NORTHAMPTON — After more than 45 years in service, one of the vestiges of Northampton’s countercultural heyday is hanging up its wrenches.
ARC Garage, which began in 1977 as a social experiment for a new kind of automotive repair garage, had its last day of operation at the end of February.
Auto Repair Cooperative began in an era of hippie communes and anti-establishment attitudes, when books such as Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” were in vogue.
“It came together kind of organically,” said Jackie Compton, who worked as a bookkeeper at the garage and met her future husband, John, there. “It was like a democracy. Everybody didn’t always get along, but we all worked together.”
The garage featured an assortment of mechanics, women with buzzed haircuts and men with long ponytails. The sounds of classical music would waft throughout the garage. Mechanics would sometimes have disagreements that escalated into shouting matches.
“I used to call them ‘moments of anarchy,’” Compton said. “But by and large, it was a wonderful, successful business, just from word of mouth.”
Originally, no payment was accepted for services; customers would instead come in and receive guidance on how to repair their vehicles.
“It put production in the hands of the workers,” said Tom Stringer, a longtime mechanic at ARC Garage. “It was a lot of independence that you couldn’t get at a normal job.”
It began in a building by the old Northampton State Hospital, before moving to Hampton Ave. In 1985, after a fire, it moved to its final location on Riverside Drive.
Eventually, the garage adopted a more commercial model, but the ethos and spirit remained. Steve Brown, a longtime mechanic at the garage, started there in 1987.
“We would work on American cars back then, like the Plymouth Valiant and the [Dodge] Dart,” recalled Brown. “We had to learn about them, and then the Japanese cars just coming out at that point and becoming popular.”
The co-op nature of the garage meant that many customers built strong relationships with the mechanics, and many kept coming back over the decades.
“I remember the first time I walked in there, you could eat off the floor it was so clean, and there was classical music playing,” said Duncan Laird of Williamsburg, who first took his Honda Civic to the garage in 1989. “I thought, this is like no garage I’ve ever seen.”
Laird said he appreciated the garage’s commitment to fairness and acts of kindness, and that many of his children went there when they got their first vehicles.
“Every time you would go there, you would get three things: a thorough explanation that engendered trust, a joke, then a recommendation of a place to eat or TV show to watch,” Laird said.
The closure of the garage comes from the fact that Brown and Stringer, the last remaining mechanics, are in their 70s and ready for retirement. But for those involved with the garage, the closure feels like a fitting final chapter that leaves a great legacy behind.
“It feels a little bit like the way people feel when they finish their novel,” Compton said. “There’s no failure to this. It was a wonderful ride.”
Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.
