-
Is Specialization on its Way Out?
Things have changed over the years. Compare a few decades ago to today from the viewpoint of the average car owner.
Imported cars were unique, odd, or both, and most everyone knew that. Today, they are more similar to domestic vehicles than ever before. Many folks have no idea if their car is an Asian, European, or domestic nameplate. Often, they have one of each in their driveway. The “Ours is a Ford family” tradition is all but dead. The odds that a soccer mom knows her Land Rover is British are slim. Hondas are made in Ohio and have been for a very long time. Fords come from Mexico. Toyotas come from Detroit.
Today, when a non-car buff consumer asks the local shop if they can service his Passat, and they tell him no, he thinks they probably aren’t very good mechanics. It’s a car from the number one car company in the world. What’s the big deal? Every year a Kia is more like a BMW, and a Chevy is more like a Jaguar. There was a time when virtually no independent shop that was not a Euro specialist would even allow a Mercedes in their parking lot. Today, many shops of all types will look at pretty much anything, and with rarer exceptions each year, they will service it just fine.
Why do some shops seem to fix any car make with few problems? Primarily, attitude. If the shop owner believes it’s impossible for his shop to successfully service Packards, his staff will be terrified if one wanders in one day. Of course, the reverse is also true. Today, domestic-only shops are nearly extinct. Most one-time domestic-only shops regularly service all Asian cars and some Euro cars. Most former one or two make Euro specialists now service several Euro brands while many also service some Asian nameplates.
As we get closer to a world car every year, specialist car counts will fade as all the other shops in town take bites out of their former exclusive client base. The times they are “a changing.”
-
1 Reply
-
Tom,
I disagree with the notion that specializing is on it’s way out. When you can’t even reset the maintenance reminder let alone get diagnostic information without having the factory Scan Tool you can never be successful being an all makes/all models shop. Focusing on specific brands allows you to spend money on all the needed tooling for that brand and you use those tools on a regular basis. Spreading the same dollars across the entire spectrum of vehicles leaves you with lots of holes in your tooling. Our techs become way more efficient at working on limited brands. Also by specializing you become the local expert, even more so than the dealer. Maybe it’s due to our choice of brands that help with that. We specialized in Subaru, Honda and Toyota in that order on the light duty side. People seek us out especially with Subaru vehicles. On the HD side we are mostly an all makes/all models shop but it is becoming way more difficult there as well with all the exhaust emissions equipment and the need to do flash updates 2-3 time per year on some applications(Isuzu).
Log in to reply.