Having grown up on a military base and then serving 20 years in the Navy, I agree that the the auto hobby shops were a great benefit to have. My father was in Special Services (later MWR) in the Air Force and worked at several of the hobby shops over the years, and I spent many a Saturday at the hobby shops helping out while growing up.
What is overlooked in the discussion of the auto hobby shops on military bases is the reason they existed and were so popular. Military pay was, and still is, on the very low side of the pay scales, and the bases early on had many problems with cars being worked on in driveways and front yards in on-base housing and barracks parking lots. A lot of the solders, sailors, airmen, and marines had the skills necessary to do their own repairs but not the money or location to do the work. As a solution these auto hobby shops were created. For a just few dollars a day these base auto hobby shops provided a SAFE place, use of lifts, tools, manuals, and a place to dispose of fluids that allowed these men and women to keep their cars running in their budgets. I myself saved many hundreds over the years doing everything from oil changes to transmission overhauls at the hobby shop.
It would be a great benefit to have a place to work on our vehicles however in this overly litigious society we now live in it is unfortunately highly unlikely that we will ever see one built for our use. We are stuck with working in our garages on our wheeled toys and hoping one of the many village trolls don't come along and see us doing an oil change or break job and turning us into Community Standards for a deed restrictions violation.
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