Taking my 1974 VW Beetle to the shop can be stressful. The first thing I have to do is to find someone who works on older foreign vehicles. I am not real familiar with the workings of any automobile, and I always wonder am I going to get overcharged? Are they going to fix things that really don't need to be fixed? These are legitimate questions, since I have had both of them happen to me. Next, I want to know if the mechanic I have chosen has worked on older Volkswagens before. I do not want a mechanic who has to read out of a manual to try and fix my car. I prefer to find someone who owns or has owned an older Beetle, a VW Thing (a vehicle that Volkswagen built from 1968-1978) or a Vanagon themselves. Also, it is very important for me to find someone who cares about the old VW's. Some people are like me in the way that they hate to see any older VW in poor condition. This is how I want the mechanic who works on my car to feel. I want them to care about the car more than they care about the money they get paid per hour to work on the car. I feel that a good Volkswagen mechanic will be honest, knowledgeable, and care about the restoration of the old VW's.
             First of all, to find an honest mechanic can be a difficult task. To find someone who does specialty work on older cars can be almost impossible. The specialty mechanics have a tendency to overcharge you for their services. I have been charged various amounts per hour to work on my Beetle. I was charged $ 72.00 an hour to rebuild a carburetor, later I found out I had basically been robbed. These same mechanics also did repairs that did not need to be done at $ 72.00 an hour. It was an expensive lesson for me, but one that has shown me that it is very easy to be taken advantage of. It is important to me to make sure the mechanic gives me an estimate before any work is done. If that estimate seems to be unusually high, I try to find an
             ...