You were told to take it to your own mechanic. Then you tried.

It is good advice. It is just built on an assumption that usually is not true: that a repair shop wants this job.

Think about it from their side. A pre-purchase inspection on a car that is not theirs, for a customer who may never come back, on a day when the bays are full of work that bills at shop rate. It is not attractive business. So you get "we can look at it in two weeks," or a polite no, or a quick once-over squeezed between real jobs.

Then there is the part nobody warns you about. Even if a shop says yes, you still have to get the car there. For a car you do not own, that means talking a private seller into letting you drive off with it, or getting a dealer to release it for an appointment. Sellers say no. Dealers stall.

And if you are buying from another state, which a lot of our customers are, the whole plan is dead before it starts.

Almost any used car with some age on it has had something done to it. The useful question is almost never "was it hit." It is "was it fixed properly."

A general repair shop does not do body work. They do engines, brakes, suspension, electrics. They are good at that. They are not going to tell you whether a panel was pulled straight, whether the paint will start lifting next summer, whether a structural repair was done to the manufacturer's spec, or whether there is filler hiding rust that will come back.

Our technicians hold a mix of credentials, including ASE, manufacturer and factory training, collision, and diesel. On Enhanced and Elite we evaluate the quality of previous accident and collision repair and screen for flood damage.

A clean vehicle history report does not cover this. Plenty of repairs never get reported to anyone. Bad body work is one of the most expensive things to inherit on a used car, and it is the thing buyers almost never think to ask about.

At a shop you usually talk to a service adviser. He is relaying what a technician in the back told him. Anything you ask that he cannot answer needs a round trip, and it does not always come back.

On a purchase this size, being able to ask "how bad is this really, and would you buy it" and get a straight answer from someone who was standing next to the car is worth a lot.

We are not going to pretend we win every comparison. If you are buying something rare or exotic, a marque specialist will beat us. Someone who works on nothing but air-cooled Porsches, or old Land Rovers, or one specific engine family, carries pattern knowledge you cannot buy from a generalist however good he is. He knows the three things that model always does at that mileage, and he knows it before he opens the hood. If you have access to that person and he will look at the car, use him.

We do inspect classic, collector and exotic vehicles, and we do it well. Exotic and rare vehicles go on Elite for a reason: more time, more technician, more depth. But we would rather tell you this now than have you work it out afterwards.

The same goes for a car you already own and know. If your mechanic has had that car on the lift for six years, he is the right person to ask about it. This page is about a car you have never seen before, owned by somebody you have never met.

Some vehicle types have a minimum package. Classic, collector, performance and modified vehicles start at Enhanced. Exotic, rare and specialty vehicles require Elite. The booking form handles this for you. Full package detail is on the services page.