-We drive cars only about four percent of the time we own them. When parked, the luckiest cars spend their days in special garages, unique combinations of man caves, living rooms, and museums—the second-most passionate rooms in our houses. Car collectors with cool garages tell us that they would never wake up in the morning and then drive somewhere to get dressed, so they need their cars parked where they live. These collectors also tell us that nobody has yet solved the space riddle, which is the complex puzzle of how big a space do you need? After visiting more than 200 outsized luxury garages, we've learned some secrets.
Let's not call these so-called garage mahals or parking palaces "ostentatious," which means designed to attract and impress, simply because most of these places are secret. They are not hidden from prying eyes for fear of monetary loss—the contents are irreplaceable usually because the cars are one-of-a-kind, valuable to their owners for emotional, sentimental, and historic reasons. Insurance offers no security for that. In fact, owners tell us that they don't consider themselves "owners" of their valuable machines. Because cars' lifetimes outlast those of humans, these collectors consider themselves "caretakers" for the moment. "I think of myself as just the last guy who owned it," says multiple rare Bentley and Rolls-Royce collector and restorer Gary Wales about each of his multimillion-dollar rides.
-Special Car Barn
-On idyllic Bainbridge Island in the Pacific Northwest, this unique garage [pictured at top] looks more from the outside like a classic horse stable. It holds about ten cars and uses every square foot of floor space, although there is an office to one side and an apartment upstairs should visitors need a place to stay. The cars are pedigreed Packard, Bugatti, Duesenberg, Porsche, and Ferrari classics, and it is a working garage with tools, parts, and continual tinkering. The decorative chair rails around the walls conceal compressed air pipes for running tools and filling tires. It's in the backyard of Glenn Mounger, former chairman of the Pebble Beach Concours d'Élégance and an early retiree from a family department-store business. None of the famous cars inside is a "garage queen," since Bainbridge Island leads onto State Highway 3 past tall pines and Olympic Peninsula mountains, often misted by drizzle and occasional rains, and Mounger regularly exercises his cars there.
-Poolside Parking
-Some people's cars live better than we do, case in point legendary 1960s gentleman racer Anatoly Arutunoff, the creator of Hallett Motor Racing Circuit near Tulsa. This structure overlooks Arutunoff's outsized pool and holds about ten cars, all of which have experienced some kind of competition—recent vintage racing, long-ago real racing, and original rallies and Cannonballs. French doors express his feeling that cars should be as much a part of life as children—constantly watched to provide inspiration and recall memories of good drives. There's a tall garage door in the back of the garage, where a mechanic's bay serves as a corridor into the main parking area. Behind the fourth set of French doors is actually a library and a full bath, and both of these rooms hold photos of Arutunoff's racing days covering every speck of wall, and shelves are filled with car books. Arutunoff's favorite desk, however, sits smack in the middle of the garage between a Lancia coupe and a Cooper racer.
-Horsepower Horseshoe
-In 1993, Mitchell Rasansky restored a Derby-Miller Indy car from the 1930s, one that in its day turned record-setting Gwenda Hawkes-Stewart into one of the first female track heroes. He displays the car at shows and in his unique backyard horseshoe-shaped garage. Rasansky is a former councilman and mayoral candidate for the city of Dallas; the term "horseshoe" sometimes refers to elected officials' city-hall desk in Dallas. Rasansky, however, says he built the horseshoe garage so he could access all twelve of his show cars, racers, hot rods, and classics without moving the others. The classic brick-and-mortar building holds a lifetime of examples of famous hardware, from notable collections of Austin four-cylinder motors, to culture-changing marketing signs, and iconic hot rods such as the Chuck Adams '32 Ford that was one of the first of its genre to appear at Pebble Beach in 2007. An added room behind the cars also has a small machine shop.
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-Polished Floor Elegance
"I'm the luckiest man alive," says former banker Harry Yeaggy of Dayton, Ohio, whose blindingly shiny gloss-black-tiled floor of his massive garage reflects some of the country's most famous cars: The so-called "Mormon Meteor" Auburn Speedster that was modified for a Bonneville top-speed record in the 1930s, General Motors' Tony DeLorenzo's first Corvette race winner (the one that convinced the GM brass to go forward with the Corvette as a business plan in the 1950s), and Dean Martin Jr.'s original Shelby Cobra. Black walls and ceiling focus your eyes on Yeaggy's cars, but lining the walls are full-size posters of ads for the cars, as well as enlarged newspaper stories. The garage has a foyer with a small bar covered with models of cars as well as a private office with a picture window where Yeaggy can work at a huge wooden desk and gaze at the machines for inspiration.
