The Garage Ltd has been the culmination of 15 years self employment in the Motor Trade and a lifelong love of Motor Vehicles.



In 1992 I started contemplating working for myself, having worked in a few different jobs since leaving school I realised by the age of 24 that my heart lay in the Motor Industry. With the help of the PSYBT I formulated a buisness plan, the Motor Industry is a slow industry to change and around this time motor vehicles were about to take a massive leap forward in technology. Gone were the days of points and distributors a new era of computers and fuel injection was about to become common place and the Motor Trade was ill equiped and poorly trained for its arrival.



I saw my chance and took it, with the help of a loan from the PSYBT and some savings I invested in state of the art technology and attended courses in how to diagnoise and fix modern day vehicles. My initial intent was to drive to my customers and offer my technical services, servicing, diagnostic, tune-ups.

In the summer of 1993 Aardvark Autotune hit the road !



I worked for a year like this and practised my craft, the response I got was good but the traveling, both the time involved and cost of fuel was making it struggle to turn in enough revenue to make it worthwhile. In a radical deviation I started offering my services to other Motor Trade users, the equipment was expensive, many garages could not afford it nor warrant its expense, many more simply lacked the knowledge to diagnoise and repair the vehicles. It allowed me to centralise my working area in the Wishaw/Motherwell area cutting my travelling time and expenditure. It was a good move and a year later I started to rent an area at the back of an exsisting tyre & exhaust garage in Kirk Road in Wishaw, now my customers came to me ... much better!



Well, fate was to shine on me once more, I did an ok trade but working outside from the back of a van was limiting just what I could do. As luck would have it the tyre & exhaust garage moved on and I was approached by the landlords of the propperty and asked if I wished to take on the lease. It was a big jump for me but I took it, Aardvark Autotune was reborn, not only could I provide the technical skills but now with a 4-poster ramp and a bay I could offer more services than before to my customers.

Now it seems important to mention that cars are not just my job, they are my passion and this was to have a great and fundamental bearing on my buisness. In the UK there was a big upsurge in "Tuning" and "Modifiying" vehicles towards the late 90s with the advent of turbos becoming more common place in vehicles and the technical advances being applied to most vehicles. Anyone who was anyone in the Tuning/Modified world was driving a turbo car, Cosworths, RS, R5s ... except for me.



I have always been a fan of the Saab 900 series and had owned a few non turbo versions, now I took the plunge and bought a Saab 900 16V Turbo, fully kitted and in iconic gunmetal grey. It was an outstanding car but where as everyone with a cossie could buy all there bits off the shelf I couldnt, I had to make them. It was the making of me as a mechanic and as a tuner, I had to fundamentally understand how everything worked so I could extract the best from what I had, I had neither the budget nor avaliability of parts to do anything else, personally now looking back I know I would not have the knowledge or skills I have now if I had just bought the bits off the shelf and put it all together.

The Saab ran at just under 300bhp, a jump of 80bhp, on standard internals and turbo. I sold it on, bought it back and sold it on again, last I checked it had over 280,000 miles on the clock and has never been rebuilt since I made it.



The Saab was great fun but it was hard work, I decided the next car I bought I would be able to buy bits for and something rather special caught my eye. I began hearing about a car called a Skyline that was being tuned massively in Japan and achieving insane power outputs, technically its spec alone was enough to make me drool the promise of its ability was enough to clinch the deal. In mid 2000 I bought a Nissan Skyline R33 GTsT, I think at that time there were about 5 Skylines in Scotland if even that many, to say it created a stir locally was an understatement.

Being a regular at Strathclyde Park where we met with other car enthusiasts gave me an opportunity to show off my new car ... the first night I drove down in it I was confronted with a row of people on there kness bowing and shouting "we are not worthy" such was its impact. As someone put it ..."in those days if you saw a decent RSTurbo you were doing well, to have Marc arrive in a fully kitted fire breathing Skyline was just amazing"



Good luck, good timing and a hell of a lot of hard work is pretty much the story from then on in. More and more imports began to come into the country and with moth garages still struggeling to deal with normal cars the "imports" quickly became undesirable for most garages to work on ... we however thrived on them. The name changed from Aardvark Autotune to The Garage to represent the change in what we could offer in the way of work and we quickly outgrew our premisis in Kirk Road.

2004 saw us move with the help of Modern Housing Group to a new property in Netherton Road which again sufficed for a time but again within a few years we knew it would never be big enough and begane looking for a new property. Again with the help of Modern Housing we located a property in Motherwell and began to develop it while still opperating from the Netherton site. In January of 2008 we moved to the new site in Motherwell and created what we feel to be one of the finest independant garages in Scotland, not just for Imports, Performance and Prestige Vehicles but for all vehicle types.



Wow, looking back on that its quite a journey a journey that would have been impossible without my customers and my friends and to them I owe a massive debt of thanks. When we moved to Netherton we took on the company saying of "Pride in Performance" it was intended to show that we not only were proud of the Performance cars we worked on but also took Pride in our own Performance and proffesionalism as a Garage. That hasnt changed but now looking back I see something else, Drive. A willingness to push forward and better ourselves and what we can offer and simply what drives me even now is not money ... had that been the case I would have given up on the motor trade long ago ... but the need to not only meet my customers expectations but to excede them.

I believe the new premisis in Motherwell as well as the substantial investment in equipment and training will not only will allow us to meet these new goals but will allow us to build on the reputation we have already earned for honestly, integrity, ability and service.