Started in 2011. Independent ever since.

We opened in 2011 with one lift, two technicians, and a customer list of friends-of-friends who needed honest work done on cars the chain shops would not touch.

14 years on, we have five lifts, six certified technicians, and a 4.9-star Google rating from 287 customers. We are still independent. We are still in Mississauga. And we are still doing the work the chains hand off and the dealers price out of reach.

Why we charge what we charge

Our labour rate is $145 an hour. The shop down the road is $80. The dealer is $190. The reason we sit where we do is not branding. It is the technician.

The technician on your car at Carbon has been working on cars for at least eight years. Two of our six are former dealer techs from BMW and Audi. One came up through a Porsche shop. They cost more to keep on payroll, and they take longer on a job because they actually diagnose before they replace. That difference is what your $145 an hour buys.

What we will not do

• ›We do not charge for diagnostic time we did not spend. If we figure out what is wrong with your car in 20 minutes, you pay for 20 minutes.
• ›We do not replace parts we have not diagnosed. If we cannot tell you specifically why a part needs to come out, we are not pulling it.
• ›We do not start work without a written quote you have approved. Verbal estimates are how customers get surprised at pickup. We do not do that.
• ›We do not refuse to work on a car because it is old, modified, or not in the shop's wheelhouse. We will tell you up front if we are not the right shop for the job. We will not pretend we are.

What you can expect

Photographs of the work in progress. Phone calls before scope changes. A 12-month warranty on labour. A 30-day follow-up text to confirm the repair held. A real conversation if it did not.

Most of our customers come to us through other Carbon customers. That is the only marketing we do. The website you are reading is the only one we have ever paid to build, and we built it the same way we work on cars: deliberately, and only as much as the job requires.