Do garages charge more if you own a 'flash' brand/type of car?

Has this post just turned up from the 80s when BMWs might have been considered "flash"?

andyt

Could it have something to do with the price of parts for a 'flash car' being more expensive than a normal run of the mill car???

i.e 'normal' cars have plenty of pattern parts available for them, thus costing a lot less, the more expensive cars can be dealer only parts, thus costing a f*ck of a lot more.

Yep, also with some flash cars there can be more to service, such as air con, turbo's, or in some cars they have more than 4 spark plugs etc. Cars such as Mercedes are well known for expensive parts.

In my experience *all* garages overcharge regardless of make of car.

bear in mind this was a long time ago

A friend owned a Fiat 600 (yes, honestly) which was giving trouble - turned out to be the dizzy

We took it to a tune-up specialist - How Much? was the query (not much money around for 19-year olds in those days)

Oh, only a couple of quid, was the response - there's a guy coming in with a Jag this afternoon, we'll just pad his bill out a bit....

Slightly off-topic:

I used to own a Punto - "Y" reg. It had a leak in the radiator in mid-2001, so there was coolant all over the drive. Took it to the local Fiat dealer. They poked around the car a bit, ummed and ahhed and pondered a while. "That'll be £300", they said. "It'll need a new radiator."

Went to the local garage in town. "We'll just pour some gunk in", said the bloke. "Bring it around in a couple of days and we'll fix it for you."

Took the car round as arranged, came back, asked how much. "£10", they said.

Sigh.

What a bunch of clueless wankers.

Puntos have marginal cooling systems, so a new rad. is the only decent option, but not at £300.

However, chucking gunk in there won't help in the slightest, all it'll do is accellerate head gasket failure and possibly worse due to blocked coolant paths in the block / head.

I also have semi-fond memories of owning a Fiat 600D (a little tin slug on wheels) I always thought that it was a pretty well thought out vehicle for its day and very good mechanically. It was also straightforward to service (despite the aluminium head that used to corrode if one used the wrong kind of anti-freeze) although as you say for an impoverished young man, even in the 1960s the price of Fiat spares were astronomical. Unfortunately it was the usual Fiat problem of the floor pan rotting out, that subsequently terminated its life cycle.

Yep. Labour rates are different for prestige cars, but not enormously (say, an extra £8 an hour tops).

In article , Jack writes

SNIP When I had students on work experience at the Mercedes workshops the manager told me that their hourly labour rate was less that that of the local Ford main dealer. (N.London)

Or £18 for eight if it's an early Twin Spark

Is it April fools again?

Air conditioning is an inspection or test bit of work unless it needs attention. Turbochargers aren't fettled with a spanner until they stop working...

Not too long ago, power assisted brakes were considered flash...

My Dad's Mercedes dealer tried to tell him this whilst I was there. Their hourly labour charge was just under £60. "That's strange, Eyres charge £47 an hour" I replied. "Oh, that's not what I mean, what I meant was that with a Mercedes technician he or she does much more in that hour, so it works out cheaper."

Heh.

My local ford dealership charge £99.95 inclusive of VAT per hour.

That would take some beating!

I'm in the wrong career.

One hundred an hour? Where?

I think you'll find it was.

No, apples are certainly cheaper than pears.

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk saying something like:

What was? Itwsbt.