Aaron

Here’s a link to Phil Smart Vintage Car Care Center:

http://www.philsmart.com/servicevintage.html

I was by the site once. It is sprawling, because it is multi use. They combined vehicle storage from something like 10 city blocks to one large area. Not surprisingly, they also moved their vehicle prep and detailing to here. Sadly, they also took the best technicians too! I worked with Smokey and Jorn since I bought my ‘TE. I am disappointed to see them inaccessible. The web page makes it look as if there are more people than are really employed as they include all the service teams on the right.

I’m not up on the type of demographics for starting up a vintage vehicle center, but would think that the more vehicles (and people) the higher percentage of vintage MBs. As such, Olympia and Bellingham are both nice places – Olympia has Excellent access to the coast and peninsula and Bellingham has Mt Baker and the northern Sound is largely a college town otherwise. They are both a long ways away from any “major” population centers but are far from being without anyone around. Of the two I think Olympia has more people.

If you don’t want to be in Seattle, Tacoma is just north of Olympia and is the 2nd or 3rd biggest city in the state. The Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah areas are about equal in population to Seattle and you can find property in part of that area, plus they are a little closer to the mountains, plus the entire area is upscale (as you may know, Redmond is the home of Microsoft). If it were me making a move like this I’d contact the MBCA local region and ask them if they have any demographic info, or check out the local Dept. of Motor Vehicles to see if they can give you a listing of the concentration of classic MB vehicles. Any way you look at it, I am absolutely positive that you’d make a good living. The initial biggest hurdle would be the advertising front. Folks will drive 30 or more miles to have their car taken good care of. My recommendation would be to spend a week when you come out and check out the 'hoods

Regards

__________________
...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"