… to close its retail parts & accessories stores in order to concentrate on car repairs and tires. I guess that the closure of most (all??) of the Sears Auto Centers leaves a void in the marketplace for sketchy repair shops.
My local Peppy Boys is in the process of closing… got some nice half-off wax, paint and chemicals. That’s the only thing I bought from them anyway.
The service center is going out as well. I guess people got tired of Peppy Boys screwing up their cars.
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Also, I have always wondered…
What are those boys taking in order to be so peppy?
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Pep-Boys in Salem NH seems to doing fine. But it wouldn’t surprise me if they closed their retail store. Across the street in one direction is Advance Auto…and across the street in the other direction is AutoZone. Each less then 100 yards from each other. Then about 2 miles south in Lawrence MA is a new OReilly’s. Then 2 miles north of Pep-Boys are 3 more auto parts stores.
Our pep boys is/was next to circuit city. Haha.
Both are dinosaurs.
Pep Boys in Albuquerque went repair-only a few years ago. Here auto shops flock together: Pep, AutoZone, Advance, O’Reilly’s all within a few blocks of each other; the Chief nearby went out of business years ago, not just near me but elsewhere in town. One of the Pep Boys reminds me of Thomas Dewey.
We have another parts/repair place in NH called VIP. But they sold out the retail side of their business to OReily’s. That was the first OReily’s I saw in NH.
Yeah, of Dewey Cheatham and Howe. 
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Never been to a Pep Boys, we have Auto zone and Advance across the street from each other with O’Reilly not far away.
Pep Boys was the first auto parts & accessories chain in my area when I was a kid. Back in the '50s I used to go there for bike accessories, and when I became an adult I used to get filters, plugs, and polish from them. And, back in those days, they didn’t have any repair facilities. The most “technical” thing that they did was to static balance your tires and then install them. They sold only their own brand tires–Cornell–which I think were made for them by Cooper.
It wasn’t until at least the '90s before other chains began to come to this area.
I never understand how all these auto parts chains stay in business, especially O’reillys.
I have 2 O’reillys I drive by regularly and they’re always deserted. I only go there when the other stores don’t have my part in stock and I’m the only soul in the store besides the cashier. Maybe they have a lot of shop accounts?
I have just the opposite O’reilys in my town seems to always to have a almost full parking lot Auto Zone across town the same way Advance auto a couple of buildings from O 'reilys parking lot is usualy empty.
Harder to tell here with the O’reilly’s and Advance auto parts because both are in strip malls so they share parking with other stores. The Napa’s located mainly to serve all the commercial fleets as well as the community college auto program across the street.
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My father in law took his 84 Plymouth Reliant to Pep Boys to get his starter replaced. I picked him up there and asked him what had happened and why Pep Boys.
He said that when he tried to start the car, it made suck a racket he was afraid it would explode and they had mailed him a coupon for 10% off a repair.
I called them twuce and was just told they were working on it. Finally at about 3 pm they called and said they were giving up, they had replaced the starter 5 times and the car was still doing the same thing so they put his original starter back in and asked him to get the car out of there.
I got on the phone and asked if they had checked for a cracked flywheel (flexplate) and they said no, because they would have to remove the transmission to see, and they did not do that. I don’t think they were deliberately lting, just ignorant. He had the car towed across the street to the Chrysler dealer where the quickly diagnosed and replaced the flexplate for what I thought was a very reasonable price.
That Chrysler dealership is gone but the Pep Boys is still there. Some times the world just doesn’t make sense.
I remember the Cornell two ply tires. They were very flimsy until they were put on a rim and inflated. I was a dockman and city driver at the time and sometimes transferred loads of tires from another companies trailers to ours by putting the trailers back to bach with just enough offset to get up in the trailer. Most times we rolled the tires between trailers but the Cornell’ s were so flimsy that they would not roll and had to be carried from one trailer to the other. We used to call them kleenex brand.
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We had the local AAmco fix the transmission on the 88 Grand Voyager for the simple reason that we were without a mechanic at the time and it would only go in reverse, the Aamco was next door to where the van was but had closed for a long 4th of July weekend. Never had another issue with the trans for the 15 or so years before Dad just decided to park it in 2011. Don’t believe we can blame the local brake shop that was doing a test drive and the mechanic came running down the street with the keys, then the manager backed the van back to the shop (It lost forward drive at the light just up the street)
At least they knew their limits and didn’t try to rob your father. It doesn’t read as if they were stupid, just limited in what they could or would do in their shop.
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As a kid growing up in OK in the '60s, I only remember Sears, Western Auto, and Otasco as stores carrying DIY auto parts.
Otasco is long gone, Western Auto barely hanging on in a few places last I knew, and Sears having exited servicing cars or carrying parts and overall mostly defunct.
These days there are Auto Zone, Advance Auto, and O’Reilly’s available within a few miles of each other here in the St. Louis, MO area.
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No NAPA auto parts?
Not only do we have NAPA stores (in addition to AutoZone and Advance Auto), but in this area there are even a couple of NAPA-run repair centers. Also, AAA has expanded into the auto repair business, probably because fewer people pay for their road service, as compared to years ago.
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Replacing the starter 5 times without checking for a cracked flexplate or flywheel IS stupid especially since it is so easy to do with the starter out and the flexplate should have been suspected as bad with the racket the car was making.
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