C&C Automotive started in 1977 as two bays at the corner of 11th and Reynolds streets in downtown Augusta. There was barely enough room in it for Mary Clements to do the paperwork.
Forty-nine years later there are six shops across the CSRA. What happened in between is documented by people who do not work for us, which is the only kind of company history worth reading.
1977: A Second Attempt
John Clements became a mechanic in 1960, after being laid off from the Savannah River Plant, at a BF Goodrich shop. He liked the work enough that when SRP offered him his job back, he turned them down.
In the mid-1970s he left Osbon Tire Co. to run his own shop. He has been candid about the odds: he did not know much about running a business, and as he told the Augusta Chronicle in 2007, "things was real tough around Augusta" at the time.
"We started out very, very small with very little capacity," he said. Two bays. Within a few years it had outgrown the building.
1981: The Fighter Jet Mechanic Comes Home
Aaron Clements joined his father in 1981, straight out of the Air Force, where he had been a crew chief on fighter jets. "I loved aviation, and I wanted to see the world," he said. "But I always wanted to come back home."
The timing turned out to matter more than anyone planned. Cars were just starting to get computers, and most shops in 1981 had no one who had ever worked on one. Aaron had spent years on aircraft systems. That head start is a large part of why a two-bay shop was still growing while other independents were being left behind by the technology.
It was not always so smooth. As a teenager, Aaron once tried to lower an engine into his own car and put it through the windshield instead. His father still tells that story.
Staying Downtown When Downtown Emptied Out
Two major malls opened in the late 1970s and pulled business out of downtown Augusta. C&C stayed, living on repeat customers and the medical community around it. "We knew one day it would come back strong," Aaron said.
The shop moved into the 900 block of Telfair Street in 1995, where it still is. By the time the Chronicle visited in June 2007, the two bays had become 35, running more than 100 orders a week, with Aaron's sister, niece and oldest daughter working in the business.
What the Outside Record Says Now
The Augusta Chronicle profiled the company on June 17, 2007, at the 30-year mark, and you can read Laura Youngs' original article. Augusta CEO covered it again in September 2021, at 44 years, and that one is here. Neither piece was written by us, and both are worth reading in full.
AAA has approved this shop continuously since May 2001. That is 25 straight years, marked with a plaque in May 2026, and we were the first shop in Augusta to earn AAA Approved Auto Repair status. AAA re-verifies that every year by surveying the members we serve.
The Better Business Bureau rates C&C Automotive A+. Being precise about that: we are not BBB-accredited, meaning we pay them nothing. The A+ is what their own process assigns, which is arguably the more useful of the two.
And the biggest pile of evidence is the one we control least: more than 1,100 Google reviews across the six shops, averaging 4.5 to 4.8 stars per location. They are all on our reviews page, with the replies our team has written back, going to 2019.
Six Shops, Opened One at a Time
- Downtown Augusta: the original business, 1977; in the current 990 Telfair Street building since 1995.
- West Augusta on Wrightsboro Road: 2011.
- Martinez on Washington Road: 2018.
- Warrenville, SC: 2019, directly across from Aiken Technical College.
- Aiken, SC: 2022.
- Thomson: 2024, and voted Best Auto Service Repair in the Best of McDuffie awards in its first full year.
The Seven-Year-Old in the 2007 Photograph
The Chronicle's photographer put three generations in one frame that June: John, Aaron, and Aaron's son Brad, who was seven. The article mentioned that Brad had just bought his first tool kit and was spending the summer taking a junk car apart in his father's shop.
Brad is 27 now. He is one of our best technicians.
That is the part you cannot manufacture, franchise, or buy. The kid in the corner of a 2007 newspaper photo grew up and is now the person who might be diagnosing your car. He is the third generation, working in a shop his grandfather opened with two bays and no idea whether it would work.
Why This Should Matter to You
A shop that has been in one town for forty-nine years cannot afford a bad repair. We are not passing through. Some of the people who bring us a car this month are the children of people who brought John Clements a car in the eighties. And the warranty we write, 2 years or 24,000 miles on most repairs, backed by the shop that did the work, only means anything if that shop is still here to honor it.
That is the one claim in this post you have to take on faith. Everything above it, you can go and check.
