Freeway Automotive

My Story begins in June 2013. My son is coming back from Las Vegas and burns his clutch up about 35 miles outside of the lovely town of Baker, CA. Home of the big Thermometer. He calls AAA and they tow him to the nearest auto shop - Freeway Auto Repair. This place is literally a dump. We are talking 'Sanford and Sons' dump. The boy leaves his car with the promise that it will be fixed in 2 days and returns to LA with his buddies. The clowns that run this 'shop' managed to replace the clutch, but also strip the threads out of a power steering line, mis-align the steering wheel, forget to put the bolts in the plastic engine shroud, and left several braces off the underside of the vehicle. The clown mechanic I talked to, 'Mark', claimed they were not responsible. It took 5 days for them to try to cover up their problems and let us know it was 'done'. This work cost me close to $1000. We picked up the car, paid and made it home. I took it into my trusted mechanic and he immediately found the stripped power steering unit leaking. The next day as my boy drove home with a bottle of ATF to fill the up the power steering, the plastic cowling on the bottom of the engine dropped down and began dragging. The idiots forgot to tighten the bolts on the cowling when they re-installed the transmission. My boy somehow made it home. He took the car into his mechanic and they found that several braces had not been properly replaced and bolts were missing. Ultimately, it cost another $760 to get the car running after the fools in Baker messed up the car. You would be well advised to stay from the Sanford & Son junkyard called Freeway Auto Repair. This place is truly a Norman Bates nightmare. Cost me a stinking $1760 to replace that *** clutch.

I was in the process of driving to Las Vegas when my car began to over heat. I pulled off of the freeway and called AAA to have them send a tow truck. When the tow truck showed up, I had him tow me back to Baker since I was only about 10 miles from there. The shop my car was taken to was Freeway Automotive, right at the end of Baker Blvd. I was then told I would have to stay overnight since they did not have the part I needed there. So I stayed at a cheesey 70's *** flick looking hotel just down the road. The next day I overheard the owner of the hotel and her husband talking about how they had a good thing going with that auto garage. Here is how the scam goes: the tow company takes all people to the same shop, that shop refers all those people to the same motel, and they all charge higher than normal fees and basically split the amounts between the 3 places. Nice scam. So here I am at 6:00 P.M. and finally I get to my car where they claim the repair for my car cost 1200.00 - to replace an intake manifold on what was a 1998 Crown Victoria. I paid double what I should have paid, and they had the balls to ask me to stay 1 more night to fix something else, what they wanted to "fix" I could not tell you, so I said no and drove the car home, nearly 200 miles. The next day, I took the car to my regular mchanic, who had just checked this car 3 months prior, and found no problems. Well apparently when this so called "GARAGE" fixed the intake manifold, they cracked one of the seals for one of the fuel injectors, basically causing my little drive home to fry my engine, and put my life at risk as the car was now running pure fuel into the catalytic converter. So this car which had at one time been running smoothly with no problems was now a potential fire trap. All because this Freeway Automotive cracked a seal and basically caused me to junk the car and shell out 6700 on a new car. Cal State Dept. Auto Repair is useless. The person I dealt with from there did nothing but sit there eating donuts for 3 months then closed the case without telling me. Absolutely useless. So please, if you get stuck, i beg of you, pay the little extra to get towed to Barstow, you will only get screwed in Baker.