I think most of you guys know how shops (esp. dealers)work. There are very large detailed books that list how long an average (or even novice) mechanic would take to do a job. This is the labor time you are charged at $65 or whatever an hour. The mechanic is paid less than that an hour but he gets to bill the full amount of time, providing an excellent incentive to finish the job faster. This means more money for the shop and the mechanic (of course the shop and the mechanic take a hit if it takes longer although they always come up with a way of passing the additional time on to the customer. It is routine for mechanics (and lawyers
) to bill more than 7 or 8 hours in a day because of this practice. A friend of mine works in an english car garage where they do MGBs (nightmare) and other old nasty cars. They routinely charge book time plus more as a surcharge for working on such pieces of ? (even if we love them an MGB is still not built to German standards of quality). My friend made more than $50K last year as a result.