The owners David Parisi & Gregg Benningfield first met when they were 15 years old. They both attended Booker T. Washington High School and became friends through their interest in cars. Thomas Roark, who used to help with our front desk, was their Auto Mechanics teacher at BTW. David & Gregg completed the 2 year curriculum and wanted to stay in Roark’s class even longer. Roark was able to extend the class curriculum so they could add another 2 years to the auto tech program. After graduating BTW, David went on to OSU for Mechanical Engineering and Gregg completed his associates in Mechanical Engineering.
Gregg was hired at Lexus in 1990, which was the brand’s first year of production. He became a senior technician with the company and worked for them for 12 years prior to starting Stellar Auto Service.
David worked in the aerospace and unfortunately that industry was not as stable during 2001. At the time he was working Dallas, but wanted to be closer to his family in Tulsa.
David & Gregg decided that they wanted to work on cars together again and create a business that reflected their ethics and quality of service.
They started their business in January 2002 at a shop near 21st & Sheridan. Over the next several years, through word of mouth, business began to grow. That’s when Thomas Roark, the recently retired auto mechanics teacher from BTW, came in to help at the front desk.
In 2009 Stellar had out-grown their old shop and built their new location at the 6100 Center in Broken Arrow. At that time we hired our first technician, Daniel. Daniel had been a general auto mechanic for several years, but Gregg helped him to become specialized in Lexus and Toyota. Thomas retired in 2010 and Christy took his place at the front desk. After more years of growth, we were contacted by Toyota technician, Joe Morgan, that was interested working for us. Joe had been trained by Gregg at Lexus of Tulsa before working at Toyota for many years. In 2021, Shaun Hembree, who was a former Toyota technician and had over a decade of Toyota customer service experience, joined out Stellar Family.
We are Tulsa’s premiere independent Lexus, Toyota & Scion specialists. Call for maintenance, service and repairs on Toyota, Lexus & Scion in Tulsa, Broken Arrow and surrounding areas in Oklahoma.
