Bryan Villavaso opened his full service auto shop, Bryan’s Place, in 2008 with the intention to provide the highest quality auto care with honesty and integrity. He’d worked as a mechanic for decades and prided himself on fixing the most challenging problem cars from other shops. “When things were slow he’d call around to different shops around town and ask for their hardest car to see if he could fix it. Usually, he could,” recalls his son Stephen. 

After a decade of running a shop with his brother, he’d just branched out on his own and was laying down the foundation for a promising future. Bryan and his wife Jan were parents to seven children. The oldest was a firefighter in Baton Rouge, and the next two sons joined Bryan at the shop as part of their homeschooling apprenticeship. Brent was 17 when the shop opened, and Stephen was 14. 

Then, tragedy struck. Bryan’s health suddenly faltered. “He went into the hospital, and two days later he was  gone,” explains Jan.  His death sent shockwaves through the family. Bryan had been their sole provider. The family’s church, Fellowship Church of Zachary, immediately stepped in with prayer and support. Jan remembers the church coming to the shop and doing a blessing over it. “We had faith we’d come through somehow.” 

Then, something extraordinary happened. Brent was 18 now, and he decided that he would continue running the shop as best he could. “We wouldn’t have made it without shop manager Troy Davis,” they all agree. He knew what needed to be done to keep the business alive while the boys gained more experience as mechanics. 

At this point, Stephen, who had always been mechanically minded, started a new hobby: putting a corvette engine into his Mazda RX8. “There was no instruction manual for that,” he laughs, “I actually had to make my own conversion kit. I figured at that point, I might as well see if anyone else was interested in having it, so I started selling the kits on Ebay. My first customer was from Australia, so then I had to figure out how to mail something like that out of the country!”

Ten years later, he still sells the conversion kits, but now also knows how to fix just about anything, “I love the new technology that we’re seeing now with cars, the adaptive cruise control and that sort of thing, it’s just more to learn, and I love learning.” You get the impression that he sees cars as puzzles. “I only just recently learned that my dad had been finding all those hard cars to fix up. But when they told me, it made perfect sense. We’re known now for fixing anything too.”

The Villavaso brothers now own two shops, Bryan’s Place and Quality Lube Express. Younger brother Victor, who started pushing brooms at the shop when he was only 11, now takes care of most of the front desk responsibilities, with Troy Davis still beside him. The next generation of Villavasos continues to innovate and adapt, ensuring that their father's vision of honest, high-quality auto care remains a cornerstone of their service to the community.

Bryan's Place - 3451 LA19, Zachary, LA

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