D.T Automotive

Great place to handle all maintenance on my car and good for performance upgrades too. Highly recommend coming here time after time

I was trying to find a mechanic close to home and I’m so glad I was referred here by a friend.
No need to look any further. Great service!
Honest, sincere and fair.
Highly recommend.

Best mechanic I’ve found — anywhere. Honest, reasonable, nice, prompt… highly recommended. And any mechanic you get seems to be equally competent.

The best automotive shop on west side and the best service. Mario the owner, and Freddy his A+mechanic rock. I had taken my car to Kondo motors and just felt rippedoff. I decided to go back to DT Auto repair and I am very happy. They are honest, show you your old parts, explain things to you and have the best and fairest price in all of la. If you need your car fixed with class and extremely honest guys go to DT auto. These guys are awesome. Hope this helps all you single ladies working to have respect, and no bs.

These are stand out, stand up dudes. They will take great care of your baby… totally honest and very effective.

I love these guys. They are the best mechanics I’ve ever dealt with! They treat me like family, always have my best interest at heart rather than just making a quick buck like most places now a days. I refer everyone to them and they’ve all all been very pleased as well. I wouldn’t take my car anywhere else. They’ve helped me so much and always made car trouble a pleasant visit.

Terrible for body work. I was referred by a friend to this place over a year ago after a minor collision to my drivers front end. My car is my baby. They cut a lot of corners with my repair. I was supposed to get a new VW hood, HID headlamp, grille, emblem and front fender. They bondo-​ed by headlight into place with the brackets. I did get a new grille but he same emblem, the good was banged out and everything was painted. TERRIBLY. Dust under the paint. Mind you all this was paid to be new under my insurance.
I’ve had to take my car back 3x because paint started rising off my car and cracking, chips are happening at 4x the rate compared to the rest of my car which is a 2007. I took it in this last time and I’ve had it. The job looks good up front but take a closer look and now I have overspray. There’s bubbles everywhere. Overspray on the fender to the point where my car looks MATTE in some places. I would not come here for body work. They may work on celebrity cars but if you’re not a celebrity you’re screwed and so is your 30,000 +/​-​asset.

I’ll start off saying. All my cars are my children. With that said I don’t let just anyone touch them or work on them. Mostly I do everything myself.
But if you want some really good exhaust work you go here. They’ve done the exhaust on my supercharged E46 3-​series, Maserati coupe and E60 BMW M5.
All times they did perfect work. I always had the owner of the business do the work for me. He’s a really good person and very into cars.
The atmosphere is great and his knowledge and work he does for exhaust is top notch. I’d highly recommend this place if you want some good exhaust work for any car.

Was referred to here and excellent job when my car broke down. Great honest service with quality people. Was afraid to take the car to a shop because of horror stories but take it to this place if you don’t want any of that drama.

Called saturday for a quote to replace a flex pipe on a 1999 Camry. The price was very reasonable, so I asked to bring it in Monday. Mario met me at opening time, and immediately put my car up on the lift. I asked how long it would take, expecting that I’d have to leave it there for the day, but he said it would take 30 minutes. I was back on my way to work in 30−40m. Mario was nice, helpful and very efficient. The total charge was about half what he quoted me over the phone. Great experience. I’ll be back if I have any more trouble with my exhaust. I would recommend to anyone who has a similar issue.

This place is the best! Mario & Freddy are probably the only mechanics I’ve ever worked with that I don’t make me feel like an idiot.
They always come in on time and at cost… Can’t get any better.

Well! 1^st off, allow me to disclose that I created my Unilocal account TODAY, solely for the purpose to express my gratitude & appreciation for DTA, Dependable Trusted Automotive in Santa Monica!
The usual gentlemen who help me there are Freddy (the younger-​looking gentleman w/​some serious wrenching skills!), Javi (he’s a buff dude). This guy will rip you in half-​just kiddin’! He’s a cool dude-​very knowledgeable mechanic, straight to the point & best of all, his main professional licensing is specializing in HONDA/​ACURA, which was perfect for me & my car. Both, Freddy & Javi work on ALL vehicle makes/​models. But, you can tell that Javi has a certain passion towards HONDA/​ACURA. There’s another gentleman I’ve seen there on multiple occasions-​dunno his name, but, he has the SICKEST, THICKEST ‘stache I’ve ever seen that would make MAGNUM P.I.‘s mustache physically shed a tear of shame. NO JOKE!
I’ve been taking my car & my father’s car to DTA for quite some time now. I can easily admit that 90% of my overall visits have been on the fly, where I’d drop in, randomly & unannounced. No matter how busy their shop appeared, they would ALWAYS manage to take me in immediately without hesitation or a flinch.
Usually, it would be Freddy there to promptly come out to greet me, hear me out on what I’m there for, & then reply with, «Alright. Drive it in & I’ll take a look.» Freddy’s up-​front, honest, informative & real easy to talk to.
Today, they were REAL busy. All the working bays were occupied w/​cars getting worked on, as well as, 2 other newly arrived customers (from what I was able to see) who were getting their cars checked out, right off-​side the working bays. Despite it all, Freddy STILL took my car in, «Alright, no problem. Let me move some of these cars out & you can drive yours in. I’ll check it out, what ever that I find that needs attn on your car, I’ll get back to you within the hour w/​the details…»
These guys are bloody awesome! There were several major things that needed to be done to my car, including, valve cover gasket replacement & cleaning off of all this excess oil build-​up, serpentine belt replacement, among other things. They got my car ALL finished up within the day. With all the work my car needed, I expected that I’d be leaving the car with them, overnight-​NOPE! I posted a pic on here of the inside of my engine bay (red valve cover) after they finished-​look @ that thing-​it looks BRAND new!
The price was (more than) right & they explained thoroughly of what work was done to my car today.
The shop is conveniently located right by main streets: Lincoln Blvd & Ocean Park. Across the way, there’s a shopping plaza w/​a few restaurants & an Albertson’s market. Also within walking distance, there’s a McDonald’s, Starbucks & other miscellaneous stores. Plenty of places to pass your time, while your car’s gettin’ worked on.
If you’re on the WEST SIDE, Santa Monica, or just looking for guaranteed PRO status, honest, dependable auto svc w/​reasonable pricing, DTA… FTW! :D