The 2025 Shop of the Year has been chosen. CARS magazine is proud to announce Platinum Automotive Repair as the winner of the award, sponsored by Milwaukee Tool.
Owned by Sal Medici and Frank Bilotta, the best friends opened their shop thanks to a simple comment made by a former employer that got the ball rolling.
They committed to ensuring anyone walking through the doors would be treated like family, that they would receive the absolute best service and that their vehicle would get the best care.
It’s those core tenets that have made Platinum Automotive Repair the 2025 CARS Shop of the Year.
Medici and Bilotta have built a thriving business in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Just a few minutes in the foyer — equipped with comfortable seating, snacks and drinks — and you’ll see customer after customer be greeted warmly, sometimes with a hug and often by their name.
“My big thing was try and make it as woman-friendly as possible, so they feel welcome,” Medici said. “Just so they feel that when they walk in, it’s a clean place — not just a typical, grungy, smelly, ‘you sit on the chair and you’re dirtier than when you first sat down’ kind of thing.”
His story starts when he was a teenager, working as a co-op student at a local shop for 17 years. It was where his family had their vehicles serviced. Medici values comfort and stability, not one to make a change. But with Frank working at a local dealership after leaving the same shop Sal was at several years prior, he considered the move to join his best friend. Multiple times, in fact. He turned down job offers twice to work at a dealer.
“I was afraid of change. Change is always hard. I think change is one of the biggest things,” Medici said. “It’s tough. You’re used to your surroundings. You know your everyday in and out. You know what you’re going to be doing. You know the people you work with.”
But he finally made the jump. He was the shop foreman and one day asked his boss for a raise.
“His response was,“If you want to make more money, you make more hours,” Medici recalled.
That took him back. When he’s putting in 70 hours a week, how much more room is there to grow, he wondered.
“He’s told us that ‘if you’re not happy, you’re easily replaceable,’” Medici said, a comment that further shocked him. “So that never left my mind.”
Six months later, he was out the door for good because if he wasn’t going to make the lead to be a shop owner, he better do it while he was still young.
“I kind of regret not doing it even sooner,” Medici said.
Now the pair have six bays to call their own, with four full mechanical bays, plus one for alignment and another that has a scissor lift for those emergency fixes. They have three licensed technicians, in addition to Medici and Bilotta but they aren’t in the bays anymore. Medici handles all the customers who come through the door and Bilotta handles the back of the business.
“He trusts me and I trust him,” Medici said of Bilotta. “We didn’t have a plan of what was going to happen here. We just opened a door. ‘Let’s hire some guys, and we’ll go day in a day.’ But honestly, it went from zero to 100 in no time.”
Stay tuned for the December issue of CARS where you’ll be able to read all about Platinum Automotive Repair, the 2025 Shop of the Year, sponsored by Milwaukee Tool.
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