This Air-Cooled VW Shop Has Used The Same Building For 103 Years. Yesterday, It Was Kicked Out

When a business stays alive for 100 years, it’s guaranteed to have gone through some hardships. The Great Depression, financial crises, new laws, changing tastes, evolving technologies, and a worldwide pandemic—Freccia Brothers Garage has survived it all. The charming repair shop, known for its work with air-cooled Volkswagens, has managed to stay open and operating for 103 years—until this Thursday came along.

It wasn’t slowing business that forced the business owners to leave their shop in Greenwich, Connecticut—in fact, an employee who spoke with The Autopian says the business was in a healthy state, with a constant stream of customers looking for quality work on vintage bugs, buses, and Things. Instead, the employee says a conflict with the building’s owner—who happens to be the mother of the business’s current operator—is what caused them to be evicted.

Now, the shop is in desperate need of a new location.

This Is All Very Confusing

Let’s start from the beginning. Freccia Brothers Garage got its start the way many small businesses in America do. The founders, Frank and Gene Freccia, came over from Italy to start a new life. They acquired the land—at the intersection of Edgewood Drive and Route 1, which would later become the heart of Greenwich’s “dealership row”—and constructed the building themselves.

“If you look at our building, we’re kind of wonky compared to the other buildings, because our door points true north, which I always thought was cool,” says Guinevere Freccia, one of the shop’s three employees (the other two being her husband, David D’Andrea Jr., and her father, Frank Freccia III).

From 1922 onward, the two brothers, alongside their sister, Emily, started off repairing horse-drawn carriages, painting signs, and monogramming items. As the world evolved, so did the garage. Naturally, that meant more cars rolling into the workshop. From Guinevere:

I’ve heard stories from the elders. They’d all just be sitting around, waiting for a car to break down on the dirt road, and then they’d run out to the street and push it back in.

By the 1960s, a Volkswagen dealership operated by the Blanchard-Pray automobile group opened up next door. Naturally, the shop started getting customers in for repairs.

Volkswagens were just people’s everyday drivers—family cars. Eventually, the hippies got [into] these cars because they were already becoming older at that point. They were getting their parents’ cars to go to these protests, using the buses, using the Beetles. At that point, we were already [doing] restorations, because the cars were 10 to 15 years old.

Eventually, Frank’s son, Frank “Skip” Freccia Jr., inherited the business. Freccia Brothers Garage continued to serve the tri-state area faithfully for years, becoming a go-to for air-cooled enthusiasts in New York and Connecticut. It was only when Guinevere convinced Frank Jr. to harness the power of the internet did the Freccia name become nationally known.

I went to [college in] Boston for fine art photography, and then I came back home in 2012, and I ended up working at a creative agency. 
And I was like, “Why don’t I just pour all the stuff I’m learning about branding and small business and private label into Freccia Brothers?” Let’s use the internet, let’s use niche marketing, let’s become a boutique destination. This is becoming a lost art.

I had to convince my old Italian grandfather, “Let’s use the scary internet. Let’s do it.” So with his blessing, I was allowed to [build] a static web page. Our name, our address, our phone number, and a big picture of the shop. And that really took off.

In true small business fashion, the website doesn’t seem to have been touched since its creation in 2014. The shop started a Facebook page, and eventually, an Instagram page too. Freccia says that by 2017, air-cooled vehicles had boomed to around 90 percent of the business.

In 2018, the unthinkable happened. Frank Jr. was diagnosed with cancer. Just two weeks later, he passed away. His son, Frank the third, took over and continued to operate the business with the help of D’Andrea Jr. and Guinevere. The rest of the family supported the trio’s decision to keep the shop going, according to Guinevere. So they did. Then, COVID happened.

COVID was very scary. We thought we were gonna lose our business and close our doors. [But] we have never been busier. The phones were ringing off the hook during COVID, and I think it’s because there were no restrictions about being outside.

There were restrictions [for being] six feet away from each other on park benches, but no one really thought about the car world. [Customers] wanted to [start] projects that had been sitting for years because a lot of people were saying, “We feel like this is the end of the world. I want to do this project. I don’t want to look back and regret it.”

And then you had the people who were working from home saying, “I’ve looked at this bug sitting in my garage for 10 to 15 years. Now I’m not commuting, I have the extra time, I’ve saved a ton on gas money, and I’m not buying takeout at work every day. I want to do this project. That’s amazing. So we were really thriving.

Even as restrictions eased, customers continued to flow in. According to Guinevere, the business was thriving. Then, in 2021, she said the lawsuits started coming in.

The Call Is Coming From Inside The Family

This is where things get complicated. After Frank Jr.’s death in 2018, his estate was placed into a trust with two trustees and four beneficiaries, according to Guinevere. She says the two trustees—that is, the two people legally responsible for handling Frank Jr’s estate according to his wishes—were Frank’s wife, Theresa, and Sharon Freccia, one of Frank Jr’s children. The four beneficiaries are Frank Jr.’s four children: Frank III, Sue Lovasco, Karen Elizabeth, and Sharon, says Guinevere.

According to her, Frank Jr. wished to have the shop continue on.

