Who I am
The FatMech is run by me – Marcus Brown. I’ve been a car mechanic for ten years, and in that time I’ve worked for major dealerships, been a mobile mechanic and worked for a local independent garage in London.
Over the years I’ve been in the mechanic business I’ve encountered almost every problem on every car you could possibly think of. I like the challenging problems as it means I have to think – as much as I love getting my hands dirty, it gets a bit old when you’re doing the clutch on a Vauxhall Corsa for the tenth time in a week.
I’m based just outside of London where I live with my wife and child. My hobbies include gardening, doing home renovations (I’ve recently put a new kitchen into our house – as if slaving away on cars all week isn’t enough work!) and at the weekend I like to play golf (I’ve got a handicap of 10 – still working on it!).
My story
I come from a long line of mechanics – my dad ran a small garage in our home town of Bromley before he had to give it up when I was nineteen due to health reasons. As such I spent a lot of my childhood around cars – Dad was also an avid car collector and trader and he’d always be fixing up some old shed on the driveway to sell on. His specialism was Fords – he used to work for Ford when he was in his younger years and so my childhood was basically made up of old Escorts, Fiestas, Mondeos, Orions and the occasional Cortina.
My first car (funnily enough) was a Ford – when I was 18, an old 1997 P-reg Ford Fiesta. My Dad, trading cars in his spare time, took it in as part exchange for something newer and asked me if I wanted it after I’d passed my driving test. That thing was basic – it had something like 45,000 miles on it when I started driving it, and had no luxuries at all – no power steering, no central locking, no electric windows, etc. It had a gutless 1.3, 60hp engine that did 0-60 in about 20 seconds. I loved that car, and I was heartbroken when it was stolen about a year after I got it.
Fortunately I’d started working by then and saved up enough money to buy a 2005 Peugeot 206 – a lot like the one you see in the picture. That one was a bit better spec’ed, and had a CD player, trip computer, power steering, all that good stuff.
Since then I’ve been in and out of French cars but the 206 was really what started my interest in all things French – specifically Peugeot and Citroen. I’ve had a lot of French cars – I’ve had a DS3, a 208, a 308 but more recently I’ve got out of French cars and into a BMW – and only time will tell if that was a good decision!
What I drive
My current car is a Grey BMW 3-Series – much like the one in the picture below:
Where my expertise is
As I’ve mentioned I’ve worked for franchised dealerships, as a mobile mechanic and as a mechanic in an independent garage. As a result I’ve seen pretty much every car on the road in my ten years in the business, but specifically because of the dealership I worked at (I won’t disclose it but it’s not hard to guess) I’ve built up a solid knowledge of PSA group French cars – Peugeot, Citroen and DS. I’m fairly knowledgeable on common cars such as Ford, Vauxhall, Volvo, VW, Honda, Renault, MINI and so on, but my specialism lies in French cars.
I am also pretty clued up on vans, which might sound a bit weird but a lot of my business as a mobile mechanic was attending to tradesmen who needed repairs done on their van and didn’t really have time to book it into a garage to have the work done – imagine being a plumber without your van for a day! I’d go to their house on a Saturday or Sunday and do the job on their driveway and they’d be back on the road straight away. I’ve done everything laying on my back on someone’s driveway in the rain at some point, from basic jobs such as servicing and brakes to more complex jobs including clutches, gearbox replacement, exhaust replacement, etc.
As a result (and I’m certainly no diesel fitter) I’ve built up a particular knowledge around common vans on the road, including Ford Tourneo and Transit, Peugeot Partner, Expert and Boxer, Citroen Berlingo, Dispatch and Relay, Fiat Doblo and Ducato, Renault Trafic, Vauxhall Movano and so on. There’s probably not a model of van out there on the road that I haven’t worked on at some point.
Why I started The FatMech
I started The FatMech (and the name comes from me having put on a bit of weight in the last few years) because most people don’t know a thing about their cars. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – for most a car is a tool to get you from one place to another. However, on jobs I frequently found myself Googling for common problems for a car I’d get in, and I’d find nothing – either old forums where the posts are ten years old and refer to a different car, or crappy AI generated articles that are really not helpful to anyone.
As such I’ve begun collating my knowledge throughout the years and now I’m releasing it to the internet in the hope that more people can learn to fix their own cars, or at least have some idea of problems they might face when buying a car. This is a little side project of mine and I’m hoping within the next few years to make The FatMech the most comprehensive repository of information online for common car issues.
Well, there’s my story – and if you’ve got any questions or comments about anything on the site feel free to reach out to me via my email or via the contact page.