Aylesbury Vale village garage owner bids loyal customers farewell after 36 years

Claydon Garage will close on August 31 when Geoff Phillips retires at the age of 67, having worked in the family firm since leaving school.

The business was started by Geoff’s dad, Cecil, at his father’s farm at Claydon Hill in around 1947, before moving to the current premises in Steeple Claydon in 1955, and Geoff got involved at a young age.

"I was around vehicles from when I was about 10 or 11 years old, doing things,” he said.

“And when I left school I came back and Dad put me through an apprenticeship, and I carried on from then on. And then when he wanted to retire, I took over the business in around 1986.”

Geoff has seen many changes over his long career with cars.

“In terms of the vehicles, they’ve changed no end, he said. The modern vehicle is nothing like the older ones, with all the electronics on them nowadays, its just refinements of how they’re built and everything.

“When I first started, a Morris Minor would have a service every 3,000 miles, now you’re looking at some vehicles that will do 24,000 between services.”

Geoff, who is retiring due to ill health, says he’ll be sorry to say goodbye to his loyal customer base of about 500 customers.

“I’ll be honest, I’m quite upset in that respect,” he said. “I never thought I’d actually get to the point where I said I’m finishing, I’m not doing any more. But as with everything, it has to come to an end at some point. But I’m sorry to see it go.”And he added: I have had a very good customer base, a lot of them have been really loyal. In actual fact, I had one in here this morning and he was saying, 48 years he’s been coming here.

"There’s one customer, I was probably only about four or five years old when he was coming, when Dad was running the business.”

Geoff also feels “very lucky” to have had his loyal PA, Kate Baughton, running the office for the past 28 years.

And he’s worked on some “weird and wonderful cars” over his 36 years in the business.

“We used to have a chap with a big 3-litre Bentley, a big racing car that they used to use in the ’30s, and he used to keep it and take it up to Silverstone to the classic car races, and he used to come in with it occasionally for us to balance wheels and do things like that,” he said. “It was quite interesting to get a ride in that.”

“And in the ’70s, you’d get the little bubble cars, there were two or three of those in the village. There was one guy with a Messerschmitt bubble car, that was one where you sat one behind the other.

“We had some really oddball ones - one chap had a Wartburg, which is a car you don’t really see outside East Germany, with a little two-stroke engine in it. Of course, getting parts for them is an absolute nightmare.

“There were some really weird and wonderful cars really.”

In addition to the garage, Geoff ran a taxi service for about 20 years from the early 1970s, and he has also been pivotal in setting up and running the annual village firework display.

Originally begun as a fundraiser for a village swimming pool 35 years ago, the display grew into a big annual event.

“I got into it quite deeply, he said. “We found a supplier who was willing to put together the fireworks to our specifications and so we actually started designing the shows and getting the fireworks we needed to do that.

“They also asked us if we’d work with them, so I took my training as a firer and I got a licence so I could fire fireworks and I did some shows for the company we were buying the fireworks from and then did the shows here as well.”

Now funded by Steeple Claydon Parish Council, the firework display has raised funds for many village causes, including the MUGA.

Geoff, who hopes to continue with the fireworks after he retires, said: “We design the show and what we want in it, we design some of the fireworks that are custom built and get music for it and we’ve now got a computer-controlled firing system so we load it all in before the show and when we’re ready to go we just press the button.”

Other projects lined up for his retirement include restoring a Morris Minor Traveller

“I think I’m going to have to freshen up on my woodworking, he said. “It’s been in store for a long while so it will need a lot of work to get it on the road.

"And I’ve got two or three other things which I’d like to get working as well, and hopefully I’ll try and keep going for another few years."