GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – Cars are expensive. And they’ve been getting more expensive over the past couple years.
with that issue at hand, local auto repair shops like Fair Muffler and Brake in Green Bay are seeing more people opting for fixes.
“Right now if you’re looking at buying a car, you’re probably paying, from what I’ve been hearing, you’re up maybe 20-percent over the last year or two years. For used vehicles, the percentages aren’t a lot different,” said Shop Manager, Theo Terrell. “If you bought a car for $15,000 a couple years ago, you can probably sell that car for $15,00 right now regardless of the mileage you put on it.”
Terrell says they’ve seen a lot of people coming through and spending more than they typically would on a vehicle that might not be worth it in the long run.
“At this point, they’re not looking for another vehicle. They say ‘You know what? This might be $2,500 and that might be more than I want to spend on this vehicle, but that’s a whole lot better than spending $20,000 on something I really don’t think is worth $20,000…they need something that’s reliable and can run right now,” Terrell said. “Maybe they had a plan where, in the next year or so, they were planning on replacing their vehicle and they’ve changed that plan because of the inflated costs…They’re just going to ride out the vehicles they have at this point for another X-amount of years until things stabilize.”
However, it’s unclear how long it could take for that stability to occur. Shortages in microchips continue to impact the market, and while factories are being built in the U.S. to alleviate that issue, it can take as much as a decade for such facilities to be completed. It may take a few years before supply chains are cleaned up, Terrell says.
As for finding a shop to get some work done on your vehicle, Terrell has a few recommendations.
“Find a shop that you trust and stick with them,” Terrell said. “That’s one of the more annoying and frustrating things on my end, is when I’ll have somebody come in with a problem – and it’s an expensive problem to fix – but they’ve had three other people look at it and they all have different ideas of what’s going to fix it.”
Terrell says he’s had lots of extra conversations surrounding why he doesn’t think what a customer was told at a different shop is correct, and that such situations can cause distrust between the shops and potential customers.
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