Interesting perspective from a local car enthusiast group. Older cars just aren't worth the hassle for repair shops to deal with. The owners tend to be cheapskates, and it's easy to damage something while fixing someone else, and parts are hard to find.
45 years a mechanic.
To make money as a mechanic you need to turn and burn cars, you want cars you can scan and diagnose easily that get parts you can have delivered in an hour. You can't have cars sitting waiting for parts or techs spending hours diagnosing issues.
Currently it's hard to get an oil filter or air filter for a 2002 VW or Mercedes. They are one to three days out.
Let's say you get a pre 1996 car in your shop. No codes, no live data, if you have a running issue you have to start at basics. Test the resistance of the temp sensor at the current temp, then start warming it up and constantly check temp and resistance comparing then to a graph. You need to pin out the ECU and install mechanical gauges on everything. Customers don't want to pay for that anymore and most of us old enough to have the experience to troubleshoot based on experience, have retired.
Let's say someone brings in a 30 year old car for coolant flush. What spec coolant do you use? Using the wrong coolant can pit the head or dissolve the head gasket. Chances are you can't just look it up, you need to read endless forum threads based on opinion and try to figure it out, no one wants to pay you for that.
Does it use a mineral oil or glycol based brake system? Are the fuel lines ethanol compatible? How many people have been knuckles deep in this cars private parts in 30 years? How many people have scabbed in wiring?
If you don't do older cars there are all sorts of issues. You won't know where to get brake shoes rebuilt or arched to the drum, or have the equipment to make lines.
Find some guy with gray hair who knows your car, establish a relationship. I have people whose cars I have worked on for 30 years, I work on their kids cars now…
I did a coolant service on a 1963 190SL, I flushed the system and replaced the coolant, when I did one of the intake manifold coolant fittings was leaking as was the radiator. Both had been fine before I flushed the system. I had to have the radiator rebuilt and painted, the intake fittings are no longer available. I had to get a CNC shop to make them based on what was left of the 4 rotten ones I had. That took two weeks. And three for the radiator. It seemed like a good time to replace the various cracked hoses, they took 9 days to arrive and two weeks for the correct vintage clamps.
Just saying. Don't play with vintage machines and think you're going to get parts at Autozone.
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In some aspects , older cars can be harder to work on than the newer cars because of all the diagnostics on newer cars. Also, a lot of mechanics are not trained on how to work on the older tech. At this point most mechanics don't know how to properly tune and jet a carburetor.
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You want your car to be worked on by a technician who is comfortable with working on it. If they say no, even for a basic service, then they probably are not. Parts are hard to find and little things can go wrong so easily. Find a place that specializes in your "classic" and it'll be better for both parties involved.
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I've worked for shops with these type of policies. It has more to do with the higher probability of consequential damage and parts availability. As a repair shop you get tired of customers demanding you pay to replace the fifteen year old, brittle coolant hose that broke apart the second you touched it. If that part is no longer made, you're screwed.
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