Graceland Automotive has the greatest waiting room in the history of man.

I say that with little fear of contradiction. Waiting rooms are rarely places to dawdle if one has any choice. The motif generally runs to plastic chairs with ancient gum stuck beneath them, magazines that are older still, and candy machines filled with selections that may pre-date the magazines.

So the second-floor lounge at the aptly named Graceland, an auto shop in the North Side industrial area between Route 65 and the Ohio River, is a revelation. The owner, Paul D'Amico, a former Elvis impersonator, wants to be sure his customers' waits aren't a purgatory.

We're talking four leather couches, eight high-backed stools surrounding a bar with beer on tap, a wide-screen TV, a dart board and a pool table.

I'd first heard about the place at the corner of Preble and North Franklin from a neighbor whose Volkswagen Beetle found its way there some months ago. He told me about the Elvis murals outside, the Elvis memorabilia inside, the amazing lounge overlooking the shop floor and the gracious owner.

Then I forgot about it.

But after I suffered a fender- (and thumb- and garage-door-track-) bender last week, my insurance man, like a good neighbor, directed me to Graceland Automotive. A tow truck came for my car and soon enough I was meeting the affable, 6-foot-2 D'Amico.

If D'Amico, 45, isn't living the American dream, nobody is. As a teenager in Bloomfield, he was taught how to do body work by Bob and Carmen Petraglia, local legends in the auto trade with a shop at 3800 Liberty Ave. Bob showed the youngster how to fix up a 1971 Chevy Camaro "and I was hooked," D'Amico recalled.

Bob Petraglia confirmed the story yesterday and said D'Amico had a knack for cars from the get-go. At 16, D'Amico went to work for the Petraglias, but at 20 he split for Las Vegas.

He spent a year there, not working for a wage but playing blackjack and roulette well enough to get by. Occasionally, he'd play the slots, and when he hit for $4,800 and heard there was a 1974 Corvette for sale for $5,500 back in Pittsburgh, he came home. He bought that car and got his old job back with the Petraglias.

As we talked, an Elvis clock on the wall behind him had Mr. Presley in a perpetual wiggle, so I asked what drew him to a singer who died when D'Amico was only 13.

Because he was "the coolest," he answered, with money, cars and beautiful women. Back in the '90s, D'Amico was an Elvis impersonator, but that was more of a hobby. He never stopped working on cars.

Mike Mori, fleet manager of Regency, a corporate limousine service just down the road on Beaver Avenue, walked in about then. Mori praised the level of skill at Graceland and how the men will work on the weekend if that's what a good customer needs.

"Put the bar and the pool table aside," Mori said. "When these guys get down to business, it's business."

About 60 percent of his business is insurance referrals, but walk-ins are welcome -- though they'll walk into a little lobby with an Elvis mannequin in a bejeweled white jumpsuit waiting in a chair ahead of them.

D'Amico started the business eight years ago with the help and encouragement of his younger brother, Mike. His cousin, John Uddstrom, painted murals outside and inside the shop in the summer of 2003 after a visit to the Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tenn. D'Amico himself has never been, saying "I'm not a big traveler." He'll go to Vegas or Florida, but never for long. His shop always beckons.

He doesn't look much like Elvis these days, having shaved his head in solidarity with a friend undergoing cancer treatments, but he had the Elvis hairdo until then.

Stephanie Addington of Mount Washington came into the shop with an insurance referral yesterday morning and said, "This is neat."

She'd been to the real Graceland a couple of years ago. They don't work on cars there, she confirmed.

Pity.