David started his business decades ago and has been servicing my cars for about 8 years. This isn't a big shiny corporate operation, just a couple of lifts in an older industrial area. But, because David has forgotten more about Nissan, Toyota, Subaru, and even old Datsun vehicles than most mechanics ever knew, he can and does tell you what repairs are critical, what is optional, what is needed now, and what can wait. He will also take the time to break the work down to chunks that will fit into your monthly budget.
David will also scold you about routine maintenance like fluid changes, etc. He will lecture you about the importance of keeping up with that stuff and how you can easily get 200,000 miles or more if you just take care of the routine maintenance for your vehicle :-)
This kind of expertise and honesty is hard to find. That means that, at any given time, David has dozens of cars waiting for repairs and it takes at least a week to get an appointment. Good mechanics are in high demand. At times, my repairs have taken and extra day or two because David has moved someone whose car is broken down and has no other transportation to the front of the line.
I happen to meet one of those other customers, an elderly widow with a half dozen grand kids that she drives to and from school and summer camp and one older Nissan Camry. I was supposed to be first appt that morning for a transmission flush but got bumped to do her oil change. Spent 30 minutes chatting with her in David's "waiting room". Nice lady, so I didn't mind. David's son even gave me a ride to a local restaurant and told me they all know her well and have taken care of her car for years. That's how David works. If you can't tolerate that, go somewhere else and pay just as much for half the quality.
Japanese Auto Specialists (JAS) isn't cheap (and David will be more than happy to spend 15 minutes talking about how much it costs to hire quality mechanics these days :-) For one thing, he guarantees his work so he only uses manufacturer or OEM parts, no low quality knockoff China stuff here. David is even picky about which parts distributors he works with.
BTW, there are a few terrible comments here about JAS and I think they are all totally fake. One even claims they deliberately loosened a spark plug wire, paid nearly $100 just to see if JAS could find it, and got a huge estimate for repairs. I don't buy that for one second and neither would anyone else who has worked with JAS.
At the end of the day, I've never had a JAS repair go bad or strand me on the road and I've had JAS do some major repairs on my Infiniti. read more
