Customers travel from as far away as the Lake District to the distinctive, barrel-roofed premises of Whittingham & Sons Ltd, in Rochford.

A few minutes' acquaintance with the Whittinghams and you understand why.

The close-knit family has transformed the normally humdrum business of car maintenance, servicing and sales into a craft calling and a bespoke service.

The effort they put into getting the job right seems almost surreal set against the normal ideas of time-management in the garage industry.

Mark Whittingham, who runs the workshop, recalls the time he spent Christmas Eve on a repair job, "just to get it perfect".

Far from boasting, he is telling the story against himself and his passion for the job.

"The problem, for me, is not having to go to work but tearing myself away from it," he says.

"Saturday nights are difficult for me, knowing I've got to take the next day off."

Mark also says: "The best business decision we ever made was not to expand." It means the garage retains a personal, family-run element.

Customers, of course, appreciate the sense of devotion and they also like the almost old-worldly courtesy that goes with it.

"It doesn't matter how good a mechanic you are in the end," Mark says.

"The important thing is the way you treat people. Cars change, customers do not."

As a shrine to quiet, old-fashioned virtues, Whittinghams is a time capsule.

The things that make it special - and, let's face it, unusual - are a testimony to gene power.

Whittingham men have been acting and behaving like this for a long time.

Whittingham is in the Essex record books.

It is the oldest business in South Essex to be continuously run by the same family, and the seventh oldest business in the county overall.

Founded in Rochford in 1830, the firm has passed through the hands of seven Whittingham generations.

Mark's son Martin works alongside him, shares his passion for things mechanical, and fully intends to spend the rest of his working life in the family business. Father and son share a distinction that may well be unique in the garage industry.

Last year Whittingham gained the garage industry kitemark.

Father and son are both on the certificate.

Whittinghams also have another preoccupation, apart from mechanical engineering.

They tend to share an interest in family history and a pride in their family tradition - understandable in the circumstances.

The garage is well-stocked with memorabilia, along with family and business photographs dating back to Victorian times.

The family tree has been traced directly back to the 1780s, when a Whittingham was working as a blacksmith in Long Melford, Suffolk.

Half a century later the family were settled in south Essex, still practising the same trade.

With the industrial revolution, blacksmithery developed into mechanical engineering.

By the turn of the 20th century, the family had a well-established reputation as carriage-makers.

In 1906, they began their run of record-making.

The Whittingham workshop was responsible for the first car body ever made in south-east Essex.

Whittingham bought a Daimler chassis and engine from France and built the body round it.

"A similar model, owned by Daimler, was shown at the Motor Show recently," Mark says. "Daimler turned down a £6million offer for it."

Whittingham, though, had no cause for financial complaint.

Their car business became so successful, the firm was soon exporting complete cars to America.

For the firm's most lasting contributions to south Essex, you have to look down.

At the end of the Victorian era, the family opened an iron foundry in Rochford.

It was clearly timed to coincide with the great expansion of Southend's drainage system, since its main product was manhole covers.

These covers can still be seen in Rochford and Westcliff.

Like everything about the Whittinghams, they were built to last.

As he explores the long history of the family business, Mark occasionally stumbles across a fascinating titbit.

He has learnt, for instance, that an employee in the Whittingham foundry in 1890 was paid one shilling and sixpence a week (modern equivalent, seven and a half pence).

It was a pittance, but there was a compensation. His wages also included eight pints of beer - a day!

Old family businesses are a dying breed. As other old firms finally sell up, Whittingham & Sons creeps slowly up the record list.

Happily, it is likely to go on doing so for the conceivable future.

Now aged 45, with his son firmly established in the business, Mark Whittingham is able to look forward as well as back. "I have just one ambition left now," he says. "I want to see the 200th anniversary."