You will find a few garages anxious to please, beautifully equipped and capable of the finest work. The garages of Europe are not to be compared with our best ones. Garage equipment of the newest is to be found frequently, and all the way across the continent. The greater majority of garages are neither good nor bad; and again a few—a very few only—are incompetent, careless and lazy, the men having the attitude that they are doing you a favor in robbing you.
If you know enough about your car to do your own repairing, or know what should be done well enough to superintend others, you will have no trouble. Furthermore, if you actually oversee everything that is done—you know that your car is all right and you don’t have to hope that nothing has been forgotten by a man who knows that he is not going to be the one to suffer if his work is not what it should be. Also you know your car’s weaknesses and in driving can save them. I find garage men who take pride in their garages, glad and willing to serve an owner who takes that much interest in his machine.
On rare occasions, a first-class man resents your persistent superintendence, as though it were a slur on his ability or good intentions. There was a case in the Marksheffel garage in Colorado Springs—it was one of the best, by the way, that I have ever encountered. The car had been driven over 30,000 miles without ever being taken down, and without other care than my own. And before going into such an uninhabited country as the desert, there were several parts that I thought it safer to put in new.
Taking the crank case off and fitting new gaskets, two men worked on it until late into the night. I did not do any work myself this time, but stood watching the men, so interested in the efficient way they were doing the job, that I was unconsciously silent. At the end of about two hours, one of them burst out with:
“I guess you’ve had some pretty tough experience with dishonest garages—is that it?”
“No,” I told him, “that was not it, but that I always wanted to know the exact condition of my engine. Otherwise I might get into serious trouble on the road somewhere.” The situation being thus explained, his former resentment melted entirely, and a few hours later we parted warm friends.
In the case of this particular garage, as well as those whose names are listed in the garage expense accounts ([pages 260-277]), you can certainly leave the repairs to them, unless your engine is to you what a favorite horse is to a lover of animals—something whose welfare you do not want for a moment to be in doubt about.
On the whole, to a man who has had any driving experience at all, and who chooses a proper car, most particularly if it is a new one, the trip will not present any difficulties. And the experiences he may have will prove an incomparable school for his driving and for his ability to tackle new problems with the means at hand.