Diamond in the rough
The family values of the business sprout undoubtedly from the love her father had for cars, which he passed on to her.
ONE of Tereaza Fortmann’s earliest memories is not of playing with dolls, but rather with car jacks with her brother in her father’s worskshop.
True petrol heads know and can describe the feeling of excitement that courses through their veins when they spot an interesting car, or a friend mentions something about anything with an engine.
For the past seven years, Tereaza and her husband Deon have been living their passion as the proud owners of Louis Motors in Empangeni.
A qualified bookkeeper, her everyday work ranges from ordering spares and doing admin for the shop and calling up a storm.
Her true passion however, lies with the cars.
‘I thrive on it,’ she laughed. ‘I live to find spares for our customers that are cheaper but still original spares. It’s like bargain hunting and I can’t get enough.’
Tereaza possesses a unique talent. She is able, with a considerable success rate, to listen to the noise a car makes and then diagnose the problem very quickly.
‘I do a lot of the preliminary diagnostics on the cars that come in,’ she said. ‘Most of the time I can tell from the sound the cars make what the problem is or where to start looking for the problem.’
Especially pleasing for her is identifying a problem where another mechanic has failed.
‘We always try to impart the best possible service without costing our customers a small fortune,’ she said.
The family values of the business sprout undoubtedly from the love her father had for cars, which he passed on to her.
She fondly remembers some of the cars her father had given her over the years, the good and the bad.
‘Whenever I think of that workshop my dad had, I remember my brother and I playing around in the shop,’ she said. ‘I guess you could say I was born into it.’
Her dream is to one day race in the hot rod category at the Oval track.
For now, she is content helping her husband fix broken cars.
