John Ryan. Progress Drive. Since 2005.

The legal entity behind Auto Electricks — Otorohanga Auto Electricks Limited — was incorporated on 21 April 2005. John Linton Ryan has been the sole director and sole shareholder for the full 21 years. For the first two-and-a-bit years it traded as Deane Mark Auto Electrical Otorohanga, then in October 2007 John rebranded it to Auto Electricks & Air Conditioning and made it his own.

The shop sits at 25b Progress Drive on the south side of Otorohanga. Most of the work comes from word of mouth in the King Country — Otorohanga, Te Kuiti, Kawhia and Waitomo — with a few regulars from further afield who keep coming back because the wiring on their classic Chev or rotary turned out the way it was meant to.

The retro muscle-car badge on the logo isn't decoration. The shop's specialties really do run from daily-driver alternators and air-con through to light aircraft electrics, marine wiring, and full re-wires on classics and hot rods. The workshop pulls double duty as the team's clubhouse — the Auto Electricks crew has built race cars for the Kihikihi Speedway demolition derby, run the branded trailer at Carnival 19 Taupo, and put together a few derby-night entries that did exactly what they were built to do.

How John runs the job

Straight quotes, no surprises. If the job's bigger than half a day you get a written number first. If it's smaller, you get a phone call when it's done. John'll tell you when something's beyond what the shop can do and point you at whoever in town can do it — that gets you a customer for life, in his experience.

The workshop runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm. Drop-ins are fine but ring first if you can — he might be at an airstrip or out at a customer's yard, and the team can give you a real ETA.

Save a fuse, blow a sparky.