Ideal car shop

[FattyBoomBatty]

If I was going to open a shop, it'd be something that was not already in the area (thinking of Minneapolis/metro here) such as a retail outlet with nice wheels, suspension, carbon fiber parts that weren't stick-on. I'd have a laser alignment rack with a tech who gradumated from suspension school.

I would carry Zero/zilch/nada wheels with black painted spokes and silver lips. talk about gay.

[Halon]

I´ve always thought it´d be interesting if there was an ¨Auto Hobby Shop¨ similar to what they had on all the military bases I lived on. Basically a big garage, with lifts, tools, parts washers, machines for turning brake rotors, etc. But you bring your car there, and do the work yourself. You just pay for stall time, and to use anything that wears (ie using the rotor turning machien). They also have most fluids in stock, lots of misc parts you´d need, and had a pretty close relationship with Napa so if they didn´t have what you needed, they could get it in within a few minutes from Napa. They didn´t have dyno´s or anything cool like that. Just a place for people who want to do things them selves rather then pay a shop to do it to save money, yet don´t have the tools and gadgets needed to do it at home. I just don´t see it being very profitable. I don´t think the ones on base were too profitable, but they weren´t there to make money, they were there just to break even and give the troops a place to work on their cars on base.

[HiImBrian]

Yea that would be pretty sweet. But your right about the lack of profitability though. Was there a time limit? Or could people have their cars there for weeks? haha

[Enes]

I had the same idea as Ju-On, however liability would be a huge issue, and insurance costs would go throu the roof. We had something like that in Bosnia, where insurance was a 7foot 290LBS guy called Ahbab with an AK47.

Payment was done per job with hour limitations, aka rotor turning job should take 3 hours, if you go over its $x/hr.
Also not all tools were same costs, specialty tools were +$x/hr as well unless it was part of the $job cost which lets say you come in for diagnostics which would actualy be $99for 3hrs but would include 3 hr usage of the code reader. If you went in for rotor job and decided to get the code reader as well it would be $55 for 2 hours + $33/hr for the code reader depending how long you have it.

And ofcourse, you break the tool you pay for it unless you pay for the extra insurance. and on top of that you have a second floor with 3 or 4 vendors of other stuff which cut you a check every month for being there % of their profits + rent.

I have tought of this a few years back, but after i checked at the insurance costs and found out that i would be paying for the insurance almost as much as the building loan + the tools it would not have ben worth it.

Damn the liability insurance, but without it, one person fucks up, and drops the car on his foot, sues you for renting him "faulty" equipment, even tho it was his fault fault for not using jack stands, and or proper equipment for the job he was using, you will be closing down really quick.

-E

[HiImBrian]

Well said salesmen!

[Enes]

?

[HiImBrian]

aka that's a really good point! umm well said.

[Enes]

ah, k danke..