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For many year's I serviced my car at the auto dealer.  I just assumed like many people do, that you got the best service from dealers affiliated with an automaker. It's easy to fall for those used car ads that say, "Dealer maintained" and decide that the best thing to preserve the trade-in value of  a vehicle is to have records proving that it was maintained by a dealer.  I wasn't ever really happy or unhappy about the servicing. I was just doing what most people do - dropping off the car on my way to work and picking it up on the way home.  It's not that I failed to notice all those independent maintenance shops all over the place. I just couldn't understand why anyone would risk going to them.

Then one day, I went in search of a dealer in our area to do the servicing on one of my cars that had clocked 120,000 miles.  It was common knowledge that certain dealerships in our area  overcharged customers and recommended more work than was necessary. So I decided to do a little comparison shopping and the results were eye popping

Most people don't buy a new car to replace one that is running into mechanical problems.  More likely, they're just tired of the old one.  If you read the article Buy and Hold, The Cheaper, Greener Strategy you know that I advocate  buying a car that you aren't likely to get rid of anytime in the next 10 years.  But what if you don't have that option because you made the mistake of buying something less than your dream car 6 years ago.  Are you just stuck with that forest green Camry that you thought was a bargain?  No, you just have to do what every teenager has done with his jalopy since the 1950s: Pimp that Ride!