Bob used to own Hotei Motors in Santa Rosa, an independent Honda shop that he established in 1991. In 2005, Bob decided he’d had enough after 40 years of doing heavy-duty work on cars and he retired, bestowing the shop on his son.

He took the BEM job after responding to an ad in the paper. “After retirement I worked on my house for a year and then decided I was ready to do something outside. When I saw that British European was offering a 25-hour-a-week position working with something I know real well it seemed to be a natural transition.

When it hired Bob, BEM was looking for more effective inventory control. “My first tasks included cataloguing everything we have on hand and its costs, and instituting more rigorous daily inventory control,” says Bob. A recurring problem, he says, a result of mechanics’ sheer busyness, is that they will often take a part and promise themselves to formally check it out but forget. “Now if they come to get a part, they check it out at the counter.”

The fastest-moving parts are usually the smallest: bulbs, seals, tune-up parts and little trim items. “Those are mostly what we keep on hand because larger parts are usually deliverable to us within a day,” says Bob.

Reorganizing the downstairs parts department is no Herculean task for a seasoned hand like Bob. “When I’m caught up reorganizing the department, I’ll do other stuff.” He looks up to the ceiling of the parts department like a man plotting his search for the Holy Grail. “There’s a whole upstairs of uninventoried old parts – MGs and Jags – that we’ll probably put up on eBay. Some of them will probably be worth hundreds of dollars.”

After that, Bob would like to get into restorations, a business that’s booming at BEM. “My mechanical specialty wasn’t British cars, but my age – 61 – makes me an expert. I owned several British cars as a kid. I’d like to get into restorations, doing teardowns. Restorations aren’t a daily grind, which appeals to me. Spending several months to painstakingly restore a car to its former beauty is something I could see doing.”

It helps a lot that he likes his surroundings. “I’m impressed by the BEM facility. “There are plenty of hoists and the mechanics have a lot of room to operate in. It’s amazing to see this much space in a repair facility.”

Best of all may be Bob’s empathy with BEM owner Mark Singleton. “Having operated my own repair ship and been a sole proprietor, I understand what Mark goes through.”                                                     ■