Former NASCAR racer drives new business

Tim Huddleston hopes locals will make a pit stop at his repair shop



CRITICAL EYE—Steve Phillips, left, a NASCAR crew member; Trevor Huddleston, 17; and Tim Huddleston survey a race car being repaired during Huddleston’s new Performance NAPA Auto Care Center opening on April 12. The grand opening event featured a barbecue, music, tour of the facility and car exhibition.

CRITICAL EYE—Steve Phillips, left, a NASCAR crew member; Trevor Huddleston, 17; and Tim Huddleston survey a race car being repaired during Huddleston’s new Performance NAPA Auto Care Center opening on April 12. The grand opening event featured a barbecue, music, tour of the facility and car exhibition.

If you’ve been working on cars since you were a kid, opening an auto repair shop might seem a natural progression. But a new Thousand Oaks business owner’s love affair with cars runs deeper than that.

Tim Huddleston is a former champion NASCAR driver with an entire racing team at his service.

The Agoura Hills resident celebrated the grand opening of Performance NAPA Auto Care Center April 12 on Thousand Oaks Boulevard.

Huddleston, who raced for about 20 years and now fields a racing team, said one of the reasons he decided to open a shop was that neighbors and friends often ask him car questions.

“Because we are the race car guys, everyone would always ask, ‘Where do you take your car to get it fixed?’” he said. “We want to be the friend with a shop.”

And Huddleston isn’t above working both on race cars and customers’ street cars, said shop general manager Tom Schmachtenberger.

“He definitely gets his hands dirty. I’ve seen him grab a wrench and crawl under a car,” he said.

Schmachtenberger, a longtime mechanic and repair shop owner, came out of retirement to work at the shop. A friend of Huddleston’s father, Schmachtenberger became a customer of Huddleston’s when Huddleston owned a parts store in Agoura Hills. When Huddleston started thinking about opening a repair shop, Schmachtenberger said he offered his opinions about the business.

Huddleston and Schmachtenberger’s brainchild isn’t the normal mechanic’s yard. The space is clean, with floors that are light blue and speckled, not covered in grease and dirt.

“There’s no reason for a repair shop to look like a junkyard,” Huddleston said.

This makes a difference, said Liz Barrett, director of membership services at the Greater Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce.

“Especially as a woman, when you drive up to a place that’s aesthetically pleasing, it gives you a sense of comfort,” she said.

But the differences go well beyond the floors.

For example, there are Huddleston’s six late-model NASCAR race cars at the store that customers and community members can come in and see, sit in and photograph.

“That’s the fun part,” Huddleston said of interacting with the community. “To see kids sitting in the driver’s seat with their hands on the steering wheel, that’s what it’s all about.”

“If I were a kid, I’d be over there,” Barrett said, adding that Huddleston joined the Chamber to support and be a part of the community.

“That always impresses me when that’s the reason for joining because so often, it’s about ‘what is the Chamber going to do for me?’” she said. “He was all about ‘how can I help the community?’”

In addition to fixing cars at the store, Huddleston will run a racing school there, the West Coast Driver Development Program—the only one on the West Coast. He and his team work with up-and-coming NASCAR drivers, some as young as 13.

“When the kids come to us, 90 percent of them have some experience driving already, so their resumes speak for themselves,” he said of the boys, who race at speeds up to 120 mph.

The team’s home track is the Irwindale Event Center, formerly Irwindale Speedway, although it also races in Las Vegas, Kern County and Madera, in the San Joaquin Valley.

Before opening the Thousand Oaks shop, Huddleston’s team was based in Irwindale, and he had a small retail shop in Agoura Hills for a while before that.

“When we moved to Irwindale, we lost that ‘we’re home’ feeling. Now we feel like we’re back home. People get to come in, check out the cars and follow the team, like a big family,” he said.


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