Union Line Garage has had several homes since it opened in April 2006 in Kingston, but it found its most stylish quarters at 130 West Broad St. in Hopewell, in a 1937 service station that owner Brett Palmer has had restored to its art deco glory when he opened his shop’s current location in August 2010.
Palmer is currently in the process of restoring an old clock and finding a giant Mobil Pegasus logo that once graced the side of the building to complete the look.
Fitting in with the community is important to Palmer.
“We’re not in a historic zone, but I still want it to look like it was supposed to,” he said.
Palmer, originally from East Brunswick, lives in Flemington with his wife. He is 28 now and started the business when he was just 22 and freshly graduated from Universal Technical Institute in Chicago, where he majored in automotive technology. After college, he went on to an elite six-month master tech program for Mercedes Benz. His shop works on all kinds of cars, but specializes in foreign vehicles.
Palmer said he loves not only fixing cars, but re-engineering them.
“If a part fails, we don’t just put in the same part that failed,” he said. “If a car has an alternator that commonly fails, instead of taking that same alternator and putting it back in again, I like to go out and figure out what was actually wrong with the alternator and put one in that was engineered differently. It’s like a puzzle that I like to get to the bottom of. You start with a symptom or complaint and work your way to an actual fix.”
And though the building may look historic, it has all the high-tech tools to get to the bottom of problems in modern, technologically advanced cars.
Palmer said he can do more than dealerships can because dealerships are limited to buying parts from the auto manufacturer, whereas Palmer can seek out the best parts no matter who makes them. He said he regularly grills sales reps to find the most reliable parts even if they are not necessarily the cheapest.
“We can actually do more than you can at a dealership,” he said. “We have better-than-dealership quality.”
The shop has five bays, three techs and works on about 20 cars a day. Palmer said he keeps customers coming back by doing a lot of “little things” for them. Union Line has a driver on staff to take customers to and from work to pick up their cars. Customers can also make appointments for repairs on Union Line’s website.
But most of all, Palmer prides himself on the quality of the repairs he does.
“The quality of the repair is above and beyond anything,” he said.
Union Line Garage is located at 130 West Broad Street in Hopewell Borough. Phone: (609) 466-0294. On the Web: unionlinegarage.homestead.com.
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