One wonders

If Asimov had taken sufficient offense to the rather insulting comments of the mechanic, it seems likely that he could have learned everything he needed to know to care for his own car. It may have taken as long as a year, but I honestly doubt it would have taken longer.

Asimov was an incredibly prodigious writer with interests that spanned the entire spectrum of knowledge. He's published in all but one of the ten categories of the Dewey Decimal System (no Philosophy). So maybe it wouldn't even have taken a year.

One wonders how long it would have taken the mechanic to gain the knowledge necessary to become a tenured professor of biology at the Boston University School of Medicine. Or to write even one successful book - Asimov wrote over 500, quite a few of which were very successful.

It's a cute story, and Asimov was undeniably a modest man, but there's not any real doubt that he was also a very intelligent one.

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