Legacy Automotive Repair roots in the beautiful beachside town of Ventura.
Classic Cars. Classic Car Guys! Bill Hahn started wrenching in Ventura in the late 60s, round about the time that the Sproul Brothers of Five Points Garage would have been wrapping it up at their auto services location over on Telegraph and Main where the Five Points Car Wash is located.
Two generations – WWII and Baby Boomer – of local independent mechanics whose businesses only briefly overlapped, sort of ships (or big boat-like land-yacht cruiser vehicles, anyway) passing in the transitional night between carburetors and fuel-injection system driven cars. When Bill put roots down in our current location at 3737 Transport Street in Ventura, the year was 1974 and Five Points Garage had been closed for several years. Who could have predicted then that more than 40 years later, kinfolk of the Sprouls would end up taking over for Bill when he retired in 2015?
So you see that Hahn’s Automotive successor owner/operator brothers come to the auto repair profession quite naturally – engine oil practically runs in their veins. Joel (Master Level ASE Mechanic) and Josh (self-taught/amateur race engine builder and rainy driveway car-fixer and CAN bus/all-things-networked-computer understander-er) – follow in the footsteps of their Grandfather who was one of the two Sproul brothers over at Five Points. Joel was growing his toolbox by the early 1980s, around the time that Josh (nicknamed “Wratchet Fingers” by his brothers and sister) was taking apart engines in the backyard after school.
“Car Guys”
One thing that has been clear in the years since the brothers have been steering the ship at Bill Hahn’s Automotive: They are true “car guys” at heart. This does make a difference in the quality of work that goes into repairing vehicles. Car guys (or car people, really) know, love, understand and most importantly ARE INTERESTED in cars. They are curious. They ask questions. They seek knowledge and try to make connections, think holistically, see the vehicle for the whole and the sum of the parts. They are NOT simply parts changers.
Truth be told, Joel has forgotten more things about cars and automotive repair than any of the rest of us will ever hope to know. And to be honest, Josh has one of those weirdo brains that just gloms on to details and makes connections between facts and snippets and unrelated but relatable information about cars. To put it mildly, this makes him an outside-of-the-box diagnostician or vehicle repair problem solver. He is an excellent researcher of obscure fixes and finder of old parts. Joel has the craziest collection of vintage car manuals and parts catalogues. He does actually reference this back office library pretty much daily as he is working through the mix-match (read: unmatched or poorly matched) parts and connectors he finds during repairs or rehabs on the vintage and classic vehicles that camp out for specialty projects on his side of the shop.