The Company has been trading since 1980 but can trace its roots back to 1950 in Falkirk,Scotland where Morton's the family owned car repair workshop first opened.
During the Seventies Alex Morton moved to West Yorkshire and worked at various dealerships including Olympia Garage in Bradford which supplied many exotic cars such as BMW,Ferrari,Lotus and the occasional Ford GT-40,Alex also visited the Lotus factory in Norfolk and received training on various Lotus models and became qualified by Lotus Engineering.
Alex then worked for a BMW dealership as a Technician and in his spare time would build Lotus Super 7 kit cars for Clients in his workshop at home aswell as training at BMW in Dover gaining more product experience and using the local Pub for hard earned “refreshments” during breaks.
Alex was now a fully qualified Technician for BMW.
In 1980 Alex set up his own Business from a local workshop and left the dealership network and quickly gained a large customer base serving the local surrounding areas of West Yorkshire.The customers who had previously used BMW for their servicing requirements made contact with Alex in his new business and this transposed into a niche to service and repair the BMW brand independently,maintaining a transparent one to one customer service.
The subsequent growth of business meant that a move to a bigger workshop was needed -specifically with at least two vehicle lifts to cope with the extra volume of work and luckily a suitable property became available in the same area which was ideal.
During the Nineties Alex's Son Ian would visit his workshop after school hours and showed a great interest in cars engaging in some minor work experience;Ian was equally interested in Commercial Aviation but decided to pursue his passion for cars aswell as learning to fly light aircraft from the age of 15.
In 2002 Ian started to work in the Business full time and initiated a very steep learning curve working mainly on BMW in particular the E46,E39,E36,E34 but also E30 and E28 models which were the mainstay of the Company around this time.These models require specific tools to repair the suspension but also a concise knowledge of the running characteristics of the straight six engines Without using a laptop!
With newer models becoming more complex and with the introduction of new technologies’ a move into GT1 diagnostic testing was introduced and Ian became proficient in operating these systems aswell as keeping an eye on a mechanical engineering skillset.
Today the Business is still operating from the same premises by Ian and is still attracting customers from the Yorkshire Region and receives enquiries from other parts of the Country on a regular basis.
We hope to see you soon.
Best Regards
New Lane Garage
