After a car he helped his teenage son build got national attention, Mike “Spanky” Cooper, a lifelong hot rod enthusiast, decided to grow his hobby into a full-fledged business that has become a tourist attraction in his community.

Cooper, now the owner of Spanky’s Hot Rods & Customs, remembers the car that sparked his love of hot rods—a 1970 SS Nova he got when he was 15. The car meant so much to him that he told his son, Michael, about the car, who then decided he wanted to have a 1970 Nova, too.

Tasked with an Eagle Scout project to create a budget and stick to it, Michael decided to restore a Nova with his dad’s help and track his progress online for the assignment. The blog and completed car caught the attention of several national enthusiast magazines, which led to work rebuilding classic cars for the Coopers.

“Michael is a web designer and he set up a website that had most of the articles and photo shoots, and that’s how we got work from out of our area,” Mike Cooper said. “Then those cars went in magazines and those stories sent us more [jobs].”

At the time, the elder Cooper was selling his wholesale wheel and tire business in Olive Branch, Mississippi, and planning to retire to Heber Springs, Arkansas, with his wife, Susan. His son, now a college graduate and newlywed, and daughter, now a college student, were going to stay in Mississippi.

“We had sold our business, so I decided, ‘Let me play around with this for a minute and see what happens,’” Cooper said. “It’s a hobby blown out of control and I’m doing it out of passion.”

Finding a Home

Father and son originally rebuilt cars in their home-based garage, but the move to Heber Springs presented Mike Cooper the opportunity to set up a true shop.

“We kept driving around town knowing that we didn’t want to do this if we weren’t going to be downtown,” he said. “If we weren’t going to be part of downtown, then I was just going to build a shop behind my house and do it that way.”

Instead of building a shop at home, the Coopers found three historic warehouses available that were in various states of disrepair. One had even been condemned. With the help of area historical societies, the Coopers salvaged what they could and set about rebuilding the three warehouses.

Tear-down took four months, and special provisions had to be made to dispose of the food and tobacco that had been in one of the warehouses for 20 years.

“I had hired contractors to do all the tearing down, all the disposal of the hazardous waste,” Cooper said. “With all the food stuff that came out of the building, we had to pay almost $50,000 to have all the contents of the building buried, you couldn’t just take it to the dump.”

Because they were saving three historic buildings, the city and county reduced the dumping fee.

Once the waste was gone, roofs up and windows hung, Cooper enlisted the help of friends and customers to do the rest, including plumbing, painting and wiring.

“It was a labor of love from everybody,” he said. “We did it just like an old car, restored it.”

The restored buildings feature much of what the Coopers were able to salvage, including the original brick, an overhead sliding door that’s more than 100 years old and 1-foot x 1-foot oak pillars. Some of the paperwork found inside the warehouses was donated to a local museum, including the contents of a 100-year-old safe found in one of the offices.

“The guy we bought the building from hadn’t opened [the safe] in like 60 years, so we were going to split 50/50 whatever was in there,” Cooper said. “There wasn’t anything in there but paper, so most of that paper and the old documents are now at the museum on display.”

Tourist Attraction

Cooper may not have found a treasure trove in that safe, but he has built the ideal shop for his business and community. Not only do people come to Spanky’s to have the car of their dreams built, they also come to check out the shop’s collection of antiques and automobile memorabilia, and buy gifts from its auto-themed art gallery.

“I really get a kick out of it and it really makes me smile every morning when I unlock the door,” Cooper said of the buildings he’s been operating from since the beginning of the year. “Sometimes I tell my wife that I know I work hard but I don’t deserve this. That’s the wow factor that I get out of it every day.”

Heber Springs residents and visitors get that same feeling from the shop. During the three-day Springfest 2010, an annual event held in April the highlights local food, art and entertainment, about 250 people visited the shop.

“They weren’t really car people but they appreciated what we did to the building and they bought T-shirts, artwork, little gifts,” Cooper said.

People also come in to see what Cooper is working on.

