Parkway Auto Body Expands

Parkway Auto Body has been successfully providing quality service to its customers for 65 years and counting – with zero signs of slowing down. In fact, the decades-old family run business just expanded into a second location. The facility – which has called Park Avenue in Nutley its home for the past 18 years – now has a second location in Lyndhurst in the same spot where its founder, Robert “Bobby” Villacari, began his legacy in auto body repair.

“My father originally started in Lyndhurst out of a very small two-bay garage,” shares Parkway Auto Body owner Glenn Villacari about the business’s humble origins. “Later, he moved down the street to Riverside Avenue where the shop remained until he retired and I took over in 1996.” Now, Parkway Auto Body has returned to that Riverside Avenue spot in its hometown birthplace where it was located until Glenn decided to move to Nutley in 2004 to meet the needs of the business at the time. Following the move, the Lyndhurst location was rented to other businesses. But as if it was fate, the building was unoccupied last year when Glenn found he needed more room to deal with the overflow at his Nutley shop.

“We were so busy we needed more space,” relays Glenn. The vacant Lyndhurst location presented itself as a logical means to managing Nutley’s overflowing bays. Luckily, the Lyndhurst location was equipped with a spray booth and other equipment to handle painting and other needs.

(L-R) Parkway Auto Body’s Nutley location & the newly renovated Parkway Auto Body in Lyndhurst

“It’s like the perfect storm that it all fell together that way.”

Then fate stepped in again. Customers began coming through the Lyndhurst door asking for estimates, and insurers also expressed interest in work at the location. The opportunity presented itself, and “it just made sense” to open it as a second Parkway Auto Body location. They renovated the building and officially opened its doors in early May of this year.

“Without my father, this wouldn’t be in the cards,” Glenn says of the legacy he’s been honored to continue. His father passed away last year at the age of 85. Had he not grown up in the business and followed his father’s footsteps, he doesn’t know where he’d be working today. Before his father brought his business to Lyndhurst, he started with a Gulf gas station just off the Garden State Parkway in Irvington. That is where the Parkway name comes from, Glenn explained. His father was introduced to auto body via a bodyman who rented space at his gas station. His interest in collision repair reshaped his career and business. When it came time to open the Lyndhurst shop, Bobby kept the Parkway name, and Parkway Auto Body was born. Although he spent his summers working at his father’s shop from the age of 13, Glenn didn’t know what career path he’d take, yet the enjoyment of working on cars never left him.

“I went to Montclair State University for two years, but the demand at the shop grew; I was needed there, so I

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