Original article published in the Mower County Independent, Thursday, June,12 2025. Reprinted with permission and gratitude.
By Gretchen Mensink Lovejoy
Greg Melartin’s taken a shine to chrome, and oh, the smiles it’s going to polish up.
“They’re for putting a smile on people’s faces. Some belong behind glass to preserve them for future generations, but the majority of them should be driven. The cars I’m buying and selling are nice, but they are drivers – something you can get in and enjoy the day driving them,” stated Melartin, proprietor of Matt’s Body Shop…and now of Top Hat Classics, a classic car dealership open at his collision and repair shop on the very north edge of Spring Valley, where he specializes in “classics, unique vehicles, motorcycles, cars, fun toys…I also buy and sell classic campers…anything cool and old, like the canned ham campers.”
There’s never been any doubt that Melartin would eventually trade in cars and vehicular curiosities he has effectually lost track of how many vehicles he’s personally bought and sold since he was old enough to steer and accelerate, estimating it at “about 50 now,” but his fascination with chrome, a near-heaven and holy whitewalls experience, began when he was a kid living in a trailer park. His mother’s friend Dave owned a vintage car, the fanciest thing he’d ever seen. It sparked in him a compulsion to tinker, to aspire toward repairing things – even taking his mom’s toaster and other appliances apart – to have the chance to put them back together, to overhaul and create. “It was like a 1932 or 1933 Plymouth my mom’s friend had, and he came to the trailer court we were living in, and from that moment, I was hooked.”
The shadetree dismantler went into the service, became a veteran who moved to New Jersey upon completing his commitment, then became a guy who needed to come home to Minnesota where his mother and grandparents were, and he worked in construction and other fields, but he was always a guy looking for a place to take apart a transmission or stick another magnetic parts tray. Matt’s Body Shop went on the market in late 2020, and Melartin bought it from Chris Czapiewski in March 2021, planning to make it efficient and self-sufficient enough that he could oversee operations and work on what he felt he ought to when necessary to sustain his tinkering habit or expand his business to include new endeavors. “The body shop was set up so that it could operate on its own, that all parts of it were occupied by mechanics, body people and customer service that could do what they need to do, and also, last winter, because it was so warm, there weren’t as many deer collisions to work on, so that meant that I needed to find something to do. This idea to have a dealership has always been in the back of my mind, but to actually get it off the ground…it’s been a year or two since.”
Melartin is always shopping for new wheels because that’s what he’s always done. He even once bought a car and traded it nearly the next day – and there was a cheeseburger and fries written into the deal. To spend an afternoon scrolling through car listings on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist is to him like taking a day to go to a car show, minus the gas money. “I like to find cars on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, through word of mouth. If somebody’s looking for something specific, I can look for it for them. I try to find cars that are mechanically sound and have minimal rust. There are some special cars that I would get that are non-runners, but for the most part, I want running, driving vehicles. It’s easier to make more people smile with a running classic vehicle.”
He’d eventually like to add a pole barn as extra storage for the body shop and a place to stow a few classic cars, because the current arrangement finds his classics parked either next to the body shop or out on the yard. “I’d like to have maybe 15 cars. I’ve always wanted to put an additional pole barn here…I don’t want to have hundreds of cars. I’d like to keep it so that I can still manage the body shop, but this is something for me to do. My business is set up so that other people can handle it, but I like buying, selling, negotiating – that’s why I set up a dealership.” He quipped, “We are a one-stop, full mechanical and collision services shop. We also have full toy services.”
The adventure, for Melartin, lies in “meeting people and making deals.” “I like that people like talking about their cars, their dreams, their stories. A lot of people buy cars because they have memories tied to a vehicle that belonged to their grandparents, parents, aunts or uncles. I’ve sold a couple of bikes so far, and I sold a 1954 Ford F250 to a 20-year-old girl who was smiling from ear to ear.”
Top Hat Classics is located at Matt’s Body Shop on the north edge of Spring Valley. For more information, stop at the body shop, log onto the Matt’s Facebook page, or call 507-346-2161 and ask for Greg.
Courtesy of the Mower County Independent, 135 E Main St. LeRoy, MN 55951, (507)-324-5325
