That message does nice double duty as a PC way of saying poors need not bother shopping him for a quote to replace something on their '99 Grand Caravan.
IIUC, you're implying that that mechanic is disdainful of poor customers, and that this just provides convenient political cover.
If so, I'm not sure why you'd assume that. It seems more likely to me that the mechanic is simply choosing his work based on personal interest and perhaps profitability. I don't see why we'd ask anything more than that from him.
I'm not assuming. Everyone even remotely close to the industry knows that mechanics don't like the people who want to do the bare minimum amount of work all the time and that fairly strongly correlates to "poors". Of course given the choice a mechanic would rather do an oil change on a '15 4Runner owned by some yuppie he can upsell a cabin air filter to than do a timing set on a '03 Outback for someone who'll decline the water pump that they traditionally try and sell with it.
If you were even remotely close to the industry, you would know full well that the older a car is, the more of a pain in the ass is to repair. It only takes one rusty bolt snapping off to turn a 30 minute job into a 3 hour one. When that happens, the mechanic has to eat those extra hours. They don't get to crawl back to the customer and beg for triple the price. The shop owner certainly isn't going to pony up the difference. It (effectively) comes right out of their paycheck.
I feel that the instant knee-jerk accusation of discrimination against someone you never even met says quite a bit about you.
That's why "book time" is based on a newbie that has no idea what they're doing.
Fairly common for a job that gets charged out at X hours to only need X/2 hours. And then there's work that gets charged at shop mechanic rate but gets partly or completely done by an apprentice/assistant.
But being from the rust belt, I know what you mean about corrosion.
If so, I'm not sure why you'd assume that. It seems more likely to me that the mechanic is simply choosing his work based on personal interest and perhaps profitability. I don't see why we'd ask anything more than that from him.