He looks back at some of the shop’s milestones, including what has been a gratifying growth in restorations.

“When I came in at BEM,” he recalls, “the tendency was away from old British sports cars. Now it’s the opposite: We’ve narrowed our market to just British cars. We still do some legacy work for valued old customers on, say, BMWs and Mercedes, but our primary focus is on British autos of any era. We’re as comfortable with 2007 models as we are with ones from the 50s and 60s.”

He says restoration really started in earnest in 2000, with BEM doing one or two cars at a time. “We knew that the service had great potential to expand. We saw repair shops and dealers going in the opposite direction, away from working with these older cars, because nobody wanted to mess with them. We did and do. That’s why we’re getting sensational word of mouth.”

Currently, five cars are undergoing restoration: two E-type Jaguars that are almost complete; two Austin Healeys; and one MKI-Jaguar. “We also have various – around three or four – partial restorations going on, mostly from owners who want their vehicles to be reliable enough for them to drive around on the back roads here.”

Singleton says BEM didn’t set out specifically to target people who want restorations. “But we’ve hit kind of a nerve. Owners facing doing a complete restoration by themselves often feel overwhelmed, especially when they realize how long the process can take in an already busy life.

“Instead of doing it themselves, they can come to us and get the best of two worlds: Not only do the professionals who work on the restoration love the cars they’re restoring, they listen to the owners and get them intimately involved in the process.”

For example, he says, owners may show restorers their ideas on paper for the restoration’s interior. “We do the work of finding the right materials and offering choices. The whole process turns into a great collaboration that is extremely gratifying to the owners.”

Singleton says he’s noticing that not everybody who restores a car wants to take it from concourse to concourse, which used to be the tradition. “More and more of them are looking to drive their restored cars around the county and show up in them at racing events rather than tow them to concourses.

“Of course restorations are only one part of what customers have come to expect over the years.

“Over the years we’ve developed a “tripod” that British European Motors rests firmly on: Sales, service and restoration. It’s a very good foundation – we can still claim the loyalty of 90 percent of Sonoma County’s Jaguar and Rover owners.”                                                                                             ■