big part of his life. He was only 6 when his father went into the car-repair business.

“I got my first toolbox when I was 5, and I’d try to fix toys and things. As I got older, I worked on everybody’s lawn mower that I could,” Oliphant said.

“I guess I was about 9 or 10 when I started hanging around the garage, watching my father and doing odd jobs,” he said.

His father, J.B. “Whitey” Oliphant, started Five Points Motor Co. in 1946. After getting out of the Navy and taking pretty Ruth Clark of High Point as his bride, Whitey Oliphant never gave much thought to settling in his native Kannapolis.

The 63-year-old business now has the third generation of Oliphants managing the company. Mark Oliphant, 45, and his father, Pete Oliphant, are co-owners.

Mark Oliphant’s brother, Jeff, also works at the garage, along with Mark Oliphant’s wife, Christel, and Pete Oliphant’s wife, Dot, a former bank executive.

Whitey Oliphant earned a reputation of knowing how to fix vehicles and doing it for a fair price, too, his son said. “We used to overhaul Chevrolet engines — take ’em apart and put them back together — for $69,” Pete Oliphant said.

“I learned by working on cars and by watching my father. He was a good mechanic, and he showed me a lot of things about cars,” he said.

“There wasn’t much schooling for (independent) mechanics back then,” Pete Oliphant said. “You learned by doing. I never went to a (mechanics) school until sometime in the mid-’50s, when I went to a General Motors school in Charlotte for several classes.”

For several years, Pete Oliphant was mostly a part-time helper in his father’s business.

“I drove a school bus when I was at Allen Jay High School, and after I finished my bus route I’d head to the garage to help Daddy,” he said.

Then Pete Oliphant began a career with the High Point Fire Department in 1960, working at the garage with his father on his days off. He retired as a captain at the fire department in 1993 and became a full-time mechanic.

Whitey Oliphant passed away in 1984, leaving the business to his wife.

Grandson Mark Oliphant already was realizing his life’s work: being a mechanic. More precisely, the mechanically trained Mark was a technician — a man who knew that the old practice of learning simply by watching another mechanic or doing trial-and-error analysis was passé.

Mark Oliphant, who had known since age 10 that he wanted to have a career in the auto repair business, earned a degree from Nashville Auto Diesel College and became an award-winning technician.

Meanwhile, Mark and Pete Oliphant had arranged to buy the company from Ruth Oliphant.

Whitey Oliphant’s old garage in the 400 block of Greensboro Road was displaced by the U.S. 311 Bypass.

Pete and Mark Oliphant faced a big decision — one that led to some trepidation. They had to find another home for the garage. They bought nine acres at 800 Greensboro Road in 1988.

They faced bigger decisions in whether to put the best equipment and technology into the new 10-bay building. They did it, sometimes in big steps and sometimes in little steps, Pete Oliphant said.

This was necessary to compete with companies that have state-of-the-art equipment and to make repairs more easily and more quickly.

“I was hesitant about buying some things, but Mark said it had to be done,” Pete Oliphant said.

“For instance, he said we needed more lifts (power lifts that raise the entire car), but I told him that we could keep on using jacks. It didn’t take me long to see that jacks didn’t get the job done; we needed lifts.”

The shop now can analyze car problems via computers and set about getting the repairs made, Pete Oliphant said.

“The information we get today (through technology) makes it easier to fix a car than in the old days,” he said.
It’s a full-service garage. “We work on all kinds of vehicles,” Pete Oliphant said.

Ex-banker Dot Oliphant is a perfect fit to handle office duties.  Christel Oliphant works as a technician’s helper and is known for being able to more than pull her share of the work.

Jeff Oliphant, 47, worked for an auto parts distributor for a few years and knows that business well, said his father, Pete Oliphant.

“Mark told him to come on over here and work with us — that we needed him. He’s been a big asset to this place.”

Five Points has a dozen employees, and makes a practice of hiring technicians who have formal training in auto repair. The day of the shade tree mechanic and the simplistic engines — like those old Chevys — is gone, Pete Oliphant said.

“Dad never had more than two or three mechanics, except one time he had four for a while,” he said.

Pete Oliphant anticipates more change in the auto industry. Today’s best, most fuel-efficient cars may be the clunkers of tomorrow, he said.

Peter Oliphant said he wouldn’t be surprised to see gasoline engines in cars go by the wayside.

At the minimum, he foresees a combination of a gas-run car that also operates from electricity. That would greatly improve the number of miles a vehicle could go on a gallon of gasoline.

That will be another challenge. Young car repair enthusiasts, willing to educate themselves in the ever-changing technology, will have to start learning anew.

At 69, Pete Oliphant will rest on what he learned by his father’s side — and at his son’s insistence.

Contact BobBurchette at bburchette@triad.rr.com