“I built a railing out in the shop to where they can only come so far and then that’s it,” he said. “I can sit there and still work and they can yell over there and ask me questions that I’ll answer, but I don’t have to stop what I’m doing and go greet them at the door and walk them through the showroom.”

The Work

Those visitors are watching Cooper do mainly turnkey builds on the street rods and classic muscle cars he’s passionate about.

“If somebody calls me with a 1928 Packard or something like that, I’m probably not into it like I would be if somebody called me and said they had a ‘32 Ford or a ‘69 Camaro,” he said. “I’ve got muscle cars of my own that I grew up with, and I love those, but, at the same time, I’m a street rodder, too, so those are both my passions.”

Cooper estimates he does 70–80 percent of the work on the cars Spanky’s builds himself. He has three part-timers helping him out, two retirees who are lifelong street rodders that help with small jobs and one person who handles rough-end body work. Cooper does outsource high-end upholstery work, as well as chrome, soda blasting, sandblasting and acid-dipping.

Accounts Receivable

Spanky’s customers are billed by the hour for labor and for the cost of parts. Cooper charges the same hourly rate for all jobs and sends customers bills at the end of each month for work performed.

“We do not take any money up-front from anybody,” he said. “I don’t want anybody giving me their car and $20,000 and I call them when it’s done.”

Cooper and his customers work out a budget for the project and determine how many hours a month the car will be worked on. Cooper then budgets his time throughout the month to give each car the time it needs.

“[If] we have 10 cars in the shop and half of them can be worked on any day, all day until they get done, and the other half are two days and three days until they get done, the full-blown cars get as much attention as they can get and the other cars get divided up between the month—two days here, two days there,” Cooper said.

Some months, a car might not get worked on and the owner won’t get billed. Cooper says most customers prefer his system to paying up-front and not knowing if any work is being done.

“I have three cars in my shop right now that never got touched [by the other shops that were working on them],” he said. “One [got] dropped off at one place, [the owners] left $10,000 [and] it took them two-and-a-half years to get the car. [Then] they took it somewhere else, left the man that car and $5,000, and it took them another year-and-a-half to get the car back and it was in worse shape than when they carried it to the first place.

“I never want to be in that position, so we bring your car in and if I start on your car the first of the month, I will send you a bill somewhere between the first and the fifth of the following month [for] the work that I have done on the car,” Cooper added.

All in the Family

Even as it churns out more vehicles and builds its client base, Spanky’s is, according to Cooper, still a family business. Susan “pretty much runs the show,” he said. “She’s the one that gets the invoices out and gets us money back in here to pay bills, and takes care of all our suppliers and vendors, does parts ordering for me.”

Daughter Samantha runs the showroom and art gallery when she’s not in school, and son Michael is in charge of the website and does renderings of projects from his home in Mississippi. From time to time, he comes to Heber Springs to work on cars with his father, just like they did on that 1970 Nova.

“One of the best things we ever did was build his car together,” Cooper said. “It bonded us and it actually helped us kick off this business. If it hadn’t been for us building that car, we’d still be building our own cars in the garage and I wouldn’t have all this going on here, I’d have probably gone in a different direction.”

Stat Sheet:

Address: 108 N. Fourth St., Heber Springs, Arkansas 72543

Phone: (901) 832-3649

Owner: Mike “Spanky” Cooper and Susan Cooper

Services Offered: Ranges from turnkey builds to adding a radio, parts, paint and body, rust repair; full fab shop; build design; gift shop; art gallery

Number of Employees: Two full-time, one seasonal, three part-time

Number of Current Projects: 13

Current Project Cars: 1932 Ford Roadster, 1948 Chevy pickup, 1956 Chevy pickup, 1958 Nomad, 1960 Impala, 1968 Camaro, two 1969 Camaros, 1969 S/S Nova, 1970 Chevelle LS 6, 1970 Chevy C-10, 1974 Falcon XB Coupe GT, 1974 Falcon Ute

Website: www.spankyshotrods.com

Approximate Shop Size: 15,000 square feet

Years in Business: 5

Tags: Business Resources, East Coast Rod Shops, Family Businesses, Pricing Work, Restorer Profile