I've said for a while that we will see a seismic shift in the specialty shop landscape in the coming years as the independent repair facilities that service enthusiast marques will begin to disappear as the owners begin to retire. Like everything else, enthusiasts will increasingly be forced to either give up their cars or begin shipping them to a handful of high-end facilities not necessarily conveniently located.
This is, admittedly, a prediction at best. But as a small Citroen repair facility in upstate New York goes to show, it's already beginning to happen, with no clear indication that a next-generation owner is waiting in the wings. Dave Burnham Citroen is a well-loved name in the French car universe, and as someone who owned a Peugeot for a brief spell, I had his info saved in case I ever needed to be bailed out of a car that I was deeply afraid of breaking.
Thankfully, I dumped the 505 Estate, but many other French car enthusiasts are exceedingly loyal to their weapon of choice - but they're intimidated by working on these oddballs, and for good reason. To lose a guy like Dave is to make the deciding whether it's worth keeping a car that has next to no specialist support and a limited parts network. My long-term shop in Rhode Island specializes in German automobiles and shows no immediate signs of slowing down, but the owner is in his early 60s and his brother approaching 70 (and one heart attack already in the books.) It's an incredibly tenuous situation. Fortunately, another European specialist won't be impossible to find should my chosen specialist decide to retire, but it's never the same. How can it be?
With dealerships showing no interest in supporting older models and a lack of talent coming out of the tech schools that want to work on anything that doesn't involve plugging into an OBD II port, the writing is on the wall. Today, it's Dave Burnham Citroen, which will impact a small number of enthusiasts - but tomorrow, might it be your neighborhood specialist that always gives you a break on parts and can solve problems over the phone?