Mechanic didn't fix my car. What are my options?

My transmission went out in October and when I took it to the mechanic he said he could get it running for $1000. For the transmission and labor! He said he bought a used transmission, put it in, and it didn't work/fit/run. Twice. Then he said he's going to build a transmission for the car instead but hasn't or hasn't finished, i'm not sure. In February he said he would just buy the car for $1000 and give me back the money I paid him. $2000 in total. It is now almost May and he keeps giving me the run around. That he hasn't gotten the money, he's having personal problems, and had an accident with an employee happen. I don't know how much longer I can wait. I haven't had my car for 7 months! Its been hard to get rides to work and everywhere else I've needed to go. And when I told him I need the money soon because a family friend is selling me a very nice car at a good price, he said he's not going to buy the car at all. And I don't know what to do with a car with a broken a transmission. Or a partially built transmission or maybe not even a transmission in there at all. Can I make him buy the car since thats what he said he would do months ago? Any advice would help. Its a 98 Honda Accord if that matters.

Take this issue to small claims court.

Try other mechanic or Auto Body Shop. Auto Body Shop may be helpful for you.

If it was just a verbal contract, then there's very little you can do unless someone was there who can act as a witness for what he said, even then it's probably very unlikely you can do anything.

If you and him signed paperwork that agreed to it then you could take him to court over it as that would be a legally binding contract.

Even if you win though you might have to wait for the money or send bailiffs in to retrieve goods from his business to the value.

It seems though that what has gone wrong is that the garage has looked at your car and thought it was just the transmission, as they've started working on the transmission they've probably found more faults that they are unable to fix - especially as it's a '98 Honda Accord. He's probably at this stage panicked a bit 'cos he's told you that for $1,000 he could get your car fixed, and at this point he's undercharging - garage's shouldn't really give a quote until they've checked the problem out properly and are sure there's nothing else that could go wrong, Vauxhall Masterfit in the UK offer guaranteed repair prices, but even in their terms and conditions they do state that they don't cover other problems they might find just to cover themselves.

Unfortunately cars are massive items, with many moving parts, many of these parts you aren't always able to see or get to and sometimes even diagnostics computers get it wrong - my car had an error coming up stating there was a problem with the engine cooling, the garage looked at it and couldn't find anything wrong with the engine cooling, but when I said that the demister doesn't work properly they figured it out that it was actually the resistor that had gone in the demister - nothing to do with the engine cooling! I also had another car that all the electric cut out, after turning off and back on again they all re-connected, the RAC guy came out to look at it and all he could see was the onboard diagnostics computer had it down that all the electronics cut out, but as the computer is electronical that had also switched off at the same time so was unable to record the location of the fault, the guy said to me there are thousands of cables in this car and I can't check every single one - he guessed it was probably the contacts on the battery and cleaned the contacts, it never cut out again - but that was just luck that he got the right part.

Have you tried taking your car to another garage (if it's moveable) and getting them to have a proper look at it and give you an idea of what is wrong, see if there's anything he's missed, or isn't telling you.