-Serene Backyard View
-Following a thorough remodel, a small pool shed at Bill Hammerstein's home in Beverly Hills became his three-car home garage. His wife Marcy originally suggested that he buy the house next door, gut it, and turn it into a huge garage—Hammerstein has more cars tucked into a warehouse a few miles away but finds them easy to overlook for everyday drives. Built before earthquake codes, the converted pool shed required a lot of engineering to turn into a garage. Long cables with turnbuckles pull the corners of the rafters together, and a deeper excavated footing drops the floor and provides a sturdy foundation for the lift. Hammerstein follows the strict Beverly Hills building and zoning rules since he's an active volunteer for many years with the city's parking commission. The cars that usually occupy the home garage are classics—a red Ferrari Daytona, a red Mercedes SL roadster, and a red Shelby Cobra—all original and in perfect driving condition.
-Petroliana Palace
-The huge collection of auto memorabilia, including a full-size Sinclair station built inside his secret garage, took car dealer Tom Martin a lifetime to collect. The building has about 15 special cars inside, a half-dozen farm tractors, and also houses organs, pool tables, outboard motors, and Vegas-quality poker tables. The same building contains an apartment for spending an evening looking over the enormous collection through a large plate glass window next to the Sinclair station. The effect is similar to building your own cityscape view under the shelter of a large warehouse, keeping the 1960s-era of car culture alive for a private audience of friends.
-The Southwest Comes to Chicago
-Chicago trial lawyer Bernie Nevoral restores classic sports cars and goes vintage racing to relieve the stress of high-profile court battles. Nevoral welds, cuts, and rebuilds with a fervor, a restless activity that takes place in his workshop outside of his suburban Chicago home, onto which this Southwest-themed garage is attached. The structure is centered on five acres of woods, where Nevoral has built ponds and gazebos and has hosted large weddings for his kids. Nevoral's wife, Barb, is an accomplished vintage racer, too, and both agree she's the quicker track driver. Between the main garage is a four-space commuter-car garage that itself would be envied by most car nuts. The couple's roster of racers includes Alfas, a Chevy-powered Devin roadster, a Lotus Seven, and several open-wheelers.
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-Cheese Country Dance Hall
By 1983 George Stauffer had sold his family's cheese business in Wisconsin and found and restored the 1966 Le Mans–winning Ford GT40, a car he raced in vintage events for a short time. A committed GT40 and Shelby Cobra fan, he converted a local dance hall into a garage. The same hardwood floors where his cars are now parked once supported crowds of dancers, who moved to live performances from bands such as the Platters and the Ventures in the 1950s. Hanging above the middle of the floor is an actual Sputnik spacecraft that caught Stauffer's eye at an auction—it's one of the original two dozen made, not a replica.
-Corvette History on Display
-Video producer and former Dallas television newsman Michael Brown bought a 1963 Corvette coupe 22 years after he first fell in love with it as a high school junior. Today he owns one of each generation Corvette except the C4, and they're either silver or black, which determined the decor of the garage he designed to hold the collection. The diamond pattern of the epoxy floor carries outside to his large driveway where it continues in cement and grass strips. Stainless workbenches and tool cabinets do double duty as kitchen counters if he has a party in the garage, and portable hydraulic dolly jacks are used to slide the cars to get them into and out of the garage, which has just five doors despite being seven cars wide. The history of each car in the collection is printed on wall plaques. The '57 Bel Air convertible matches a car Brown had in high school, and it's the only non-Corvette.
-Log Cabin Luxury
-Influenced by growing up in Auburn, Indiana, the backyard of America's arguably most prestigious high-performance automobiles of the 1930s, Dean Kruse created museums, both public and at his private home for his family. As a kid, Kruse used to watch test drivers for Auburn, Duesenberg, and Cord locally. Attached to the large log home he built in rural Indiana is a huge log garage where he would rotate some of his collection of more than 100 cars—when we visited there were three Hitler staff cars at one end, with Jeeps, Nashes, Auburns, Jaguars, and even Mini Mokes scattered around the perimeter. The bald eagle statue above his '57 Bel Air was one of a small set that was distributed to notable places around the country, including the White House. Kruse also built two more enormous garages for his racing car and tractor collections, and together the structures boasted 14 bathrooms and seven large bars—and Kruse doesn't even drink.
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Car and Driver has partnered with Mercedes-Benz to bring you "A Cut Above," a travel series inspired by the all-new GLE Coupe exploring great drives, high-end gear, and must-visit destinations.
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