Glen Ellen family shares love of classic cars at Marshall’s Body Shop

A wall constructed from old fence boards and ?decorated with vintage license plates and an old car bumper separates the messy side from the clean side at Marshall’s Body Shop in Glen Ellen. There was a newly sanded 1953 Chevy pickup, a 1970 442 Cutlass and a 1932 all-steel Ford sedan with rear-hinged doors on the dusty side, and newly painted cherry-red parts for a 1962 MGA convertible on the other side.

“I don’t know if I have OCD or what,” said Cliff Casolla, the new owner of Marshall’s Body Shop, “but I like things to be neat and organized.”

Casolla, who purchased the shop in July, has used his industrious nature and artistic skills to create a shabby-chic atmosphere worthy of a magazine spread in this historic building in downtown Glen Ellen.

The 29-year-old Sonoma native repainted the outside of the building back to its original white and brought his old-fashioned small-town sensibilities to the business, with his fondness for classic cars and emotional connection to restoring them to their original grandeur.

“When you get into an old car, like a farm truck, it has that smell,” Casolla said. “Some people want to relive memories in a car and when you restore it, it’s rewarding.”

Marshall’s Body Shop is licensed for automotive and body work and does a fair amount of “everyday insurance work,” he said, but it stands apart from its nearby competitors with its focus on custom restoration of hot rods and classic cars.

And Casolla, whose father instilled in him an appreciation for old cars, wouldn’t have it any other way.

Because manufacturers of new cars focus on lower costs and higher production, they could never compare to the quality of classic cars, he said. Restoring these cars, he added, is like “tuning an old guitar.”

Casolla graduated from Sonoma State University with a degree in criminal law and spent most of the past decade pursuing a career in law enforcement. After a short stint as a San Francisco police officer and a series of life-changing events, including the deaths of two grandparents, he realized that a police officer’s lifestyle wasn’t exactly what he wanted.

“Life is too short to do something (just) for money,” he said.

It also could have been the influence of his dad, who builds high-end custom furniture and is, as Casolla said, his strongest advocate. In addition to a shared love of classic cars, his dad is “big on following what you love to do - or, at least, giving it a shot.”

In fact, Casolla and his two brothers all have eschewed the 9-to-5 lifestyle for less traditional jobs - one brother is a fashion model and personal trainer, and the other owns a coffee cart business in Guerneville.

Cliff Casolla, in particular, was inspired by witnessing his dad transform an idea from a drawing to a tangible piece of art on a showroom floor.

“I was exposed to a dying breed of tradesmen,” he said.

He channeled this exposure into fixing up classic cars throughout high school and while working as a police officer. Casolla said he would come back to Sonoma after a long day in the streets of San Francisco and spend hours working on cars in his small garage.

When the opportunity arose for him to buy the licensed and permitted body shop from his friend Kevin Flores, who had owned Marshall’s since 2000, he couldn’t pass it up - even though most people “thought he was nuts.”

Working in the shop is “priceless,” he said. “As opposed to sitting on the freeway, driving home, trying to get out of your head what you did that day.”

Marshall’s Body Shop was built in the late 1930s and was the only service station, with three gas pumps, between Santa Rosa and Sonoma. In the 1950s, the Norrbom family took it over and, in addition to a service station, it became the home for the town’s only tow truck and ambulance.

“It had an Andy Griffith and Barney Fife feel,” said Casolla, referring to the classic “Andy Griffith Show” TV comedy. The owner of the shop was also an ambulance driver.

Later, the Norrboms made the door of the garage larger to accommodate the town’s only fire truck.

In the 1970s, Bob Marshall bought the building and converted it into a body shop. It still serves the same population of car owners today, from Kenwood to Sonoma, but Casolla’s word-of-mouth reputation already has attracted classic car aficionados from as far away as Australia.

As Lucca, his 2-year-old Doberman pinscher, followed Casolla around the shop, he said that even though there aren’t enough hours in the day for him to get everything done, he ultimately has more free time now than he did in his previous career. He’s traded a police pension and early retirement for the ability to have his dog at work, commute by bike and spend holidays with his family.

And what would be even better than that, Casolla said, is to someday rebuild his dad’s 1956 Chevy and take him out for a cruise.