The Problem
Every car community on Facebook has the same post, every single week: "Where should I take my car to get [X] done?"
The answers come flooding in. Personal recommendations, horror stories, someone's cousin's buddy who works out of a garage. It's well-meaning but it's a mess. And if you're new to an area, or you drive something that needs a specialist, you're basically rolling the dice.
On the other side, there are thousands of independent mechanics, small performance shops, and specialty trades doing incredible work, but they're invisible. They don't have marketing budgets. They don't game Google reviews. They rely on word of mouth and hope the phone rings.
The Idea
MAD Garage started from a simple question: what if we could connect car owners directly with the shops that actually want their business?
Not a review aggregator. Not a lead-gen site that sells your phone number to the highest bidder. A real platform where a customer describes what they need, whether it's a repair, a build, a tow, or a dealer, and gets matched with shops that specialize in exactly that work, right in their area.
For the shops, it's even simpler: get listed, get found, get to work. No per-lead fees. No bidding wars. Just a clean dashboard to manage your work orders, quote jobs, and communicate with customers. We built the tools a small shop needs to run professionally, the same stuff the big chains have, and made it affordable.
For the Lone Wolf Mechanic
This platform was designed with you in mind. The one-man shop. The two-bay garage. The performance builder who's incredible at what they do but doesn't have a receptionist or a CRM or a marketing team.
The approach here is cooperative, not extractive. We're not here to take a cut of every job or charge you per click. We're here to stand up small businesses and help them succeed by putting them in front of the right customers at the right time.
When a customer searches for a turbo install in their zip code and your shop pops up because that's literally what you do every day, that's the whole point.
For the Customer
We built this to bring the information to you. Instead of posting in a Facebook group and hoping someone has a recommendation, you describe your situation and we show you the shops near you that handle that exact type of work.
Stuck on the side of the road? We'll find you a tow company and a destination shop in one flow so you're not scrambling while stranded.
Looking for a performance shop that knows your platform? We match by vehicle make, service category, and work type so you're not taking your Corvette to a shop that's never seen an LS engine.
While we can't guarantee every shop will deliver a perfect experience, we can do our best to connect you with businesses that actively want to earn your trust and your business. That's the bar.
About the Builder
I'm Matt, a car guy, IT professional, and the person building this thing from the ground up. I've spent over a decade in tech leadership and most of my life with grease under my fingernails.
I run MAD Garage out of Conyers, Georgia, where I build and restore cars. Everything from a 1970 Plymouth Superbird to a turbocharged BMW M Roadster to a heavily modified C7 Corvette Z51 that I take to the track. I've lived the experience of needing specialized work done and not knowing who to trust, and I've been on the other side helping friends find the right shop.
This platform is the product of both worlds. I built it because nobody else was building what the car community actually needed, and because I believe independent shops deserve better tools and more visibility than what's out there today.