Body shop started with horseshoes

Pete Dottl was a boy who loved cars, so he was lucky to have a dad who owned a body shop where he could help out.

"I thought it was big stuff," he said.

His passion for cars and fixing things continued and at the young age of 25, Pete Dottl acquired the business - Ideal Body Shop - an anchor on Park Street for the last 83 years. The roots of the company go back 100 years.

It was when he was in the fourth grade that Pete started pitching in at the Ideal Body Shop, which was then run by his father, Norbert Dottl, who had acquired the business from his father, Joe Dottl, a German immigrant.

"I would come down and sweep the floor and wash the windows," Pete said. "The shop had real big windows then."

A number of German craftsman worked in the shop and sometimes they asked the young Pete to hold a bumper or lift something.

"That's kind of the way you learn," said Pete, now 62.

He started doing body work while he attended Edgewood High School. After graduating, he took auto body courses at Madison Area Technical College for two years. Then he started full time at the shop at 502 S. Park St.

Other family members also worked at the shop. Pete's three sisters helped out during the summers doing book work. His father brought home work orders so Pete's mother, Helen, could type up the bills.

Repaired wagons

The auto body business followed a natural progression starting in the late 1800s when Joe Dottl settled in Roxbury as a blacksmith, repairing plows and making horseshoes, wagons and sleighs. He moved from there to East Washington Avenue just off the Square and continued to fix wagons and make horseshoes.

Joe later moved his family to a home on South Park Street where the sidewalks were wood. He built some small blacksmith shops next to the house where Norbert Dottl was born.

Eventually the business started building custom truck bodies for companies like Gardner Bakery, Pepsi Cola and Wisconsin Power and Light. Then the work evolved into fixing cars and whatever else was brought in. As cars became more popular, the business turned to auto body work.

The business became the Ideal Body Company in 1907 and later the name was changed to the Ideal Body Shop and the business focused exclusively on auto body work.

In 1924, the current shop - a handsome brick building designed by Norbert - was built at South Park and Drake streets. The blacksmith shops were torn down and a tavern was built by Norbert and leased out. Later it was sold and today operates as the Rustic Tavern.

Original fixtures

The auto body shop has been renovated - it still had the original light fixtures and was heated with coal when Pete took over in 1972 - but some of the relics have been kept. They include a neon clock in the window that Pete recently spent $500 to fix. It has become a Park Street icon and Pete always gets calls from passersby when it's not working or the time is off.

Another wooden clock was kept along with the terrazzo floor and a huge safe, which dates back from the blacksmith days. The steel safe, which has doors reinforced with concrete, had been wheeled down the sidewalk to the new building. The shop's original front doors and copper that edged the windows are now part of the shop's interior.

Norbert Dottl was a hard worker, even a "workaholic," Pete said. While Pete found his father easy to work with, he was all business.

"He didn't have the personality to make it seem fun," he said.

The two didn't always agree. "We had our differences, kind of like any father and son," he said.

But they would talk over the issues and the senior Dottl had an advantage because he had been in the business so much longer.

"He usually won and he was smarter," Pete said. "It probably was the way to do it."

Son buys business

When Norbert was ready to retire, he asked his son if he would buy the business, showing him the profit and loss statement. After making sure his sisters weren't interested, Pete purchased the equipment on a land contract in 1972 and initially rented the building, according to a detailed, nine-page lease. Eventually he purchased the building on a mortgage.

"That was like his retirement package," Pete said.

When Pete purchased the business, he had only one other worker, Don Zhe, who is still at Ideal. He now has nine employees and all but one were trained in the shop.

"(You) take a kid under your arm and train him," said Pete, who belongs to several business associations and is a charter member of the Wisconsin Auto Collision Technicians Association.

Pete's wife, Mary, worked in the business for a only short time, handling the mail, the books and paying bills, before moving on to another job. They learned they each had a different way at looking at the business and Pete found that work was carrying over to his home life, something he had not grown up with and didn't want to start.

The Dottls have one child, Tom, who didn't share his father's love for the business. He worked there for two summers while in college and set up a computer system for the business.

Tom, now 38, lives in Delafield and is a specialized CPA for a manufacturer.

It's not that Pete Dottl didn't have thoughts about his son taking over the business, which is now destined for eventual ownership by some employees.

"I was just worried we would lose our father and son relationship," Pete said. "I wanted him (Tom) to see what's out in the rest of the world."