The recent article, "Skeeter’s Auto Service," which appeared in the COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER, profiles an automotive repair shop located northwest of Houston, TX. Skeeter Lothringer along with his wife Eraina and daughter Rona run Skeeter’s Auto Service in Cypress, TX. While the shop now employs 20 technicians working out of 32 bays, Skeeter’s Auto Service hasn’t lost the personal care it provides each customer. They offer pickup and dropoff services, guarantee their work and wash each vehicle before it leaves the shop.

Below is the article as it appeared in the COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER.

Skeeter’s Auto Service

By Josef Molnar
Friday, 19 February 2010
Community Impact Newspaper

Skeeter’s Auto Service in Cypress promises customers old-fashioned service with the latest in automotive technology.

Skeeter’s offers pickup and dropoff services for its customers, guarantees its work and hand washes each car when the repair is finished. It is all part of the shop’s slogan to “change the image of auto repair.”

“Service and building a rapport with customers is the main thing we do,” said owner Skeeter Lothringer. “We build a rapport with our customers first.”

What started as a passion for working on cars evolved into a side job to help pay the bills when Lothringer was trying to support a young family as a truck driver.

“We did it in order to make ends meet,” he said. “That’s where it all started.”

His wife, Eraina, would bring their baby daughter, Rona, to the driveway to watch while they worked.

“I really just helped him,” Eraina said. “You can’t help but pick up a [few skills], but I just did what I could to help.”

In 1976, Jimmy McKay of Jimmy’s Auto Service hired Lothringer, and he was later promoted to service manager. He bought the shop in 1992 and renamed it, and with his wife and daughter, the business has grown. The shop now employs 20 technicians working out of 32 bays on a 4-acre lot.

Lothringer’s work has even expanded to the radio, where he hosts “The Car Doctor Show” on AM 700 KSEV from noon to 2 p.m. every Saturday. He uses his 45 years of experience with cars to diagnose automotive issues and offer his advice to car owners.

“It brings us business here, but pretty much we don’t advertise for our shop,” Eraina said. “We do advertise for other shops because [Lothringer] looks at it as a help for the community, to help people to take care of their cars.”

While some repair jobs can be expensive, helping his customers to have transportation is just as important to Skeeter, so the shop offers payment plans.

“The only thing that we never see, and the thing we never look at, is a customer’s pocketbook,” he said.

Skeeter’s Auto Service also works with body shops to restore vehicles from Ford Model Ts to the latest cars; it is all a matter of his customers’ preferences. Lothringer said Americans have attachments to their cars, and although his employees will offer advice, he teaches them to respect his customers’ wishes.

“A lot of times dealerships will say, ‘If it’s 10 years old or older, we won’t work on it,’ and we’re not going to do that because people have a sentimental attachment to their cars,” Lothringer said.

“We restored one for a gentleman to the tune of $6,000 or $7,000 because he could still smell his wife’s perfume in it, and she had passed away,” he said.

To read this article on the COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER’s website, visit http://impactnews.com/northwest-houston/321-business-profiles/7068-skeeters-auto-service.