Good Dealer or Mechanic in the Pittsburgh Area
 

Mods, if this needs moved to a regional board, feel free to do so...I was just hoping to get more exposure here.

Anyway, I am a new owner looking for a good dealer or mechanic to perform any work on my 8 that I don't have time to do myself (I'd love to spend everyday in the garage with it, but the salary for that isn't quite what I'm looking for).

I am looking for a dealer or mechanic around Pittsburgh, PA or possibly even towards the Youngstown/Akron/Cleveland area. If anybody has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Thanks!

Welcome to the club! -- I've been letting Rohrich Mazda take care of my 8 and they've been reasonable with me.

do not go to budd baer or moon township mazda fyi

Btw if you do end up going to Rohrich Mazda, tell the service rep (most probably John) I sent you

This is an interesting thread... I was searching for keywords "mechanic" and "Pittsburgh" and came across this one because I was looking for a Mazda mechanic that WASN'T from Rohrich.

I've had three experiences with Rohrich in the past, and all three of them were suspect:

1. In 2003, after testdriving a Protege5 at Billco, I tried spec'ing one out but as Mazda was phasing out the protege altogether, I could only find ones that were already made and available. Billco couldn't find the car I wanted. Rohrich could find it, but wanted way too much money (about $4000 too much money... for a protege!). Moon Township found it and had it for me the following week. Furthermore, when I was at the Rohrich dealership, it was an hour from closing the showroom, but they wouldn't take the time to answer my questions, and the girl working there who seemed to be the sales manager was easily overheard by me as she said, "well is he a buyer or a just a shopper? Because we're closing in an hour so if he's not going to buy then he's not a concern". That was enough for me to decide never to buy from Rohrich. Which was good because it motivated me to see Moon Township, who was not only very professional, but extremely efficient and thorough... and saved me a ton of money.

2. Of course, that didn't dissuade me from using Rohrich to test drive an 8. In 2005 (or 2006 I forget), I went to go see one and maybe drive it. The salesman was eager to oblige and grabbed the keys to one of the new ones they had upstairs. He fired it up and revved it up cold (although if I'm not mistaken, isn't there a rev limiter on a cold engine?) but then he gave me the keys and literally told me to joyride the thing. He said, "I want you to floor it in 2nd gear. Don't bother shifting, see if you can get it to 80". I did this. But in retrospect, I got to thinking, would I want a "new" car that is treated like that by the dealer? Maybe they all do it, I don't know. But I know for example, that Subaru won't let people test drive STi's for that very reason.

3. I went to get my protege's timing belt replaced per the maintenance schedule. Rohrich Mazda wanted more than twice as much money as it ended up costing me at Firestone Complete Auto Care.



That being said, the reason I tried going to Rohrich for maintenance (#3) is because Moon is far from me and Rohrich is local, and also because Moon Township's maintenance was so horrendously slow and awful (my first and only experience with them was in 2004 for my "free" oil change). Four hours for an oil change was ridiculous. I vowed never to go back there for maintenance.


So I'm glad to hear that Rohrich's maintenance is not as deplorable as their sales. I might have to check them out. I wanted to get a compression test done, but I didn't want to get overcharged or underdelivered, two things I've faulted Rohrich and Moon for in the past. And Billco's just out of the way altogether.