I’m not very good at turning, so I just go straight really, really fast,” a laughing Kyle Rizzoli said.
He was talking about racing, and he has good reason to be happy about it. In addition to being the general manager at Rizzoli’s Automotive, the Cal Poly mechanical engineering graduate recently won the NHRA Pacific Division Stock Eliminator Championship for the second year in a row. He raced a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro against 300 competitors in his division and 1,000 drivers in the nation for his win. Rizzoli also races nitromethane-powered Top Alcohol dragsters with his father; they go 0-280 miles per hour in only five seconds.
Racing and working on cars runs in the Rizzoli bloodline, given that Rizzoli now marks his family’s third generation to participate in both activities.
“We kind of had a long lineage of racing,” Rizzoli said. “Grandpa did Spitfires, which is a little roadster-coupe thing, and he raced for years and years. And then my dad is the one who started doing drag racing.”
It was through racing that Rizzoli first developed the love of working on cars he’s now turning into a career.
“The tinkering side on the racecars, that’s what really got me intrigued in engineering,” he explained.
Knowing he wanted to work with cars, Rizzoli completed college with a mechanical engineering degree: “The mechanical side really showed me how to design and build a car from the ground up. It really has given me a great foundation for being here, because it’s not just a matter of fixing the car—I actually understand everything about the car.”
Founded in 1976, the operation the third Rizzoli joined in 2007 was already well established in both San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria. Rizzoli’s father and grandfather worked hard to achieve their current success.
“Between the two of them, they literally built the building in San Luis Obispo. And then they built it into what we are now,” he said.
But the youngest Rizzoli was no slouch himself: “As soon as I could walk, I was doing stuff around here between mopping floors, taking out trashes—I’ve done pretty much every job that can be imagined here between oil changer to office assistant to parts manager, shop assistant—just whatever it takes, I’ve done it.”
Now that he’s returned to the business with deep knowledge of how cars work, he spends more time managing operations than working on cars in the shop.
“I work on about the five percent of cars that come through both the shops, where the car has been to multiple other shops in town,” he said. “They can’t figure out what’s going on. My technicians can’t figure out what’s going on. And then it’s more just a brain trust.”
A focus on European cars is another aspect of Rizzoli’s Automotive that originated with Rizzoli’s grandfather, a master Mercedes-Benz technician.
“We still stick to the core of what Grandpa loved, which was pretty much European cars: Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Volkswagen,” Rizzoli said. “Those are our main cars that we work on, and that’s just more from his lineage.”
He added that the newer cars from these companies are easier to fix, thanks to having up to 30 computers that control various systems. Some problems can be fixed with software updates as though they were iPhones. This isn’t true of older cars, though.
“With the old cars, it’s totally finesse, and you have to just know. It’s kind of like the Car Whisperer,” Rizzoli said.
Thanks to his engineering background, Rizzoli often has interesting insights about the cars he repairs: “We curse engineers a lot around here, too. It’s like, what the heck was he thinking? Why would he put the oil filter there? Why would he put the spark plugs back there?”
Knowing how to fix cars is only half the battle. The other challenge is making customers happy.
“We’re there to try to help this person get back on the road as easily as possible without interfering in their life as much as possible,” he said. “It truly is helping people. It incorporates the two things that I love, which is cars and people.”
To improve the experience for customers, he said they make sure to keep the shop and the customer rooms spotless, and they hand wash and vacuum every car they work on.
With their success and the increasing number of people keeping their cars longer, Rizzoli and his family has considered adding a garage in Paso Robles. Despite this, they want to keep the business local.
“As soon as you start getting too big, especially in this industry, as soon as the owner starts getting pulled in too many directions, you really lose that family feel,” Rizzoli said.
Besides, the third Rizzoli likes the Central Coast lifestyle, having been educated here all the way through college: “I’ve traveled enough with my racing career. I know that it’s pretty dang good around here.”
Thanks to his passion and dedication, the Rizzoli family is set to service cars and light up drag strips for many more years to come.
Biz Spotlight was written and compiled by Intern Frank Gonzales. Information should be sent to the Sun via fax, e-mail, or mail.
This article appears in Apr 11-18, 2013.