These days, I get my dirty auto maintenance done at the vocational school down the road. Since I’m mostly all thumbs and haven’t got a garage of my own (though I’m most likely getting one these days), I’ve found it easier to book a service at the auto shop they have in their premises and roll down the hill with the parts in the passenger footwell. The students there get to wrench on my car, learn valuable life lessons like why it’s not a good idea to buy a low-mileage obscure Japanese car, and I get a smaller bill than I would get if I took it to any other garage.

But before I get all Lionel Dobie, here are a few photos of the auto shop in question.

So, most likely it’s this guy or someone like him doing the wrenching:

The Karjala beer baseball cap is mandatory, they hand them to anybody coming in at the door.

The Sapporo’s in for monthly maintenance, this time it’s the muffler that’s developed a noisy hole and it’s the passenger side CV joint’s time to get swapped for a new one. The car’s spending the weekend indoors as it waits for a suitable joint instead of the Galant joint that was supposed to fit it; I had the chance to grab these photos of the auto shop as I had to go grab the scissor jack that is shared between my two cars. The Mazda’s now back on the road, so the Mitsu’s probably going to need one of its own these days.

What does it cost to have a car serviced there? Well, the last time they swapped a CV joint they charged 33 euro. That’s about half of what the Mitsu garage charges per hour, of course not including the joint itself.

So, what else is spending time at the shop?

Well, first of all there’s this good-looking light blue Beetle. Doesn’t look like it needs that much bodywork, but whatever is going on is going on at the back.

Another thing is this handsome early-’90s Caprice Classic, a proof that the exorbitant fuel prices here do not automatically discourage everybody from owning a five-litre V8 automobile. Behind it, the doors that used to belong to my Mazda can be seen.

Hey, isn’t that my girlfriend’s brother’s total beater V6 Camaro? Why yes, yes it is. It’s a ’84 Sport Coupe automatic with the worst paintjob in recent memory, but luckily the paint is peeling off it so it’s gradually losing most of it. There are rash-like outbursts of rust cracking the surface, that bring to mind Tremors. The Camaro’s in for welding so it’ll pass inspection, and then it’s back to hooning. Behind it is a Golf GTI with a Jetta face, as over here GTI:s came with a quad setup and the car’s since been treated to a brick setup just for kicks.

To finish the post, here’s a post-facelift K10 Nissan Micra. Tiny, reliable other than hairline cracks in the head, very red. Maybe Ray of hatch fame likes it?

[Student photo credit: Kaleva.fi]