National Automotive Service Center

We can’t thank Gabe and the guys at National Automotive enough for the recent service on our daughter’s car. Our daughter is a student at SFA and we live almost 1000 miles away in northern Illinois, so we just had to trust what a repair shop had to say. They kept her car for 2 days, drove it a couple of times and couldn’t hear the mysterious sound she was hearing in her front end. They put it up on the hoist, looked underneath, took care of a loose heat shield, greased everything and checked out the rest of the car. Everything looked good. Gabe called us to keep us informed of what he was doing and what he «didn’t find». He reassured us the car was safe and our daughter could come pick it up. He didn’t charge us a dime — said that was he was there for! WOW — you don’t often get service like that anymore! Thanks Gabe and the rest of the guys at National Automotive — you have earned a loyal customer!

These guys quoted me $ 2200 for a job and I called two other shops to compare prices and the other shops both offered me half the price at $ 1100. I didn’t tell the other shops what I was offered by national automotive.
National Automotive just doubled my price and tried to get an extra $ 1100 from me.

I’ve been in twice this year, first for a car inspection and today for tail light issues. Both times I was very impressed by honesty and efficiency of service. Friendly too! Thank you I will be back!

I took my car to National yesterday and they have a great turnaround rate! But my car has dirty hand prints on the upholstery and there was a cigarette butt on the floor of the driver’s side.
They’ll get the job done but your car will need a good cleaning after leaving this garage!

I’ve had to have my car towed to National twice now. The first time I broke down in the middle of Railroad street while delivering pizza. While honestly they couldn’t find anything wrong, I have an idea of what happened (I had just drove through some serious water on North Street and I think it stalled me). All they charged me for was the like gallon or two of gas they put in my car to try and see if that was the problem. Very fair and honest.
Then a few months ago at the end of 2013 I was pulling into a parking spot at Wal Mart and come to learn the cable in my gear shift had snapped, so my dash said I was in park, but my car was actually still in neutral. So I had it towed to National because I live at Chevy Chase Apartments and I knew I’d likely have to walk to the repair shop to get my car when it was fixed (which I did) and so I chose National because it was the closest and I’d had a pretty good experience the last time.
While my car was there, my parents and I decided to get my fuel pump replaced which we knew was going out. While the cost to repair both ran about $ 700 – 800 I don’t feel like I got scammed or screwed over. Fuel pumps are apparently very expensive, and while my dad had planned to change mine over Thanksgiving break my mom decided that while it was in the shop, and instead of my dad taking time out of our Thanksgiving break together we’d just get National to repair it.
I didn’t have the FULL payment on the day I went to pick up my car, so I paid the majority of the bill which I did have. They allowed me to write them a check to hold on to with the remainder until I could call back and pay the rest with my card.

I’ve had to take my car here twice for various random happenings and always felt appreciated. A college kiddo with little knowledge of cars, I made a great opportunity to be hoodwinked i’m sure, but the guys here never tried to tell me anything fishy. I found them helpful, friendly, knowledgeable and would return again if I needed some work done.

Used to bring my car (an hideous neon green Hyundai Tiburon) here a lot in college and never felt like the guys at National were screwing me over or doing shoddy work. Obviously, no one really enjoys paying mechanics anything but they were always more than reasonable in my book.
3.5 stars.