Mike Zack is sitting at a table inside the spotless garage bay of Northern Motorsport in Wilder, reflecting on the 33 years he and his brother Jeff Zack have been in business on a sultry morning while the heavy metal chords of AC/DC blare on the speaker system.
Northern Motorsport specializes in servicing European cars — Volkswagens, Audis, BMWs, Volvo, Saabs, Land Rovers, Jaguars, MGs and Triumphs — and it’s about to close up shop for good after three-plus decades diagnosing, taking apart and reassembling countless cars.
Well, not “countless,” as it turns out.
“I can tell you,” Mike Zack says, getting up from the table and checking an invoice.
“About 75,000,” he answers. “We have numbered repair orders.”
Actually, it’s even more: The repair orders go back only to 1990, when the brothers built and relocated to their current location on Route 5. They had opened their business a couple years earlier adjacent to the former Flanders & Patch Ford dealership on Miracle Mile in Lebanon before relocating.
“We each put in $3,000. We couldn’t get a loan from any bank,” Zack recalled. “We had no serious equipment. No lifts. No jacks.”
They hunted for customers by leaving business cards under windshield wipers of cars in parking lots. They waved prospects over from the NAPA Auto Parts next door. They took out radio spots that advertised they had a “factory-trained Rolls-Royce mechanic” on staff. (Jeff Zack had worked at a Rolls Royce/Bentley dealership in Connecticut before he and his brother moved to the Upper Valley.)
“Our first year, we did like $9,500,” Mike Zack said. “Man, it was tough.”
Twenty-six years later, in 2014, their peak year, Northern Motorsport generated $1.2 million in business. Specializing in foreign cars was a smart decision, Zack said, because their owners tend to be better-heeled and the business therefore more resistant to the ups and downs of the economy.
“The reason we did European cars is that recessions don’t typically affect people with money. With the medical center, college, students and the tech industry here, it’s been good,” Zack said.
Self-described “gearheads” who were fascinated with cars growing up — the family was continually relocating as their father, a corporate troubleshooter, took new assignments — Mike, 66, who lives in Thetford, and his brother Jeff, 63, of Hartland, are close.
Health problems have kept Jeff away from the shop in recent years, however, leaving Mike to oversee the three mechanics himself.
“That’s what’s made it fun for me,” Mike Zack said of being partners with his brother. “We’ve been working together since teenagers.”
Along the way, the brothers got to work on some pretty fancy cars, such as the multimillion-dollar Bugattis that belonged to the late Dr. Peter Williamson, a Lyme resident whose estate’s collection sale helped to finance the Williamson Translational Research Building at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.
But the Zack brothers were not averse to customers in a jam — the office rules hang on a wall alongside oil paintings that artists traded instead of cash payment.
Instead, the reason the Zack brothers have decided to wind down — they expect to close by Labor Day — is that they couldn’t find a qualified buyer or anyone to take over the business.
Zack said he had two employees he’d hoped would do it. One, Rick Gobeille, who had worked Northern Motosport for 25 years and rose to service manager, died in April. The second, his son-in-law, recently opted to take another job at a body shop.
And although the Zacks had their business up for sale for more than a year, they didn’t feel confident that the few buyers who stepped forward would provide the level of service that Northern Motorsport had built a reputation on. Nor were either of Mike Zack’s two sons — one of whom is a mechanical engineer — interested in coming into the business.
“I figured the writing was on the wall,” Mike Zack said.
The predicament is similar to that faced by other small family-owned firms in the Upper Valley in recent years, especially those in the trades, as many millennials, reared on smartphones and game consoles, do not see a future in working with their hands (even though trade industries such as building, plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, CDL drivers and advanced manufacturing often pay better than jobs for liberal arts degrees).
In retirement, Mike said he will continue with his hobby of refurbishing antique sports cars. The shop has about $300,000 worth of equipment, he said, which will come in handy.
He’s “whittled down” his antique car collection to eight vehicles, including a meticulously restored yellow 1973 Volvo P1800ES and a “Dartmouth green” 1970 Mercedes 280 SL with interior wood paneling that he spent seven years working on.
And up on a lift under a black tarp, hidden as if a top-secret project at Lockheed’s secret skunkworks plant, rests Northern Motorsport’s crown jewel: a 480-horsepower jet black De Tomaso Pantera GTS, a high-end sports car sold through Mercury dealerships in the early 1970s that’s built from “an Italian body, an American engine and a German transmission.”
Zack estimates the “completely restored” De Tomaso could command $180,000 at sale.
“Since it’s been finished, it has never been driven,” Mike Zack said, adding that because his brother has been recovering from a heart transplant “he’s never seen” the De Tomaso in its pristine refurbished condition.
“But he will,” Mike promised.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