One of the last things he was saying to us was, “It’s business as usual. Take care of the family.” He was telling me, “Take care of the guys,” because it’s my dad and my husband who work here. “I want the shop to live on forever, as we’ve always talked about.”

As the pandemic came to an end, Theresa Freccia changed her attitude on the shop’s continued existence, says Guinevere. Her grandmother filed a lawsuit to get the business evicted.

She’d encourage us for years, even before my grandfather passed away—and after—to keep the shop alive. And then it just flipped.

[T]hese lawsuits just started in 2021. My grandmother brought them on. It’s just a very sad thing. All of a sudden, she wanted to close the shop. 
I can’t confirm or deny what she wants to do with it. I can say it doesn’t financially need to be done, and the family legacy should live on, like my grandfather wanted.

While the property itself should’ve been part of Frank Jr.’s trust, Guinevere claims Theresa didn’t follow her fiduciary duty to actually move ownership of the building into the trust, going against three of the four beneficiaries’ wishes (Guinevere says Sharon is the lone beneficiary taking Theresa’s side in all of this).

Theresa Freccia declined to comment via Google AI assistant when reached by The Autopian via phone, but according to court documents, she argued that she did not want to front the bills for taxes and insurance on the property. The court also found Frank Jr. didn’t will the property to his children or grandchildren, but rather to Theresa Freccia, making it both her choice and her responsibility. From the after-trial memorandum:

The evidence presented to the Court did not indicate that “Skip” Freccia conveyed, or intended to convey, the ownership of any of the parcels in question in this matter to his children/grandchildren in occupancy thereof. He did not leave any instructions to the plaintiff to allow possession “forever” to any defendants herein. There is no unjust enrichment to the plaintiff individually, or to the Estate for the plaintiff to pursue these actions.

The defendants all commonly testified to their belief that these premises would be their “lifetime/forever homes” in convenient memories after “Skip’s” passing. His will/the actual written trusts unequivocally conveyed these properties to the plaintiff (either individually or in trust) without a reservation for the defendants. Even had there been a promise, even implicitly, to benefit the defendants, it could not extend beyond “Skip’s” life.

The defendants did some repairs—to upkeep the premises they were occupying. The Court does not believe that they thought they could just live there forever with their mother/mother-in-law/grandmother footing all of the taxes/insurance, etc.

The land and building were recently assessed for about $1.4 million, meaning the taxes for 2024 at the current tax rate were likely above $10,000. While Greenwich has historically low taxes, the property value is high, and insurance rates in Connecticut for commercial properties have risen dramatically in recent years.

After years of litigation, the law sided with Theresa, and Freccia Brothers Garage was hit with a formal eviction judgment on August 5. The deadline to move over 100 years’ worth of accumulated parts, tools, and old cars was on Thursday, August 29, according to Guinevere. Unsurprisingly, it’s been a serious burden on the team.

Right now, [the tools and parts are] in temporary storage, and we’ve been lucky enough that our “chosen family” has shown up to help us. We’ve probably had over a dozen people here every single weekend. We’ve had people here after their full-time jobs. We’ve had garbage dumpsters here and, friends bringing excavators to load them because we couldn’t have moved all this stuff.

There were over 100 years of stuff in the shop. Bumpers, glass, tires, rims, body parts. And it’s heartbreaking to have to throw this stuff away, but we’re keeping what we need to continue as a core business. But this has been emotionally draining, physically draining.

So What’s the Plan?

At this point, it’s unlikely Freccia Brothers Garage will be able to move back into its original location any time soon. So the team has set up a GoFundMe with the goal of raising $250,000 to pay for moving, storage, relocation, and utility costs, in the hopes it can find a new garage space and resume normal operations. From the donation page:

Freccia Brothers Garage has been in our family for five generations and has been serving our community for over 100 years. Frank has worked there every day since he was 10 years old, preserving the Freccia name and serving the community with honor, grit, and heart. He worked alongside the original Freccia Brothers and his father, Skip.

For years, we have been embroiled in a legal family trust dispute over ownership of the building where Freccia Brothers has always been. Despite being hopeful that it would work out, unfortunately, we’ve just learned that we lost the dispute, and the family member who won has decided to immediately evict us.

Overwhelmingly, the majority of beneficiaries do not agree with the eviction ruling and want Freccia Brothers Garage’s legacy to remain open and alive.

The shop’s customers have been overwhelmingly encouraging, according to Guinevere.

My clientele has been so amazing and so supportive. We’re talking about doing rallies and promoting the fundraiser more. People are coming by to say, “It’s not goodbye, it’s just see you later. Keep in touch. Let us know where you’re going.”

These cars are like people’s family members. 
So they want to make sure that they get the best, top-quality care. Every little car that comes in here has a whole name and a backstory, and people are concerned. And the town doesn’t want to see another drive-through bank.

As of this writing, Freccia Brothers Garage has raised $28,997 so far. With any luck, the team should have a new location pinned down soon (Guinevere told me they already have a couple of leads). Shops with history like this are increasingly hard to come by. So let’s hope the move is only a temporary setback rather than a final nail in the coffin.

Top photo: Freccia Bros