В Техасе семейный автосервис с 100-летней историей сохраняет традиции ремонта классических Volkswagen Beetle

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Editor’s Note: This story is one featured in the September/October Business & Legacy 2026 issue of ETX View magazine which published Sept. 5. More stories will be posted in the coming days. To view the full digital flipbook, visit etxview.com  To the unsuspecting passerby, Oak Hill Automotive is hard to spot. Its stone-and-glass Longview storefront at 2606 W. Loop 281 doesn’t have a sign. But a quick glance through the large windows reveals a scene that’ll make classic car enthusiasts — specifically Volkswagen aficionados — stop right in their tracks. A couple of Volkswagen Beetles are parked in the front of the shop, surrounded by an ocean of parts for the classic line of German automobiles. Fenders, headlights, hubcaps and more cover the floor and line the shelves in this longtime East Texas store. Behind the showroom is an auto repair garage powered by tools more than a century old, and they’re operated by a family with more than 100 years of combined experience working on cars that have earned their place in popular culture. From buses to Beetles, better known as “Bugs,” classic Volkswagen automobiles remain easily recognizable and beloved classic cars. For more than 50 years, Oak Hill Automotive has provided VW owners with the parts and mechanical services to keep them roadworthy. The family-owned Longview store is among a small number of stores left in Texas and surrounding states that almost exclusively work on and stock parts for classic Volkswagens. At least for now, it’s not going anywhere, either. “Nobody develops a good exit strategy from these businesses,” said Daniel Watts, the shop’s second-generation owner. “I don’t have one, either.” Bit by the Bug Growing up, Daniel was practically surrounded by Bugs that didn’t bite physically, but he was nevertheless bitten by the Bug at an early age. He has never recovered from that infection, either. Volkswagen Beetles were parked in the backyard of his home so his father, Clarke, could fix them. With a little tinkering expertise, the trusty vehicles were back on the road. Daniel soon found himself following in his father’s footsteps — and tire tracks — as a lover of Volkswagens. Daniel and his brother were in diapers when they joined their father in his mechanical shop. “His momma said, ‘You gonna have to keep him out of that shop. I can’t get the grease out of them diapers,” Clarke said. At the age of 87, Clarke has been alive longer than Volkswagen Beetles have been available for sale in the U.S. That occurred in 1949, 10 years after he was born. A Louisiana native, Clarke started working on Volkswagens when he was about 20. In 1958, his aunt purchased a new Volkswagen bug, and his uncle bought one the next year. They didn’t want to drive back to Shreveport to get their vehicles worked on, so Clarke started doing it himself. “I’d been piddling on stuff,” he said in his soft Cajun accent. “I had people that would bring cars and leave them sitting in the front yard for me to work on when I was 12, 13, 14 years old. It just went from there.” In the ’60s, Clarke worked at a mechanical shop in his hometown of Ringgold, learning to repair everything from cars to bulldozers and even a railroad locomotive that broke down outside the shop. He soon found his niche with Volkswagens. “I figured out right quick that they were easier to work on than a D8 Caterpillar,” he said, a reference to a large diesel bulldozer. Clarke worked on VWs for a few years before he bought his own — a 1956 Beetle with a sliding ragtop. Clarke and his late wife, Bonnie, moved to East Texas in 1971. He started his automotive repair business in an old blacksmith shop in Oak Hill, a small community near Henderson, the next year. That’s where the shop got its name. Clarke maintained the shop for about four years until he built a new shop at his house. It was in his front yard, and he worked there until 1991. He moved the shop to Longview, where it has been ever since. “It turned into a pretty decent business,” he said. “We just kept getting more Volkswagens and more Volkswagens, and finally, I just put a sign up — Volkswagen only.” A Bug’s life Longview used to have more people who worked on Volkswagens, but few had the knowledge, equipment or space to fully restore one, Clarke said. Knowledge is something Clarke has a surplus of. At the height of Oak Hill’s operation, he was performing a vital engine repair function — crankshaft grinding — on 3,000 crankshafts per month. Crankshafts connect the pistons in an engine, and when an engine is being rebuilt, parts of the crankshaft often have to be ground down to restore their proper round shape. He delivered them to parts warehouses around the state. Clarke has been mostly retired from the day-to-day operations of the business for about eight years. He still comes in from time to time to grind a crankshaft, using the same two machines he has for decades — grinders that are more than 100 years old. He estimates those two machines have ground more than 1 million crankshafts, and they still do a “truer” job than any other he’s worked on, Clarke said. The Oak Hill garage looks