Doug Mitchell, owner of Z Fever, got into the business of auto repairs when he bought a lemon.
By MARTY CLEAR
Published August 13, 2004
Times Correspondent
DREW PARK - Most car nuts can trace their obsession back to childhood, or to some beloved car from their youth.
It's not that way for Doug Mitchell, the owner of Z Fever. He was never really into cars when he was a kid. He kind of liked the sporty Nissans but never felt any desire to get under the hood and tinker with them.
And it wasn't a really cool car that sparked his interest, not some hot-looking babe magnet or a stylish classic from another era.
Quite the contrary. For Mitchell, who now spends his days surrounded by sleek customized Z cars and other hot imported vehicles, it was a complete clunker that provided the seeds of his obsession. It was the worst car he ever owned, a car that broke down constantly, that made him fall in love with internal combustion.
Let's throw it into reverse for a minute here. Mitchell, who's now 37, was growing up in north Tampa when he developed his first crush on a car.
"There was a guy across the street and he taught Tae Kwon Do," Mitchell said. "We would spar and he became my sensei. I kind of looked up to him and he had a 280ZX. When I got old enough, he'd let me drive it around a little."
His high school buddies were into cars with more bulk, the Camaros and the Mustangs. But Mitchell realized the little Nissan had more power and pickup. And besides, he thought it looked cooler than the muscle cars.
He bought a Z car of his own, then later sold it and bought another. That second Z was a big mistake that turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him.
"It was not the one to buy," he said. "In fact, it was the one not to buy."
The car needed constant attention. Mitchell, who was a college student at that point, didn't have the money to get the pros to keep fixing it. So he came up with an alternate tactic.
"I figured, well, I'm a student, I'll learn how to do it myself," he said.
He got a lot of books and started to learn. He found that what interested him most wasn't the nuts and bolts of engines, but the theoretical concepts.
Besides powering his interest, that kind of understanding served him well. He often didn't have tools or the money to effect repairs the way the books recommended, but he could usually improvise solutions.
"I was lucky," he said. "I didn't have anybody telling me, "You can't do that.' "
He also found he liked Z cars more than ever before, and started working nights and weekends for a local Nissan mechanic. It didn't take him long to figure out he could make more money repairing cars on his own.
He went into business for himself. At first, his entire business consisted of his tools, his personal car and some business cards.
"If I saw somebody driving down Dale Mabry in a Z, I'd follow them," he said. "When they stopped at a traffic light I'd jump out and give them a business card. I'd follow them home or to work. If I saw a Z at a gas station I'd go up to them and say, "If I can help you, give me a call. I'm good and I'm inexpensive.' "
Since he didn't have a garage, he worked on Z cars where and when they needed work.
"If you were in a parking garage downtown and you needed a clutch, I'd come down and put the car on four jack stands and put in a new clutch right there in the parking garage," he said.
By the early 1990s, Mitchell had an actual garage, a single bay in Drew Park. As his business, by now called Z Fever, continued to grow, he had to move it a few times - first to Town 'N Country, then to Dale Mabry and Interstate 275, and finally, about a year ago, back to Drew Park to spacious new digs on Lois Avenue.
The scope of the business has expanded and changed over the years too, and Mitchell says Z Fever is now one of the most comprehensive auto shops in the area.
Aside from providing the regular maintenance and normal repairs that all cars require, Z Fever has a complete body shop, sells custom wheels and rims, and buys and sells used cars. It even has a small machine shop so it can fabricate parts.
About half of Z Fever's business these days comes from importing exotic Z engines from Japan and fitting them into American cars, and then further enhancing their performance.
By taking the turbocharged engines from the Japanese equivalents of Z cars (they go by such names as the Fairlady and the Silvia over there - not names that would translate well for American car buyers) and modifying them, Mitchell and his crew have often pushed their Z cars to 600 or 700 horsepower. The standard American 240Z engine has under 150 horses.
Because Z Fever does so much of that kind of work, it can even manufacture some of its own parts, including headers, through an arrangement with an Asian factory.
Mitchell said he never had any grand plan, for either his life or his business, that brought him to this point. It was an organic process, a matter of seeking out opportunities and proceeding aggressively when he found them.
"This isn't something I've wanted to do since I was a little kid," he said. "But at the same time I'm very business-oriented and I'm very energetic. I'm always looking for ways to become more efficient and maximize profits."
