John's Bug Shop was founded in 1985 By John Spironello; a long time VW enthusiast and mechanic. John had been working at Mack Trucks as a diesel truck mechanic for some years and had a hobby selling performance VW products in his spare time. This helped him and his friends feed their habit of building and running off road dune buggies. John could always be found in his parents' garage till wee hours in the morning working on somebody's dune buggy or sedan fixing whatever he could get his hands on . Since the age of 13 John had been involved with VWs and knew most of the other VW owners in the Region .
John's parents' garage soon became the hang-out for local VW enthusiasts. This quickly got out of hand as did the weekend traffic of buggies and bugs parked on the lawn, roadway, and in the driveway. John finally came to the realisation that a shop should be found to house this nasty habit. A shop was rented with 6 of the friends that hung around, and the basis for the bug shop was born. What started as a hobby shop in an old dairy, quickly turned into a crowded place and the decision to move again was initiated. John decided to move into another shop with just one friend to share the expenses. This gave the space needed to work on more vehicles than one at a time. Working on trucks during the day and VWs at night gave John the money needed to purchase more parts and equipment needed to work at both places at once. At a slow pace the custom accessories started to accumulate and a show room for custom accessories was formed.
Fate intervened to move John's Bug Shop from a part time side business, to the full time one it is now. On one nice bright Mother's Day afternoon John had just finished putting an engine back into this street legal dune buggy. He had been working on this buggy for a friend. This job was a nightmare from the word go and John had to constantly repair many things that his friend had already tried to repair the previous day. What the friend had forgotten to tell John, and do, was to tighten the lug nuts on one back wheel that he had off. Two friends and John proceeded to road test the buggy.
As John was driving down a street in Niagara Falls he had noticed that the buggy began to shake really bad so he decided to look for an opening and pull over to inspect the situation. Pulling the dune buggy off the road completely left enough room to inspect safely what was wrong. Little did John know that as he crouched down to shake the wheel to see if the lug nuts were loose, a Cadillac with a drunken female driver behind the wheel was in his path. John was seriously injured, resulting in broken ribs, bruised kidney, punctured lungs, stitches, bruises covering half his body, torn ligaments and tendons in his ankle, and a number of other injuries causing a 5 month leave from his day time employment and an uncomfortable 1 month stay in the hospital. When the time came to return to work as a heavy duty truck mechanic, the heavy amounts of lifting and climbing were too much for John to take. At that time he decided that the VW work at home would probably ease the work load, making it easier to work, due to the injuries he sustained from the accident. So he packed up his tools and with a sad farewell left the trucking industry to run John's Bug Shop full time.
Learning business tactics as he went along , John slowly got the hang of things. As time passed he finally realized that eventually he was going to need help. The hiring of employees was going to be in the plans real soon. Having a secretary and an apprentice mechanic was quite a relief. Together the trio really made a difference in the early years. At about the same time the shop was formed, John had another great idea. Since he knew a lot of VW enthusiasts, he thought they should form a club.
The Niagara Volks Folks was formed after approximately a year of canvassing flyers in peoples' cars in parking lots all over the place. This was a lot of work and without the help of some real close friends it might not have ever happened. Since 1985, only one original member other than John is still a member. Andy Gross is that person.
The shop has moved locations actually only once from its former barn shaped building on Portage Rd., to its present location on Oakwood Dr. in Niagara Falls. The move came as quite a shock to John; his old Landlord giving John only one month to move out of the barn. This was insane. Along with running the shop, purchasing 5 forty-five foot trailers ,scrapping out at least 40 VWs , finding a new place to house the shop, and dear old dad rupturing his spleen, (ending up in Hamilton General Hospital), the move went just as planned. Yeah right! The New shop brought with it lots of parking, 3200sq of floor space and an exciting new look.
Along with a great staff of six, Nancy and John have been running the shop for over seven years together now, and work great as a team.
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