When you’re buying a brand new car, chances are you plan on taking it to the dealership for regular maintenance or even repairs. This works well if your vehicle is still under warranty or the dealership you purchased the car through offered some type of maintenance plan to go along with the car. After a few years or a certain amount of mileage, the warranty wears off, and that doesn’t mean everyone stops going to the dealership. There is a specific expectation that comes with taking your car into the dealership for work, but it isn’t always an option, and sometimes it isn’t worth the added cost.

Going to the dealership

A lot of people assume that the brand’s dealership is the best place to go if you want high-quality work done on your car. For Porsche especially, not just any mechanic can work in your car. There are special tools that are required, ad they because most of their cars are mid-engine that require some specialized knowledge to get the work done quickly and efficiently.

General maintenance on a car like a Porsche requires a little bit more than a standard oil change. Even to do an oil change on most European cars requires specialized tools, filters, and even sometimes oil types that your average mechanic may not carry. Because of this, a lot of people opt to just go straight to their local dealership.

Maintaining your Porsche

Not every Porsche owner lives a reasonable distance from the nearest dealership. Some people can live states away, and if their car requires extensive repairs that could mean paying a pretty heft fine to get it towed. Getting work done at a dealership is typically more expensive as well, and that can deter people from getting as much work done as they could possibly need.

Finding a reliable Porsche Mechanic

You don’t necessarily have to take your Porsche to a dealership to get quality work done on your car. For many people, it could be easier to find a European car specialist or even a Porsche-specific mechanic nearby. These mechanic shops can be a lot smaller than your standard dealership, but that doesn’t mean they offer less than the highest quality of work. In fact, you might be surprised to find that your local Porsche mechanic might even know more about your car than the techs at the dealership.

While I live within 20 miles of the nearest Porsche dealership, I still took the time and did an extensive amount of research before deciding where to take my used Porsche Cayenne. I settled on a locally owned European shop named Vlad’s Autobahn that had even more positive reviews than the dealership did. After a quick trip to the facility to ask a few quick questions, it was clear that the team there knew just as much about Porsche’s as they did at the dealership, maybe even more.

Shops like Vlad’s are small and locally owned, meaning they have to offer high-quality work to stay in business. They usually work on a range of European vehicles, but unlike dealerships they work on as many classic Porsche’s or older models as they do new ones, making them a great canditate to take your Porsche regardless of year. If you’re looking to customize or upgrade your Porsche with anything from new wheels to performance tunes they can have more hands-on experience than dealership techs that do a lot of recall-based worked instead.