Jack's Volkswagen Repair

The dune buggy was built in a Volkswagen shop. That much was known from the car itself, a VW-based buggy, but not whose shop, until Mark Valentine said so on a Grove City Facebook thread in July 2026:

"My good friend Greg Cook who I helped out at his shop, Jacks VW, was involved in making it. The photo they first published in the Record was taken in front of his shop."

And, asked what became of the car: "Last I heard his brother had it in his basement."

The shop

Jack's Volkswagen Repair, 1000 Stringtown Road, Grove City, telephone 871-2328: a business card with the VW roundel and a Beetle, which Valentine posted with his comment. Stringtown Road is the road the Cracker Barrel stands on. The shop later moved, and the Grove City Record marked the move with a photograph:

Jack's VW has relocated their foreign car repair business to 2349 Harrisburg Pike, just north of I-270. Shown above, left to right, are Kenny Norris and Mark Valentine, mechanics; Peggy Cook, office manager; and Greg Cook, owner. They're standing in front of an Audi which is in for repairs.

So the shop was a family business, Greg Cook owning it with Peggy Cook running the office, and Valentine one of two mechanics.

Jack

The Jack of the name turns up in the archive already, in the Record's account of the buggy's first road test on Friday 11 October 1985, "Local inventor gives car its first road test":

Among the witnesses were the Grove City Record; several friends and relatives of Meyer; Jack Cook of Jack's VW Service; and Lt. Col. Stanley Parkinson of the United States Air Force.

Jack Cook, then, was the founder, and Greg presumably his son and successor. That Jack was there the day the car first drove under its own power, alongside an Air Force officer, says how close the shop was to the work: the buggy had been "presented in an idling condition for the Record" a year before, and Stan says in the same article that the year between was spent on the accelerator controls and the burn rate of the gas. The chassis, the running gear and the engine that had to be made to take the gas were a Volkswagen mechanic's territory.

What is still wanted

• The Record photograph Valentine means, "the photo they first published", taken in front of the Stringtown Road shop. The archive holds the October 1985 article; the photograph on the page of the newspaper is the one to find.
• Greg Cook, Peggy Cook and Kenny Norris themselves. Mark Valentine is the route, and the register has the rest: the people who knew Stan.
• Where the buggy is now. Valentine's "brother's basement" and the family's "sold to Quad City Innovations" are the two accounts, and they may both be true in sequence.