Living the dream: 25 years later, Severo checks off box from sixth-grade assignment

Dec. 12—When 12-year-old Jim Severo imagined his future life for an assignment in Mr. Labonowski's sixth-grade class, he produced a paragraph displaying careful penmanship and a detailed vision of where he would be in two decades — enough to rate a grade of 100 and the comment "Good job."

A quarter of a century later, Severo has done a good job checking off nearly all of the boxes he established for himself as a 12-year-old.

Job and wife? Check and check.

Nice house in a good location in Meadville? Check.

Drive a Chevy Tahoe or Blazer? Check: At least one Tahoe has been among the 50 or so vehicles 37-year-old Severo estimates he has owned over the years.

Own his own car dealership? As of last month, that one's a check, too.

Severo, who has operated Ranz Bar & Grill, 10950 Liberty St., for the past 13 years, opened Prime Ridez LLC and Rhino Linings of Crawford County in November. Located directly across the street from his bar, the dealership stocks a small selection of hard-to-find used vehicles while also offering bed lining and custom upgrades and accessories that are hard to find elsewhere without a trip to the Erie or Pittsburgh areas.

Tyler Bizzarro of Meadville had made such trips in the past, but during a recent stop at Prime Ridez, he said it's nice to have an option "right down the road."

Bizzarro's 2020 Ram 1500 Laramie had already been lifted — modifications to the vehicle's suspension that increase its height and typically include larger-than-average tires — and he was back to have power steps installed. Not having the power steps with the elevated truck was having an impact each time he climbed in.

"I'm creasing my leather," he joked.

In an impromptu tour of the new showroom that followed Bizzarro's visit, Severo showed off a varied selection of vehicles that included a 2021 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 with just 1,800 miles, a 2011 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, and even a fire-engine-red 1992 Chevrolet Lumina Z34 with just 15,000 miles on it.

The Lumina, like the business itself, was a passion project, Severo said. He tracked it down because he remembered his father driving the same model when he worked in car sales in the 1990s and the car figured prominently in his formative car-related memories. It holds a special place, but like everything else, it was for sale too.

"I'm looking for something supercharged, something lifted, something unique," Severo said as he strolled past a golf cart with a lifted suspension, glossy black rims and off-road tires. And if a vehicle doesn't fit that description, the business is equipped to make it happen, if not now then further down the road.

"Don't come to me for your next car," he said with a delivery that was catchphrase-ready, "come to me for your dream car."

Being in the business of dream cars is a dream come true for Severo, who said the building — until recently the home of Olan Wood Products — feels like a "big toy box."

Nowhere is that feeling more evident than in the office, where dozens of model cars line the walls in an elaborate display. Behind the desk is another display: a movie poster-sized blow-up of that sixth-grade assignment in which he wrote, "In twenty years I would like to have a job at a car dealership or own one myself."

Doing what moms do, Severo's mother had held on to the assignment. When he turned 32, Severo was married, a business owner, had owned dozens of the cars he had dreamed of as a kid, and had done much more — perhaps most notably he had served as a combat medic during the late-2000s deployment of the 56th Stryker Division's Cambridge Springs-based First Battalion, 112th Infantry.

What about that car dealership dream, his mother asked. It was still there, it turned out, and over the next few years it began to take shape, with the pandemic slowing things down for a while. Along the way, Severo's wife had the handwritten assignment enlarged.

The result is not exactly the dealership that 12-year-old Jimmy envisioned. The die-hard General Motors fan had envisioned a fleet of Chevys, Buicks, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, GMCs, Cadillacs and even some Geos. In fact, the all-GM approach was the one point that longtime Neason Hill Elementary School teacher and Ford aficionado Frank Labonowski called little Jimmy on.

"What!" Labonowski wrote below Severo's paragraph. "No Crown Victoria?"

While some of the details differ, Severo felt that both his younger self and his former teacher, who died in 2011, would be happy with the results. Twenty years after starting his first area business as a senior project in high school — Prime Detailz inspired the name of the new dealership — he's still serving the community that forged him.

"It's literally living the dream," he said.

Mike Crowley can be reached at (814) 724-6370 or by email at mcrowley@meadvilletribune.com.