Houma repair shop prides itself on quality work

Getting your car repaired is a time sometimes filled with stress and headache.

That’s why Jimmy Boquet’s Automotive prides itself on working with customers to make the process a smooth one.

Open since 2005, the Houma-based business offers a friendly staff and skilled mechanics capable of easing the tensions that accompany a car in need of work.

“At some places, customers get the idea that the mechanic is telling them that they don’t know what they are talking about or that the mechanic is just blowing them off,” Boquet said. “But we have two women here in the office all of the time. For customers to talk to them, it’s more comforting. … We want to take as much of the pressure and strain off of them as we possibly can.”

Boquet has been meddling with automobiles almost since birth.

The local mechanic said he’s always loved the in’s and out’s of various automobiles.

“I guess you can say as early as junior high, I’ve always taken an interest to cars,” Boquet said. “I always had pictures of cars all over my room and had magazines and everything like that. I’ve always been interested.”

Boquet said he graduated from Central Lafourche High School and decided to turn his hobby into a profession.

He enrolled at Universal Technical Institute – an automotive school that trains mechanics.

He graduated a year later in March 1990.

“And I’ve been doing this ever since,” he said with a smile.

Following graduation, Boquet worked at various mechanic shops and automobile dealerships locally.

He even moved to Houston in 1998 and worked for a dealership for three years.

“I drew a lot on that experience,” Boquet said. “It was a really good experience. They sent me to a lot of classes and training. It was a really good work environment. I learned a lot there.”

Boquet returned home in 2001 and said he started to have the inkling that he wanted to open his own shop.

“But I wasn’t 100 percent sure at the time,” he said.

He became 100 percent sure a few years later when he made the jump and opened the Houma location.

“The time was right for me when we opened,” Boquet said. “I feel like I had the experience and the drive to open up my own shop.”

Now with close to a decade of experience, Boquet said his business can do “almost anything” to a vehicle in need.

He stressed that his business does not do internal diesel work.

“We do just about everything except for body repair,” Boquet said. “We can do regular maintenance and repair. We can do brakes and air condition repair, as well as fixing the problems with check engine lights and things like that.

“We replace transmission sometimes, but most of the time, we sublet those problems out to a friend of mine who works in transmission.”

Boquet said the most common problems he sees are seasonal.

“Around here you get a lot of air conditioning things,” Boquet said. “Like the AC isn’t cooling like it used to or different things like that. But we also get a lot of basic brake work – the brakes are making a noise they didn’t normally make. Those are two of the more common things we run into.”

In addition to the long list of services, Boquet said his experience is a key.

Because he worked so many places before opening, he said he had the luxury of being able to mold the best pieces of each spot into his own shop.

“That’s exactly what we did,” Boquet. “We tried to mold and incorporate the things that worked well in each place and eliminate the things that weren’t so good. That experience was a big help in allowing us to get started.”

So with his business closing in on 10 years, Jimmy Boquet’s Automotive continues to push toward the future.

They’ll do so by continuing to follow their same basic principles: skilled work and quality customer care.

“That’s what’s worked so far for us,” Boquet said. “So that’s what we’ll continue to do.”

Jimmy Boquet, owner of Jimmy Boquet Automotive in Houma, says – with a little TLC – today’s vehicles are designed to run longer. His Bayou Gardens Boulevard business has been providing motorists full-service auto repair since 2005.

CASEY GISCLAIR | TRI-PARISH TIMES