Tony Marino — Domestic and Mopar specialist
Mopar specialist and domestic-V8 mechanic. Writes under a pen name to protect current shop employment.
Tony Marino has been turning wrenches in the New York metro area for over twenty years. He writes for ProblemsByVin under a pen name because he still works in shop service and doesn't want his bosses seeing him publicly grading vehicles by manufacturer. He's got two kids and a mortgage and the day job pays the bills. The pen-name arrangement is disclosed openly on the About page.
The cars Tony knows best are the Mopar lineup from the late 1990s forward. The early LH platform sedans with the 2.7 V6 sludge engines, the LX cars (Charger, Magnum, 300) that came after, the Hemi V8 across pretty much every Chrysler product, the Ram heavy duty trucks with the 5.9 and 6.7 Cummins, the 62TE transmissions behind every Caravan and Town and Country and Journey. He's also done plenty of work on the Ford modular V8 family — the 4.6 and 5.4 two- and three-valve engines that filled F-150s and Crown Vics through the 2000s — and the Honda V6 5-speed automatic that filled Pilots and Odysseys of the same era with rebuilt transmissions.
Tony came up the old way. Worked in a few shops, ran his own restoration place for a while in the late 2000s focused on the muscle-car era of American iron, then went back to a regular shop when the restoration market got soft. He's done daily-driver work the whole time. The minivan with three kids' worth of cracker crumbs in the back seat, the work truck with the bent tailgate, the high-mileage Honda the wife inherited from her dad. These are the cars his editorial speaks to.
ASE-certified in engine and transmission categories. No financial relationship with any vehicle manufacturer, warranty company, or parts retailer. His pieces for ProblemsByVin are reviewed for accuracy against the NHTSA data underlying them before they're published.
Stories
Engine family deep-dives
Transmission family deep-dives
Make-level problem aggregations
Editorial commentary on 60 make-level problem aggregation pages, ranked by NHTSA complaint volume.
Comparison commentaries
Warranty calculator commentary
4 per-vehicle calculator commentaries authored by Tony Marino, available on individual vehicle warranty calculator pages across the site.
Focus
Mopar (Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, Jeep), Ford modular V8 family, Honda V6 5-speed transmissions, advice for buyers of older domestics and Japanese vehicles.
Experience
20+ years across independent shop service and muscle-car restoration.