When Mark Brandow joined the Peace Corps in 1967 at the age of 19, he was sent to Malaysia. While there, he found an old MGTC and restored it for two years as a teaching aid for his industrial arts students. After spending a third year as a ministry advisor, he decided to return home to Minnesota. But he wasn’t leaving that car behind.
“I shipped it to California in the summer of 1970 and drove it home,” he says. “It took two weeks on the road with my younger brother, and it was so much fun.”
Mark had such a great time fixing that car that he decided to keep doing it when he got home. The problem was the only place he had to work on them was his father’s driveway. That didn’t last long; his father wanted his driveway back.
He persevered, and years later, in 1972, opened his own shop called Quality Coaches, which in 1985 would be moved to its current location in Minneapolis. In 1991, with a little help from his mother, he bought the building and is currently mortgage free.
“By the grace of that and help from my friends, I'm still in business doing what I love,” says Mark. “I wasn't trained as a teacher when I went into the Peace Corps, and I wasn't trained as a businessman when I got into business. And I wasn't even trained as a mechanic when I got my first MG. So, my attitude is, you learn by doing well enough and you're rewarded by a positive outcome.”
For his 50th birthday, he and his wife, Eileen Custer, bought a repairable on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, thinking maybe he’d slow down and do something different. But he couldn’t tear himself away from his vocation for fixing cars. “I'm fully invested here because I have to pay my taxes and keep the boys busy. My job is to organize, implement, instigate, agitate, and do all the things that float along being in business.”
Restoring that MG also gave him a passion for British makes and models. “Malaysia was a former British colony, and my little tired horse that I found on the roadside for 150 USD was a leftover from a British serviceman. When I bought it in ‘67, I had never seen anything quite so unique. It just struck my fancy and I still have it today.” He actually made it into a vintage racer that’s won many awards over the years.
While Quality Coaches works on all cars, the repair and service of vintage cars is truly its niche. “People come from far and wide because they either like the attention we give or the experience they have here,” says Mark. “Even if I don't have any pedigree in the process - I'm not factory trained and I'm not a dealer affiliate – I’ve got my reputation. I came with nothing and whatever I've got was because of the intention, the direction and the discretion that I've shown.”
After 50 years of repairing cars, he still has no plans to retire. “If I'm not here, where are people going to take their vintage cars? They'll have to sell them off. Car culture in the Twin Cities is largely dependent in part on what I've been able to grow in a satisfying way. I tell people I'm going for 100 years. I don't smoke and I don't drink, and I don't hang around with those who do. Cars were my hobby and they're still my passion. Passion never goes out of fashion.”
While Mark has owned his shop for over 50 years, some things have changed along the way. “I’m mortgage free now and we’re eco-friendly,” he says. “We burn all the oil that comes out of cars when we change the oil, so that way we're recycling something that's a contaminant. I put solar panels on the roof. And, many of the cars I fix are economically designed and not big heavy polluters.”
He adds, “Being eco-friendly is important because we're all suffering the complications of climate change and I like to think that I'm doing something for the environment. We can't do anything to take care of all the pollutants that are coming out of other countries, but on a local level, we need to make sensible decisions. If everyone does their part, it'll be a whole new world in the future.”
The name of the business derives from the fact that he loves to teach his mechanics and customers what he’s learned over the years. “I'm a big coach. I employ people for their talents and their abilities. I greet customers with a glad hand and tell them I can do what they want for reasonable money. Sometimes they even think that it's good fun to come in and it’s the fun factor that drives the bus for me.
“Pursuing my dreams was never about money; it was more an attitude of being of service and helping people in need.”
He’s definitely doing a lot of things right. A customer nominated him for the Better Business Bureau Integrity Award (now the Torch Award) which he won in 2008.
20 W. 38th St. | (612) 824-4155 | Quality-Coaches.com