ART’S AUTOMOTIVE – 2871 SAN PABLO AVE, BERKELEY, CA

Cars We Service

Art’s Automotive is a specialty auto repair shop and team of experienced mechanics located in Berkeley, CA. We’re experts in Japanese hybrids and conventional Japanese vehicles, specializing exclusively in Toyota, Subaru, Honda, and Mazda. By focusing on these brands, we maintain unmatched expertise in diagnosing, repairing, and servicing their unique systems and technologies. While we could work on every make, we believe that dedicating our attention to these vehicles allows us to be the best at what we do.

Why’s specialization important?

Experience and Expertise

Working on the same cars over and over we’ve gained experience, and experience is important. We’ve learned our brand’s challenges and idiosyncrasies and discovered how to not make mistakes based on past experience.

Here’s a breakdown of our percentages by brand:

• Toyota service – 45%
• Subaru service – 23%
• Honda service – 19%
• Mazda service – 13%

Compare that with a general repair shop dividing their attention over the 30 popular automotive brands, the average is just over 3% for each brand.

Faster diagnosis and repairs

Automotive repair is billed by the hour, so efficiency matters. A shop with brand-specific experience will diagnose and repair your car faster, often by a large margin. You’d be surprised how many Toyota hybrids we quickly diagnose after several other shops have given up.

Access to Specialized Tools and Equipment

Each automotive manufacturer has a unique diagnostic equipment, information systems, and special tools. Maintaining this costs $5,000 to $20,000 per year per brand. We can afford this because we service only four Japanese brands, but no shop would be able to do this for 30 brands while maintaining competitive pricing.

Can you fix cars without the dealer-level equipment? Sometimes, but it will certainly take longer and the results will be inferior. And then there are some services and repairs that are simply impossible without the proper equipment.

WHO WE ARE

Capablities

Art’s Automotive has a rich history, but we’ve never stopped evolving. With every advancement in automotive technology, we’ve retrained and retooled to stay ahead of the curve. Today, Art’s Automotive is recognized in Berkeley as a leader in advanced auto repair. Our primary specialty is hybrid vehicles—whether it’s routine service or larger repairs like hybrid batteries, inverter repair, and replacing electric motors in the hybrid transmission.

Where we truly excel is hybrid diagnostics, but we’re also great at all types of car electrical repairs. Additionally, we repair electrical components in-house, saving customers thousands of dollars. We also diagnose and calibrate ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems), which enable semi-autonomous driving today and pave the way for fully autonomous vehicles in the future.

People

Even if an auto repair shop has the best facilities and tooling, it’s impossible to fix cars without skilled mechanics, and Art’s Automotive has the best. We are a shop stacked with with talent. On average, our certified technicians have over 15 years of auto repair experience. We have employees who teach hybrid service and repair at the college level, write for automotive technical publications, and create video training classes.

Awards

Art’s Automotive is proud to have been consistently recognized by our community as one of the Bay Area’s best auto repair shops. We’ve been voted ‘Best in the Bay’ by East Bay Express readers 18 times, including most recently in 2024, and we’ve also earned top honors from readers of the SF Chronicle and The SF Bay Guardian. We’re grateful for these awards because they reflect our customers’ trust and our team’s dedication to excellence.

How We Operate

We work by appointment for non-emergency auto repair. If you have an emergency (your car breaks down, won’t start, is unsafe, etc.) and need a mechanic, you’re always welcome to tow your car in. However, if you’ve never been here, please call to verify we work on your vehicle. We do have restrictions on the types cars we service. If you have questions, feel free to contact us. If you’d like to learn more about how we operate and our policies, you can also read our new customer orientation page.

On the day of your appointment, please drop your car off between 8:00 – 9:00 AM. Our cut off is 10:00 AM for same-day repair. If this doesn’t work for you, please give us a call and we’ll work something out.

Hours of operation

Dropping Off Before or After Hours

We understand that dropping off or picking up your car during business hours isn’t always convenient. That’s why we offer Early Bird drop-off and Lockout service for completed vehicles. Need help getting to and from the shop? Here are some suggestions for how to get to and from the shop or renting a car at a reduced rate.

If you arrive while we’re closed for lunch, you don’t need to wait around for us to open. Simply fill out on of the “Early Bird” envelopes and drop it in the slot on the Russell side of the shop. Click here for more information about using our early bird drop off.

Art’s is best known for hybrid repair and electronic car repair, but we offer a lot of other automotive repair services as well. We are a full-service car repair shop in Berkeley. If you’re unhappy with your dealer service center, give us a try.

If you’re just getting to know us, you can learn more about our auto shop here. 

The people who work at Art’s are introduced on this page.

The articles page has tons of original content, and the blog posts feature shorter works. Lots of interesting cases have rolled through our auto repair shop over the last 43 years, so if you find that sort of thing interesting there are well over 200 articles to read.

Some of the Services We Offer

Our Service Area

We’ve been at the same location in Berkeley California since 1983, but our auto repair and maintenance shop has customers from all over the East Bay Area. It’s worth the drive. We provide Toyota service, Honda service, Subaru service, and Mazda service to customers from Berkeley’s nearby cities like Emeryville, Oakland, El Cerrito, Albany, Richmond, and Orinda, who bring their cars to us for service and repair. If you’re looking for a mechanic, give us a try.

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