Now, the Analyst

When a child has a fever, he is taken to a doctor. When a pet is acting peevish, it is brought to the vet. But what should people do when the family car starts to cough or shake with palsy? To look under the hood and operate one self is to invite disaster. Driving it around to the local service station all too often results in an overdose of medication, an outrageously swollen bill, and a cure that backfires around the next corner.

Now there is the "car analyst." He sells no parts, makes no repairs, owes no allegiance to Detroit manufacturers. Instead, his sole service is to examine an automobile from its exhaust pipe to its headlights and report just what is wrong with it and what is not.

100 Tests. Car Analysts of Denver is typical. Its 80-ft.-long laboratory with its 77 machines, devices and tools resembles a tracking station for space missiles. While customers nervously pace about the lounge like expectant fathers, their cars are run through an hour-long series of some 100 tests. One machine tests the entire drive line from transmission to universal joints, determines whether the engine puts out as much horsepower as the manufacturer says it should. Another machine tests the cylinders, the r.p.m., the starting system and the general health of the engine. Others estimate the wear left in each tire, analyze the exhaust gases, check brake linings and stopping power, wheel bearings and alignment. Then the inspector sits down with the owner to deliver the good or bad news. Since Car Analysts charges a $20 fee and does not do repairs, it can offer candid estimates of how much the car owner should pay for the necessary work.

In most instances, the company's findings simply point up the shoddy if not shady job many garages do. Last week a mother who was about to take her family on a long trip stopped by, even though she had had her engine tuned, a new brake cylinder installed, and her entire car "inspected" just two months before. The diagnosis: her fuel pump was leaking, all four brakes needed relining, the speedometer was four miles an hour slow, the engine was delivering way under capacity, and the back-up lights were not connected ("I never knew I had any!" she exclaimed).

Another customer had just paid out $18 for new spark plugs and wiring, only to have his car continue to stall and sputter. The garage explained that what he now needed was a complete valve job for another $75. Car Analysts discovered that all he really needed was a new 650 plastic rotor for the car's distributor.

Nervous & Aging. The analysts also serve the nervous used-car buyer, who drives his prospective purchase around for a fast check on its condition. The owner of an aging car brings it in to find out whether the car is worth re pairing or could more profitably be traded in for a new model. Says Car Analyst Glenn Kriegel: "Sometimes we finish an analysis and stand there shuddering. In two recent instances we told the owners, Take your car and drive it carefully along the back streets away from traffic, then park it permanently in the city dump.' They did."

Several of the pioneer car-analysis stations were set up by Mobil and Shell when they discovered that their customers were disenchanted with existing garage methods. And car manufacturers only wish their own dealers could afford the same elaborate diagnostic equipment the analyst can offer. Says E. B. Rickard, manager of Ford's service and parts division: "It's just like modern medicine. The modern car is an enormously complicated piece of machinery. In a person, if you have to have your tonsils taken out, you want to be absolutely sure they have to come out. That's why you have a specialist with the right equipment. It's the same way with a car. Without the proper diagnosis, you're in trouble."

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