Planning for the Future: The Changing Face of Auto Repair

Change is afoot in the auto industry, and you don’t have to look very hard to find it. Stellantis is on rocky ground. Honda and Nissan are in talks to merge. And the seemingly on-again-off-again shift to EV propulsion dominates the headlines on a daily basis. That’s all to do with new cars, of course, but the field of auto repair is going through its own changes. Today’s cars require a different skill set than yesterday’s cars did, and tomorrow’s cars will advance requirements further.

I’ve worked as an automotive technician since I was 19 years old. In 2010, I finished my own automotive training at Skyline Community College in San Bruno, California. The curriculum in my last two semesters took a deep dive into the world of engine diagnostics and covered everything from the lowly feedback carburetors from the mid-1980s to early batch-fired fuel-injection systems to the then-new direct injection, as well as everything associated with onboard diagnostics. But 14 years is a long time in the car business. So how are modern technicians trained?

Recently, I paid a visit to a busy automotive program. As I happen to work at a community college that houses a well-funded training facility, it required little more than walking across campus one day on my lunch break to gather some facts.

I noticed something interesting as I approached the two looming brutalist-style buildings that house the program—a fleet of vehicles mostly made up of Toyota’s most popular models: Camrys, 4Runners, Corollas, Priuses, and Tundras packed into every corner. A few other Japanese and Korean imports were sprinkled sparsely around the Toyotas, and all of these cars, trucks, and crossovers were no more than five years old.

The walls within the building were adorned with Snap-on and MAC banners, but also with simple acronyms like T-TEN and MAST, which are the manufacturer’s sponsored training programs: “Toyota Technical Education Network” and “Mazda Automotive Student Training.” Mazda is new to the game—MAST kicked off in 2019—but Toyota has been building its network of T-TEN programs since 1986. They work with 38 different community colleges across the country. Honda, not one to be left out, also has a network of 28 schools that host its Professional Automotive Career Training (PACT.) 

My friend and coworker, Louis Krebs, is the shop coordinator for the program. He handles the logistics that keep everything running and manages the Toyotas the students use to learn. He gave me the inside scoop on where things stand.

“They (Toyota) have deemed our fleet of 38 vehicles should be no more than 3 years old. Toyota will send us an overabundance of Camrys, Corollas, Tacomas, and 4Runners because those are the most popular things they sell. They want technicians to be very familiar with the popular models. I don’t even have anything anymore that’s got a carburetor or distributor or anything with plug wires.”

The majority of the Toyota fleet Krebs teaches on had been damaged in transit or were victims of some mistake in production that made them impossible to sell. So rather than send them to get scrapped, Toyota divides them between the schools they’ve partnered with. Students are then trained on those vehicles and more than likely go to work for one of the many Toyota dealerships across the country. And even those students who choose to work for independent shops or even another car company will be well prepared for whatever comes their way because they’ve been trained on machines made by the world’s best-selling automaker.

OK, but if everyone learns with new vehicles, how will anyone know how to fix all the classic cars still kicking around? Well, the good news is, despite carburetors and distributors being outdated, they are still taught in theory, pulled from a shelf and from time to time used to explain what the the world used to look like—and if you happen to run into one, here’s how to deal with it. Drum brakes, too, still get attention, as they’ve only recently been phased out.

But if you consider the average age of vehicles on the road today, right around 12 years old, it’s hard to justify the space required to store vehicles that aren’t prevalent in modern society. Here’s the thing, though, a technician with a solid foundation in diagnostics shouldn’t have any issues dealing with older vehicles. And that’s exactly what these programs provide: a solid foundation to become a quality technician. It’s more than just learning to take things apart and put them back together. Students are taught how to think critically so when they’re faced with something they might not be too familiar with, they’ll have little trouble making a solid diagnosis and repair. 

Of course, there is more to this story than just how techs are trained. The humble independent auto repair shops are constantly faced with new challenges to overcome. Not only are they in competition with corporate-owned dealerships, but they’re also up against franchised quick lubes and tire shops, to the extent that many small shops have stopped taking on jobs they used to do, like oil changes or mounting and balancing tires. Not to worry, though, independent shops aren’t going away anytime soon; their business model just has to evolve with the rest of the industry. 

Beyond the realm of community college training programs and how they are preparing tomorrow’s techs, I got in touch with shop owners who have some valuable first-hand knowledge of the current industry.

Alex Troche is a friend and the owner-operator of Rob Baker’s Garage in Millbrae, California, a modest two-bay shop attached to a gas station that has stood at the corner of Meadow Glen Ave. and El Camino Real since 1968. Troche, a millennial, took over the shop in 2016, and if his Instagram tells us anything, it’s that he’s still willing to work on vehicles as old as the shop itself, a fact he confirmed in our conversation. 

