Machine shops undertake general mechanical work that includes fabricating new parts or repairing old ones. The automotive machine shops undertake the repair of cars or vehicles, which may include motorcycles also. Some automotive machine shops are brand-specific. This means that they repair vehicles of one particular brand, which may be Ford, Nissan, Toyota, and so forth. These are usually company-authorized automotive repair shops. The repair work may include engine cleaning and dust removal, the checking of cranks, rods, blocks and heads, as well as suspension parts of race cars, crack repair of blocks and heads, crank shaft grinding, polishing and hardening, block boring, complete engine balancing, and connecting-rod stress relieving.

There are automotive machine shops that take up all types of vehicular repair work irrespective of brand. They also undertake the repair of older vehicles, the so-called