Car restoration shop opens in new location

Straight Lines Custom Restoration has been in Tea for 13 years, but recently moved across town.

They were located south of the middle school, but they ran out of room to expand their business so owners Marty and Jodi Anfinson bought some land near the airport. The Anfinsons bought the land last fall and built their shop at 27176 Linda Avenue.

Now they have room for about 25 cars in their new building at once. The Anfinsons have seven employees who work to restore old cars and pickups.

“All of these guys are talented. They pretty much have their own thing. They have several skills,” Jodi said.

Marty started working on cars when he was a little boy living in Garretson. After graduating high school, he starting building fire trucks in Lyons at Rosenbauer. Then he worked at Peterbilt, a couple of body shops and then worked on railcars before starting Straight Lines.

He enjoys restoring classic and muscle cars.

“It’s fun. It’s fun to go from working on something like this (1965 Buick Riviera). This car in 1965 was probably 20 years ahead of its time,” Marty said.

The oldest car they have ever worked on at the shop was a 1917 or 1918 Maxwell. They worked on its wooden spoke wheels. After that the oldest one is a 1927 Ford Model T they currently have in the shop.

“You go back to when it was just out of the buggy era. That was 10 years after they were making buggies. A lot of them after that they made mutual transmissions. That one is actually an early, early automatic,” he said.

Marty said the hardest car to find parts for has been the Riviera and any of the cars that were only manufactured for a year or two.