Brown Automotive

Good service, friendly staff, courteous shuttle driver. Made the usually horrible experience of having car service not so bad!

I have been dealing with Brown Toyota/​Subaru since 1997 when I purchased a used Forester. They kept it running and I eventually gave it away to a friend with 250 th. miles on it. Since 2007 they’ve been maintaining my Toyota Tacoma. They are competent, efficient and I have no complaints. I expect to get 500 th. on this truck maybe more with their help.

It’s a real pity that Brown’s has so many listings for different company names here. Makes writing a review rather tough.
The basic deal with Browns is this… AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE.
We have worked with Brown’s Jeep, Saab, and Honda… They all lack what you would find in any town with more than one option per manufacturer.
With Jeep, we were took a car with 90,000 miles in for two repairs. They couldn’t figure out the first, but the second was $ 2,000… after paying for it, they told us that they figured out the first… we need a new engine for $ 7,000. At this point they refused to refund the first repair, fight with us at Jeep for assistance (21 oil changes recorded) and didn’t understand why we didn’t want the engine.
With Saab, the service guys were great to deal with, but the parts and labor costs were about 60% more than we paid our independent mechanic that we subsequently switched to.
With Honda, they tried three times to fix a window on a 10 month old minivan… Not only did they not do it, they actually rotated my tires on the first day… and on the third… So, needed to pay for another tire rotation. I never thought I would say this. but I look forward to the day our manufacturer’s warranty runs out.
We bought our Honda out of Mechanicsville purely out of frustration with Browns. When you have a town as small as Charlottesville, it really stinks to have one dealer who holds every decent manufacturer’s sole franchise. They are the dominant force in town, and every manufacturer should be looking to find another alternative.