Recently, I was invited to Quick Everett’s garage, a top-notch automotive repair shop in Chattanooga, TN by one of the owners, Hal Everett. Quick Everett’s opened its doors in 2018 and has taken off to be one of the areas premier specialist shops. They work on all things foreign and domestic – but mostly foreign.
I showed up at about 5:30PM to a slew of cool and classic cars out front of the building. Hal and his team were hosting an “open shop night” where everyone got together and worked on whatever needed attention. As I walked through the shop’s open front bay door, I was immediately greeted by a resto-mod Chevrolet Special Deluxe streetrod. Flanking the car on the right were various projects and customer cars that Hal and his team have been working on, including an American Lafrance racing car. As I made my way towards the back end of the shop, a customer’s Bentley Continental GT convertible pulled in.
After snapping a couple of Bentley photos, I moved to the back area where Hal and his team greeted me. They were unloading a relatively bare-bones Volkswagen bus off the back of a trailer. Everyone pushed the would-be rolling shell into a parking spot in their secondary storage building before regrouping. Hal informed me that for the remainder of the evening, they were going to be moving cars. A lot of cars, as it turned out.
Next came a 1980’s Mercedes SL that was absolutely gorgeous. I was told that this was a special car from one of their clients that was having it gone through and mildly restored by them.
Following the Mercedes was a host of wildly different vehicles that were being backed into their respective spots. These cars ranged from a 1st gen Bronco, to a Nova, to a pair of his and hers 5th gen Camaros. When I asked about the Camaros, the story goes that a husband and wife wanted to have matching bracket drag racing cars, so there sat the 2 cars. One was white, the other was red. Quick Everett’s does far beyond maintenance for cars and trucks – they specialize in customization as well.
After moving a beautiful, canary yellow Packard into its spot, Perry pulls across the back lot with an E39 BMW M5 in tow. The car looked just about as immaculate as you would hope to find one, so I had to ask the question, “what’s it here for?” and the answer from Hal was just, “…he (owner) wants us to go through everything.” -That’s as far of an explanation as I was given for the rest of the evening. Perry fired up the car and got it backed into it’s home in the building.
And what better way to haul around a beautiful M5 than with the shops V10 TDI Touareg, of course!
After the last possible car could be stuffed into the building, everyone gathered back around the main portion of the shop for a break. This is when Hal showed me the Land Cruiser they were working on. On the outside, it looked relatively factory apart from a reverse camera that was protruding through the rear license plate. But what made this car special laid under the hood – a GM Performance 350 ramjet crate motor. The car was otherwise, completely unassuming – a true wolf in sheep’s clothing.
After I had taken a good, long look at the Land Cruiser, my focus shifted back outside to a black blur that sped past the bay door. This blur turned out to be a Mk4 R32 that was just about as close to factory as you can get. The owner, a Boston native and one of Hal’s customers, just happened to be in the area and wanted to swing by. Over the next hour, we got to hear some awesome stories about the car and several others.
Once he had left the shop, everyone was cleaning up the area and closing up the shop. Perry took me around one last tour of the place to make sure I hadn’t missed anything in the 30+ cars… Turns out I had. In the farthest corner of the shop sat Perry’s brainchild – a diesel Rabbit Truck. However, this is not your standard rabbit truck, because under the hood lies the power plant to a 2-liter turbodiesel, pulled straight from a Jetta. Plenty of custom bits from Perry’s shop, S&P Automotive (which is another story for another day!) and lots of care and detail went into his patina’d Volkswagen.
Once 7PM hit, everyone was out the door and the shop went dark. A few handshakes later, and I was out the door myself. I look forward to going back to that melting pot of a shop. Huge thanks to Hal, Perry, Mike and all the guys over at Quick Everett’s for inviting me into their shop – I had a blast.
Story and photography provided by Ben Battles: Mad Hatters Photography
