Some auto mechanics might be intimidated by arriving for work each morning facing a parking lot full of cars waiting to be worked on. For Tom Larason, it’s just another day at the office. Or the shop.
Anyone who regularly drives by the corner of Mountview and Fishinger roads in Upper Arlington knows that look. The lot is nearly always full and the three bays always occupied at Fishinger & Mountview Auto Repair. For Larason, the shop owner, that’s a dream come true.
“The other mechanics can get stressed looking at all the cars in the lot, but not me,” Larason says. “The more cars in the lot, the more opportunities we have to make people happy and more repair work we have to do.”
And they do a lot work. With three auto mechanics, Fishinger & Mountview Auto Repair averages 80 to 100 car repairs a week, from simple oil changes to major work. The average turnaround time on repairs is 1-2 days. The shop is technically open from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m weekdays, but the crew can be found working as late as 7 to 9 p.m. many nights. Larason often comes in Sundays to catch up and get a start on the new week.
“We crank them out,” Larason says. “If our bays are empty, we’re not getting the repairs done.”
This for an auto repair shop that does no advertising except for occasional Upper Arlington High School athletic game programs and didn’t have a website until this one launched in spring 2021.
Yet, all of Fishinger & Mountview’s 70-plus Google reviews on the web are 5-stars and business is booming. It’s been that way for a long time.
Larason’s shop prides itself on its quality of work, honesty, reasonable pricing, and lack of upselling auto repair work.
Customers are the best advertising
“It’s word of mouth,” Larason says. “We’ve had a lot of customers who first started bringing their cars here 20 years ago and now we take care of their kids’ cars. I bet I know 90 percent of our clientele on a first-name basis. We do have a lot of new customers. Much of that has come through the Upper Arlington Facebook page, where folks have recommended us.
“People come in the door and we tell them the truth. So much of this job is communications. Sixty percent is fixing their cars and 40 percent is talking and communicating what needs to be done.
“I want to have the customer for 30 years. If we step on toes, that one person will tell 10 other people. People like coming in here because they see happy faces each time and they know they aren’t going to get ripped off.”
A Columbus native, Larason has worked at the shop since December 2000 and purchased the business from Nick Zeyen in 2018. Another mechanic, Cory Kinemond, has worked there 15 years.
There’s been either a gas station or auto service shop on the corner of Fishinger and Mountview roads since the mid-1950s when it opened as a Sohio station. It then became a BP station until the gas pumps were removed in 2008, and has been solely an auto repair service since then.
Oddly, Larason’s dad ran the Sohio station there in 1979-81 and went on to operate Northwest & Star Auto Repair with his brother at the intersection of Upper Arlington and Grandview, from 1981 until retiring in 2011.
It seems natural that Tom would follow in his dad’s footsteps. His dad was a lifelong auto mechanic who often took a young Tom to work with him on Saturdays. Tom’s grandfather sold auto parts for the old Ohio Auto Parts in the 1950s and ‘60s.
Tom started as a part-time auto mechanic at the Shell station at Lane and North Star in Upper Arlington in 1996 as an Ohio State undergraduate student and, a short time later, become a full-time mechanic there.
It’s a decision he has never regretted.
“I love what I do,” Larason says. “There’s something different to do every day. Even with a brake job, there may be something different. I like the challenge of finding a new way to do repair work I haven’t done before."
And, he adds with a smile, “It’s always a challenge to see how many cars we can fix in a week.”
