Local Automotive Repair Shops Data On Repairs Performed

Hi everyone, I have a request for a dataset pertaining to automotive repairs.

I am voluntarily building a free application/platform that anyone can freely use anytime to help the public make informed decisions on where to take their motor vehicles for repairs. My interest in this comes from the fact that I love cars and I hate seeing people get ripped off. I’ve worked on countless cars and helped many people with free repairs. Specifically, this platform would allow users to search for nearby automotive repair shops and they would see a graphical summary view of the quantity of repairs any individual shop has done in a given period of time (X number of brake repairs, Y number of engine oil changes, Z number of front-end alignments, etc.). More features would be added with time but this is the starting point.

I have already done legwork before coming here to make this platform a reality.

I contacted my state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain access to the necessary dataset. My state’s DMV has a legal clause that specifically requires all automotive repair shops to retain records of estimates, work orders, invoices, parts purchase orders, and appraisals to be available for inspection by the DMV. The DMV kindly responded to my request and unfortunately, I learned that although all automotive repair shops are required to retain these records, the shops are not obligated to submit these records to the DMV for archival at any point in time. Furthermore, the circumstances under which the DMV would even audit a shop with the intent to inspect these records would be extremely circumstantial and exceptionally rare.

For clarification, my intent is to only depict the values contained in these records through visual means such as graphs and charts. Customer names, cost of repairs, parts vendor names, mechanic names, and any other personally identifiable information (except for the name of the shop doing the repair) would all be obscured.

After hitting this brick wall, I learned about some existing platforms that collect and aggregate automotive repair data (RepairPal, iATN, Mechanic Advisor, AutoMD, CarMD). Although these platforms give users the ability to post reviews like Google Reviews and Yelp, they don’t contain the fundamental data I need to build this free platform. Some also sell products or services to automotive repair shops (namely OEM how-to tutorials for specific make/model cars) and I don’t want to get involved with any financial sponsorships or political bureaucracy.

I have thought about reaching out to local automotive repair shops I have close relations with but there’s less than a handful that trust me enough to grant me access to their data and for this data to be accurate. Networking with each automotive repair shop in my entire state is just not realistic.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!