“I do work on some carbureted vehicles,” Troche told me. “Carburetor-specific work is done on vehicles older than 1976. But I do service and maintain smog-era carbureted vehicles. Just don’t have some of the diagnostic equipment used in tuning them. But the rest of the vehicle still needs service and repairs that can be done without issue or limitations.” 

Beyond the fact he’s worked on machines built so long ago they could collect a pension, Troche had some useful insight into other areas of the auto repair field. According to him, one of the biggest issues that everyone will face is a consistent supply of quality parts. Recall that automakers aren’t required to keep parts supplied for vehicles once they’re no longer in production. This means the vast majority of older vehicles are left at the mercy of the aftermarket once the OEM stock dries up. But even still, Troche has continued to service everything that comes through his door. Especially vehicles from the ’90s and early aughts, which make up 80–90 percent of his business.

“It’s difficult seeing parts suppliers cut back on what used to be regularly stocked components,” Troche said. “Having your ’90s and early 2000s brake rotors or ignition parts being stocked at outlying warehouses instead of your local ones can be a shock. Selling a job while it’s on the rack and starting teardown immediately isn’t as knee-jerk of a process as it once was. You have to take a little more time to ensure the parts are going to come within a reasonable amount of time or else you are pulling that one out and another in to fill the time between order and delivery.” 

One of the worst experiences for a shop is a comeback, especially if it’s due to a new part that has failed prematurely. The last thing any business needs is a damaged reputation and for customers to lose faith in their abilities, especially if it’s due to a decline in the availability of quality parts. It’s an issue that has reverberated across the industry and left a lot of people to wonder what the best course of action is.

Rob Fuller, Datsun virtuoso and owner of Z Car Garage in San Jose, California, has simply quit working on certain cars. Nissans and Datsuns made from 1979 to 1989 are now turned away because quality parts just don’t exist, and Rob has refused to put his name on something he doesn’t believe in. And in cases where something did fail, he has kept track of it and made sure to avoid those products next time around. His trick to having reliable parts for his classic Datsun work isn’t really a trick, it’s a humungous supply of NOS parts for 1970–78 Z cars. And his advice to anyone looking to take on servicing less popular classics is to start stockpiling parts now before the good stuff is all gone. 

But parts sourcing is just part of the problem Fuller is dealing with. Like the rest of the industry, he is having trouble finding technicians to help handle the mammoth amount of work he has scheduled. But the issue isn’t just getting someone on the payroll, it’s finding someone who shares his same dedication and passion for the work. Someone who is willing to put in the 10,000 hours it takes to perfect the work.

Despite training programs’ focus on building a solid foundation for techs, Fuller has had his share of bad luck finding good help. “Striving to be really good at understanding and problem-solving isn’t something I’m seeing in the labor force,” he said. “I’ll have people work for me two years, teach them a lot of rad stuff, and then they leave. And two years later they’re doing something completely different with their lives. Since our world is so automated and our world is so convenient, sometimes the things that are hard to do aren’t really getting done.” 

You can tell from even the most brief conversation with Rob Fuller that Z Car Garage is way more than just a way to pay the bills. There’s a piece of his soul in the business and everything that goes along with it. And with a two-year waitlist for classic Datsun work and the normal services they handle on modern Nissans, he has no plans to close up shop. His plan is simple: No matter what the future throws his way, keep learning and moving forward. The same thing he’s done for the past 30 years. 

“I’m not an old timer who’s stuck in the past,” he said. “I’m an old timer who wants to learn from the past, present, and future.”

The sentiment echoed across the board, though, was that the industry isn’t going anywhere. The passionate people who run quality shops aren’t just going to close up their businesses one day and abandon everything they’ve worked toward. They are going to move forward and find ways to adapt to a changing environment. This could mean more owners going to an appointment-only style business, which would give the shop more time to source hard-to-find parts. Rather than have a vehicle sitting around, everything could be ready to go as soon as it rolls through the door. And with the never-ending popularity of Radwood-era vehicles, we could see more specialty shops that handle the ’80s and ’90s stuff, especially as a broader swath of that era’s cars become collectible. 

These are difficult times for making predictions for the auto industry—both the business of making cars and the business of fixing them. Both will go on, of course, and with respect to the repair side, it will require embracing community, continuing to pass on knowledge, and focusing on learning. And maybe the people who were only briefly involved in the industry will rediscover that spark later on, dust off their tools, and get back to fixing rad stuff.