like a mechanic’s paradise — and a neat freak’s hell. Tables are covered with miscellaneous parts and tools, and a couple of vehicles in for repairs occupied most of the shop floor’s available space in early July. How does Clarke know where everything is? “You don’t,” he said. “You kind of know the area where it’s at.” The shop is a far more complex maze than the engines usually overhauled therein. The classic air-cooled Beetle engine is a small, four-cylinder model that is void of all the modern technology that requires a computer degree. The simplicity of the Beetle is what makes it interesting, Daniel said. With a little bit of work, a junkyard Bug can be ready for a car show. Daniel owns several Beetles of his own, not including the nearly 400 or so that fill the family’s supply salvage lots. Their massive array is affably referred to as the old Volks home, and it provides Oak Hill with a steady stream of parts to sell. After all these years, Daniel doesn’t know why he’s still so drawn to Bugs. Maybe the Beetle bit him a little too hard all those years ago. “I’m chasing one in Colorado right now, hoping to get another one,” he said. Or maybe it’s all the fun he’s had behind the wheel and on the race track. Off to the races Volkswagen Bugs are popular race cars, and the Watts family frequented tracks in the region where they could push their Bugs to the max. Daniel and his older brother, Clarke Jr., took part  in their first dirt-track race around the time they were 9 and 10 years old at the former Rose Bowl racetrack near Tyler. Adult racers weren’t exactly thrilled about their young competitors. “There was two or three of them guys that was there that said, ‘Oh, there ain’t no way they’d know how to drive,’” Clarke Sr. recalled. Out of 12 cars, the boys finished third and fourth — their first race at a track. The track owner told the men who had protested their participation: “‘I can see why y’all didn’t want them out there. They outrun you,’” Clarke said. It was common for the Watts’ Volkswagens to perform exceedingly well at the races, often beating cars like Chevy Camaros with eight-cylinder engines. “They just run good, handle good,” Clarke said of their Beetles. Daniel moved away from the dirt-track and started drag-racing after a few years, something Clarke Sr. had a knack for, too. He did his last drag-race in 2025 at the age of 86. There’s a time for everything under the sun, and Clarke’s time drag-racing was done then. In a dusty, dimly lit office at Oak Hill, tall, seemingly forgotten trophies stand on a desk as a reminder of those long days and hot nights on the race track. Daniel’s love of the hobby isn’t limited to the automobile or the action, though. “We call it our Volkswagen family,” Daniel said. “I’ve got Volkswagen family that I’m closer to than my family family. … Your Volkswagen family, you get to pick, and it’s more than just friends. It’s more than just relationships. It’s years of multiple generations coming through here.” ‘Still working for us’ Volkswagen parts shops like Oak Hill are a rarity. In 2025, the classic Volkswagen parts shop in Bossier City closed, and Texas stores along the I-20 corridor shut down, too. The Watts family bought out a shop in Houston. The nearest such shops are in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and Fort Smith, Arkansas. There’s still a demand for the kind of service Oak Hill provides. In this digital world, people can order parts off the internet with ease. “But when you have a question with your part, you don’t get service,” Daniel said. “You don’t get tech help. You’re at the mercy of the internet.” Expertise is what sets Oak Hill apart. Daniel sources parts from manufacturers around the globe, and he sells them at his storefront and mails orders to customers. There’s no website for online purchases. The business still relies heavily on word-of-mouth to reach customers, Daniel said. In the vintage Volkswagen community, that works. Customers from around the country call upon Oak Hill for parts. This summer, a man from Alaska and his daughter found out about Oak Hill and drove there to get parts. It was cheaper to buy them in-person. While they were in the area, Daniel and his crew helped them finish the restoration of the daughter’s Beetle. The shop has a strong presence in the Volkswagen community, but the number of customers is steadily dwindling. Younger people aren’t taking the same interest in classic VW Bugs as their parents and grandparents did, Daniel said. That’s true of his own children, too. “You can’t force somebody to do something they don’t want to do,” he said. For now, the hobby is running strong. Sentiment and nostalgia are powerful fuels. Many love VW Bugs because they have some kind of familial or personal connection to the unique automobile. Every time Daniel is filling one of his cars up at a gas station, someone comes up to show him photos of a Bug their family had or talk about memories they made in one. “It’s just so relatable,” he said. That goes for their parts shop, too. There’s something comforting about buying parts from a person who knows what he’s selling. “The business plan of an old-school walk-in counter and showroom, it’s a dying business plan,” Daniel said. “It’s still working for us.”