Frank Hauser's Foreign Car Service

Frank is originally from Germany and was trained as a mechanic by VW. Though he's been in the USA for at least 20 years and speaks perfect English (or at least as perfect as anyone else's), he still retains his germanic attitude toward repairs. He's not bad on any kind of car, but he's a real wizard on VWs.

I had to take my VW Passat 4Motion into the dealer to get a dashboard error code cleared ("Emissions Workshop"). The dealer told me that nothing was mechanically wrong, but they needed to update the computer (for a painful $210). They also said that, since I had 100,000 miles on the car, they STRONGLY recommended that I replace the timing belt since the Passats have an interference motor. I said thanks and got my car out of there as quickly as possible. I then searched Car Talk's mechanics files for a good, private VW mechanic (my regular mechanic wasn't too familiar with timing belts on VWs). Frank Hauser's shop looked good online, I had a discussion with Stewart (sp?) who seemed competent (as much as one could over the phone), so I scheduled an appointment for a week away and asked that in the meantime they call me back with an estimate (Stewart initially guessed $700-800 but needed to look up the parts). He called back two days later with an estimate of $780, which included replacing the thermostat and water pump (which are accessible at the same time as the belt). The next week, we dropped off the car the night before using the key drop. I called the next day at Noon to make sure everything was going ok and talked to someone new (to me), after an initial "What car? Did you make an appointment?" scare, the person I spoke with got my name, found the file and said, "Oh yes, that job is just being finished up now". Later that day I called again to make arrangements to pick up the car after hours. They gave me the bill ($778 - nearly spot on with the estimate), took my credit card and locked the car outside for me. The invoice was stapled to the credit card receipt and placed in my car. It was detailed about the cost of each part, their hourly rate and the number of hours worked. Overall I am very pleased with the service, particularly since the VW dealer estimated $1250 for the same job!