We’re the first to admit that one of the wonders of modern life is the ability to have your car’s oil changed and fluids topped in under 10 minutes.

Get in, get serviced, get out.

But an oil change isn’t actually servicing a car. That’s why the peace of mind from a quick change may be illusory. Although a fast-change facility may give you a list of things they check, they don’t know your British vehicle anywhere near as well as we do.

Nor does it seem they have any desire to. Have you ever been to a quick-change place that drives your car before “servicing” it? At BEM, even before we lift the hood, we drive the car.

Within a 3-mile radius of BEM we have all sort of driving conditions – stop and go and places where we can get a car up to 50 miles an hour. Within a short drive, we can tell if things are wrong with the car, such as shimmying or worn brake pads – developments that drivers typically ignore because they become used to them. We’ll take a customer’s car out for a test drive and come back and say, “You really have to ride your brakes hard to slow down your car,” and the customer will say, “Oh, I forgot to tell you about that!”

Because an oil-change place doesn’t drive your car, they can’t know if anything they do addresses any real problems. A quick visual inspection through the air gaps on a vehicle’s rims at a quick oil place isn’t going to reveal a brake problem.

The fast-change places will top off liquids, true, but they can’t drain old liquids that wear out, such as antifreeze, which can become corrosive as it ages. They can’t bleed brakes – that takes time they can’t afford because there are customers waiting in line behind you.

We also use factory, not generic filters. None of our original manufacturer filters has ever failed. We use Castrol and Mobile 1 oils, which are exceedingly high-quality and heavy duty. They’re especially good for older cars that need thicker oils.

There’s also the problem of getting nickel and dimed by the quick change places. You come in expecting to pay, say, $50, and pretty soon they’ve upped the ante by selling you other services you supposedly need. But all of this without having done a real inspection.

Quality of service is a matter of time. You can’t produce quality in a hurried, short-term situation. It takes at least an hour to do a thorough check – putting the vehicle on a lift, taking the tires off and doing a thorough inspection of everything vs. 10 minutes at a fast-change place.                                                                  ■