Admittedly I missed this distinction, but does the point still stand?

A BMW owner has fussier standards (on average) than a Toyota owner. The 'higher touch' a service you're trying to provide, the less welcome these interventions will be. If there's a distinction between a normal-car garage and a luxury-car garage, this probably comes down to some sort of licensing or certification from those luxury brands. Seems plausible to me that luxury brand X could stipulate things like availability of human contact points.

Re: not being a car mechanic, it's true, but I'll have you know that I replaced my own blower motor a few months ago :)

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keiferski 9 hours ago | parent [-]

This isn’t accurate. Lots of types of people own older used European/luxury cars, it’s not just a rich people thing. Used BMWs especially aren’t that expensive compared to new cars.

This garage is for those older cars and has no connection to the actual manufacturers, so there is no licensing required.

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NiloCK 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Appreciate the distinction. Probably 'the thing' I'm referring to applies more directly to dealership mechanics.

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keiferski 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure and just to add a funny anecdote here: a family member of mine used to own a 1980s Jaguar. Beautiful car and he probably paid $5,000 for it, but it had issues pretty much every month. His reasoning for keeping it was that the monthly repair costs were roughly equivalent to what a new car payment would be.

I agree with you on the dealership dynamics though.

	▲	qup 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		At some point he should run out of problems. Jaguar-of-Theseus