First Auto Service: Local service from a hometown guy
Sam Lee caught the car bug at Sunnyvale’s Homestead High School, in automotive class, and now the longtime resident offers honest auto service to the folks in his hometown.
In about 2012, after many years of working as a mechanic (they call ‘em technicians nowadays) for auto dealers and other repair shops, Sam went out and bought his own place. What better location, he figured, than in the neighborhood where he lives — historic downtown Sunnyvale.
So now he’s the owner of First Auto, a little shop on East Washington Avenue at South Sunnyvale Avenue, where he and another guy or two keep busy working on the cars of people who live and work in the immediate area.
Luxury import auto service
First Auto is happy to service most any brand of car, but Sam allows that it’s the luxury imports — Mercedes, Infinity, BMW, Audi and the like — that get his personal engine revved up. “They’re more of a challenge,” he says, “because of the engineering. In fact, he owns several such cars himself, in part because he loves the different driving experiences and in part because what he learns about the cars helps him in his work.
Back when Sam was at Homestead High, there was a boom in drag-racing imports. It was his interest in that sport that got him involved in the auto shop class. That passion only grew, and he remains involved in racing to this day. He’s into open-wheeled kart racing these days (“like Formula One without the cost”).
Time to winterize
Despite his interest in racing, Sam makes it clear that First Auto Service isn’t trying to break into the race-car market because his two-bay shop is too small to work on modified cars. Rather, he says he’s strictly after regular cars in the local market.
Now that it’s winter, Sam says, it’s a good time to come in and take care of a few things to keep you safe in the rain: replace the wiper blades and any burnt-out lights, fix the brakes, rotate the tires, replace cracked windshields and the like. They don’t do heavy body work.
Most of Sam’s business comes from friends, repeat customers and his 4.5-star rating on Yelp. Lots of reviewers love how First Auto won’t try to pressure customers into fixing things that really aren’t a problem yet, or they mention the fast, friendly service. First Auto offers free engine diagnostics and a year-round special on synthetic oil and filters, and Sam finds that to be enough incentive to bring in new customers. He doesn’t really have to advertise, lest he get more business than he can handle.
First Auto, he says, is “like the best-kept secret downtown because it’s a little hard to find. … When you’re down there, you just have to come find us.” When you do you’ll be glad you did.