TurboCar: my first acquisition and why I shut it down

Why I bought a repair shop

I was fed up with tech and wanted a different kind of business. I spent about four months looking at businesses for sale and, almost by chance, ended up looking at car dealers and repair shops. I found TurboCar on BizBuySell.

The model was simple: buy wrecked cars at Copart and IAAI auctions, repair them and sell them to other dealers. The purchase included the shop, the mechanics and the licenses.

What I found

It was a mess. There were no processes, rent and payroll were expensive, and there was no clear way to decide which cars to buy so the numbers would work.

I didn't like the industry either. I ran into a lot of dishonest people.

And there was a trap: I couldn't stop buying. Every month without cars in the shop meant rent and salaries with no revenue. So I bought the way the previous owner had taught me, and I lost money on those purchases.

How I fixed it

It took me months to really learn the business. The change that worked was moving to luxury salvage cars (BMW, Porsche, Bentley, Lamborghini, Rolls-Royce), repairing them and selling them directly to the end customer.

That raised the ticket and the profit per car: from around a thousand dollars, or a loss, to about 15 thousand. Each car took between three weeks and a month and a half to be ready. In total we sold 2.5 million dollars.

Why I shut down TurboCar

Just when the business finally worked, the inventory dried up. Most insurers started marking totaled cars as destruction or parts only, instead of salvage. Those cars can't be repaired to legally go back on the road, so there was nothing left to buy.

On top of that, I didn't like the industry. I sold the inventory and shut it down in March 2026. In the end I lost money: the learning months were very expensive and the time it took to fix things wasn't enough to make them back.

What I learned: the million-dollar EBITDA rule

1. If you're going to buy a business in the United States, make sure it has at least a million dollars of EBITDA a year. That size almost guarantees it already has processes.
2. Anything smaller isn't a business, it's a job. You're buying the owner's position, with all of its problems.
3. If it's small, you're better off starting it yourself. You'll have to learn either way, and it's easier to do it in something you're organizing than in something someone else made a mess of.
4. Before you buy, make sure you like the industry. You can fix a business; you can't change an industry.