When J & D Auto Service opened on the eastern corner of Sepulveda Boulevard and Second Street in 1965, the contested Gelson’s site a few blocks away was the city yard.
Since then, the store’s owners Dean, 82, and Sally, 74, McIntyre have worked on multiple generations’ cars as the city has changed around them.
They’ll be working on their last car, lifelong customer Jess Money’s 1988 Monte Carlo Super Sport, on May 25. Then they’ll spend a month cleaning up the place for their new tenant, Debonair Cleaners, which is moving due to the Skechers expansion.
The couple isn’t overly nostalgic about closing up shop for the last time. When asked what it’s been like to work in the same place for half a century, Dean and Sally both shrugged.
“It’s just what we do,” said Sally. “It’s been fun.”
Money, who’s known Dean since Money was 14, thinks it will sink in later.
“I’ve been teasing him that the first Monday morning, the idea he doesn’t have to go open the shop — he’s never going to do it again — it’s going to be interesting,” said Money.
Although J & D has been in the same spot for 51 years, it technically began in El Porto when Dean and another mechanic, Jay Watkins, were working for Bill’s Service on Highland Avenue in between Kelp and 40th Street.
In 1955, Dean, who grew up in Nebraska and began working on cars when he was 15, moved to El Porto, where his mother and brother had moved, after three years in the Navy.
While working at Bill’s, Dean raced cars at places like Lions Drag Strip in Long Beach and the Pomona Raceway, where he distinguished himself at the National Hot Rod Association’s 1964 Winternationals with his 1933 Ford pickup modified with a Chevy engine.
Money, whose father was a customer of Bill’s, began joining Dean “as a pit flunky” when he was 14.
Around this time, Dean met Sally, who was born in Glendale, at a race in Fontana in San Bernardino County. Dean was there racing and Sally was there “fishing” for guys.
They stayed in touch and married in 1961. They moved into their house in East Manhattan — “the lowlife side of Manhattan,” jokes Sally — and had two kids.
When the owner of Bill’s Service, Bill Pepper, retired and the store’s lease expired, Dean and Watkins bought the business, renamed it and moved it to its current location, which had been home to a garage and gas station, Bill Welch and Son. The business was so successful that they opened up a separate gas station which Jay left to manage in the early 1970s.
Sally worked part time at J & D, driving to get parts with the kids in the back of the car. When their children got older, she started working full time, answering the phone, doing the bookkeeping and getting lunch at nearby restaurants.
Although Dean’s specialty is American and Japanese cars, he’s worked on all kinds, including a Lamborghini owned by Rod Stewart that was brought in by someone who took care of Stewart’s cars.
When they close up the shop, Dean and Sally plan to take June cleaning up the place, including an attic area filled with parts belonging to the previous owner. So far they’ve found Ford Model A and Model T carburators. They plan to sell what they can online with the help of their grandson, now a student at the University of Nebraska.
Money’s not sure where he’s going to take his cars once the shop is closed.
“One great thing Dean has is a memory of how cars used to be,” said Money. “There aren’t a lot of mechanics around today who know what a ‘53 Packard is, let alone work on it. People bring them to Dean because he knows how to fix them. Those people, like me, are going to be a little adrift.” ER
