A little more than 50 years ago, in Littleton, North Carolina, Buddy Isles Sr. did bodywork and restorations for locals in an old barn off the beaten path. Meanwhile, several miles away, closer to town, a textile factory pumped out products thanks to a workforce of 300 of those locals. 

A number of years later, Isles established Buddy Isles Tire and Automotive as a modest six-bay shop. The textile factory was now nearly empty, but it was still bustling as a painting facility for airplanes. Isles’ son, Buddy Isles Jr., worked there painting plane wings, where he realized that the 55,000-square-foot warehouse would make an impossible-to-miss shop. 

After a stint with NASCAR as a fabricator, Buddy Isles Jr. took over the family business alongside his future wife, Morgan, in 2017. By that time, the warehouse was empty and owned by the county. Buddy and Morgan bought the place, painted the entire facility themselves, and used their last $10,000 to install four lifts.

Building the New Foundation

“We moved in, and our first year was incredible,” Buddy Jr. says. “We averaged 100 new people a month—1,200 new customers just in the first year. It stayed like that for three or four years. The wow factor of people coming in and seeing how nice the facility was just sold itself.”

Almost 10 years later, the shop is nearly unrecognizable. What began as four lifts has expanded to over a dozen laid out in a sprawling row. The warehouse now houses multiple businesses, including a collision center, high-performance tuning center, parts store, towing and wrecking operations, and more—all operating under the couple. 

While the warehouse itself seems to stretch on forever from the road, the main entrance is part of a humble extension. After passing by the front desk and cozy customer waiting area to enter the warehouse, the first thing you might notice is that the entire facility is fully climate-controlled for technicians’ comfort. Depending on which direction you head, you may pass the machine shop’s lathe and milling machines or one of the several trucks for the wrecking and towing business. Along the way, you may encounter the Hunter Engineering alignment setups and diagnostic technology where members of the automotive team keep vehicles flowing in and out.  The facility also handles RVs and marine vehicles, so it’s equipped with all manner of tools to handle whatever the job needs.

“We have specialized machinery to fabricate parts in-house, which gives us capabilities most standard shops would never have the opportunity to implement,” Buddy says. “We also have every machine that BG makes to perform any flush or fluid service available.”

From Parts to Performance

Further into the warehouse sits a freshly constructed dyno room and facilities for the tuning center—Buddy Isles Speed World—named after his father’s original tuning business. Buddy and Morgan recruited talent from across the United States and as far as South Africa to run the performance center.

From there, a simple door takes visitors into the town’s premier parts store, B&M Parts. Much like he researched the warehouse for quite some time before buying it, Buddy had kept a close eye on the lone parts shop in town, an independent Carquest store. When the owner was ready to sell, Buddy stepped in and bought the whole store. Five years later, the former owner is still a part-time staff member. Through Advance Auto Parts and CarQuest’s TechNet program, they now have access to a nearby warehouse’s $3 million in inventory.

“We expanded our showroom and started stocking our own paint materials and supplies. A lot of what we stock is tailored specifically for our own shop’s needs, which is a huge benefit,” Buddy explains. “Operationally, the two businesses run totally separate. We still order the parts, log the purchase orders, and charge them out through separate systems. It just happens that you can walk through a door and have access to the part in a matter of minutes.”

Even after transforming their simple business into a multi-faceted empire, the partners continue to focus on growing not only as owners, but as members of the community who are responsible for nearly two dozen people’s livelihoods.

“I think society sometimes forgets the sheer amount of root passion required to build something of this magnitude,” Morgan says. “If you aren’t all in, don’t even try. It will swallow you up and destroy everything you love. Without pure passion and a true foundation of this being the exact thing you want to do, don’t do it.”