It is all very well having an amazing car or bike and if you are lucky you might even have a garage that you can fit the car in to keep it out of the way when it is not being used, occasionally you come across something that makes you insanely jealous. This is one of those times and it isn’t even a vehicle I am jealous of, it is the place the person keeps and works on his vehicles that makes me hate my own tiny little garage and sloping driveway.
First off I should point out that this is not a normal garage build by someone’s house, this is a garage build in something called an AutoMotorPlex. The AutoMotorPlex in question is in Minneapolis and is much more than your typical garage on an industrial estate. The complex is a purpose build motorists dream with every unit being used for cars and bikes and there are lots of meets and shows held there including a Cars & Coffee event once a month that draws in around 500 cars and just as many again just to visit. The complex features 11 buildings with around 175 garage units and a 4000 square foot clubhouse that has a bar with a big screen TV and kitchen for gatherings and events. It also has sports courts, common are court yards and a 1.5 acre pond. It is all in a 40 acre plot just outside of the main city and is an easy car journey to get to and from. The picture below is of the AutoMotorPlex during one of its Cars & Coffee meets in the summer, it looks bigger and better than most big UK shows!
Each individual unit is finished and fitted out by the owner and you can choose units in different widths and sizes starting from 13′ x 25′ to a huge 32′ x 86′ and some units even include drive through doors front and rear. The units are better specced than most houses with in floor heating, fire suppression sprinkler systems, bathrooms, office/private spaces (which they call ‘man caves’), sound systems, satellite TV and WiFi.
Obviously with the mega amounts of money that will be in the complex as whole and in your own individual unit, you also get Internet Protocol based security for the campus and your individual unit, a security gate to get into the complex and optional added security that includes internet accessible security cameras so you can look at your unit wherever you are as long as you have web access.
The particular build I am talking about is from a guy on the 6 Speed Online forums who has a 40′ x 40′ unit he is building with a 16′ x 40′ mezzanine that will be a second floor inside. You can see his plans for the build in the layout below. The upstairs ‘man cave’ includes a kitchen, bathroom, living room area with a TV, office and a deck outside. The downstairs workshop area has two 4 post lifts, storage room, wash bays/drains, another TV and a fully stocked cabinet and tool area.
If you want to follow the full build in proper detail you can by reading the big thread here. I will just show you what happened by way of a picture time line. It is amazing work and it is a shame it is classed as a commercial unit and can’t live there because that place is about 50x nicer than my actual house. Probably warmer as well!
Now you may have noticed the rather nice looking Camaro sat there in one of the pictures. Surely that can’t be the only reason he wanted a garage like this? Of course not, he also has this project!
Can you tell what it is yet? How about now…
It should be pretty awesome and the guy is still doing bits to the garage so expect it to just get better and better.
The whole dedicated complex thing had me thinking though, it is probably one of the best ideas I have seen in a very long time and to have a whole thing just dedicated to people into bikes and cars would bring around a sense of community not seen in normal industrial estates and the like. I’m seriously wondering if it is an idea I could take onto something like Dragons Den to get some investors. If I had the money I would definitely think about doing something like this, especially somewhere just outside of a big city like London where there would be lots of rich people with expensive cars but nowhere really in the city to park them and work on them. It seems like it could be a pretty sound financial investment, start off by buying a block of industrial units, which you could maybe rent to 10 people to start with and I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to fill up the spaces quickly and at a decent price to make money on it. Please someone if you are rich, help me make this happen!
Thanks to the Build Threads post for showing me this epic garage and also most of the pictures are from the thread and Alex Bellus Photography.
