You wouldn't hang a da Vinci in your root cellar and you wouldn't store your spotless supercar in that big room full of boxes and inline skates that passes for a garage. Take a tour of these ten creative and expansive chambers of Garage Mahal, as selected by Jalopnik readers.
Welcome back to Answers of the Day — our daily Jalopnik feature where we take the best ten responses from the previous day's Question of the Day and shine it up to show off. It's by you and for you, the Jalopnik readers. Enjoy!
Photo Credit: Greg Jarem / Mercedes-Benz / Jalopnik
10.) The Garage Condo
Suggested By: Irishman — AAAAARGH!
Why it's cool: As we enter the Garage Mahal, we are greeted with a simple realization of the ideal garage: a beautiful, luxurious man cave. It's the build of your dreams.
Rest here before venturing further into the great collection of garages.
Photo Credit: AutoMotorPlex
9.) Ralph Lauren's Garage
Suggested By: rawtoast
Why it's cool: In the Garage Mahal, the boundaries between garage and museum are easily blurred. As you can see from Ralph Lauren's collection, once you put enough classic Alfa Romeos, Ferraris, Mercedes-Benzes, and Bugattis together, you start to have something of an art gallery. "You can't drive a painting," he said of his collection, and it is a beautiful thing to see a collection of such high-speed, roaring artwork.
Photo Credit: AP
8.) Rauh-Welt Begriff Headquaters
Suggested By: ColoradoQuattro
Why it's cool: Turn left here and you can see the endless displays of the Sultan of Brunei's dedicated wing of the Garage Mahal. Peering eyes, however, are not allowed in that private area, so come this way and see the body shop to end all body shops, the Rauh-Welt Begriff headquarters. The widebody Porsches of Kashiwa, Japan do not come from a sterilized, hyper-clean facility, but rather in something like the cluttered iron workshops that are on the edges of your town and in the affordable quarters of your city. The most elite bahn-storming 911s of Japan find their dually-grade overfenders amongst the beer bottles and slot machines of Nakai-san's garage.
Photo Credit: gregory_gdp
7.) Glickenhaus' Garage
Suggested By: geistkoenig
Why it's cool: Wandering past Steven Solberg's little carport and a GT40 parked in a living room, we arrive at the Glickenhaus garage. It's hard to train your eyes away from Glickenhaus' cars to see their surroundings, but they are hallowed walls. The place looks like another "justification for a higher education" poster made real, only filled with the cars of your favorite Le Mans fantasies.
Photo Credit: Brad Trent / Damn Ugly Photography
6.) Leno's Garage
Suggested By: Honda_Hooning_Daily_Drive
Why it's cool: The quantity and quality of Leno's collection can be found in one of the great halls of the Garage Mahal, and nearly merit two spaces on our tour. But if Leno always finds a way to cram more wonderful machines into his shop / garage, then we can try and squeeze the greasy-hands brilliance of the collection into just one stop.
Photo Credit: Greg Jarem / Mercedes-Benz / Jalopnik
5.) The F40 Home
Suggested By: ∞Gîmmî∞Sagaŋ∞ðm∞Drakeŋ∞
Why it's cool: A deep and secrete chamber in the Garage-mahal is devoted to that union of human living space and automobile living space, the 'car in the living room' garage.
They challenge our preconceptions of what a garage consists of, but with creativity and a dependable ventilation system, cars and their owners can dwell together. This level of garagedom is usually reserved for only the most exquisite of cars, and this F40 certainly fits the bill.
Photo Credit: Mister Jalopy
4.) The Sauber F1 Garage
Suggested By: ∞Gîmmî∞Sagaŋ∞ðm∞Drakeŋ∞
Why it's cool: Nothing is lost for its lack of visible grease, boxes of dusty parts, and more grease, the hallmarks of a great garage. No, ∞Gîmmî∞Sagaŋ∞ðm∞Drakeŋ∞ has lived well enough to see firsthand the distilled gearheadedness of a modern F1 workshop, in all of its gleaming, coke-white glory.
Photo Credit: BMW Sauber F1 Team
3.) George Barber's Vintage Motorcycle Museum
Suggested By: BtheD19
Why it's cool: "We walked down a hall to the side, to a set of nondescript double doors. He opened them, and the sight before me was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. A warehouse, with shelving 4 rows high on 2 walls, and just as many bikes on the floor. I wont even begin to tell you what was there, but machines I had never heard of, ones that I have read of setting world records, ones that I have lusted after. It was awe inspiring, and I was left speechless. HUNDREDS of bikes." That's just a piece of the two stories told by BtheD19 and OneMatt. Take a look at the same private halls they saw, here, in the Garage Mahal.
Photo Credit:MikeSchinkel
2.) The Boxer over Brentwood
Suggested By: SennaMP4
Why it's cool: "This is a space whose only purpose is to enjoy the car." Holger Schubert's description of his living room, where his 1984 Ferrari 512 BBi 'Boxer' shares with him an ocean view, could be true of any of these great garages. Like the F40 home, it is not a garage int he strict sense, but it is something more than a glorified parking space.
We all love cars differently, some with modernist living rooms, others with shade-tree elbow grease. The unifying element in it all is that Schubert's dedication is in plain view here, just like his Ferrari.
Photo Credit:DesignDriven.com
1.) The GarageJournal's Restored 1930s Auto Shop
Suggested By: Krautwagen
Why it's cool: We have seen many different approaches to creating the ultimate garage in this too short tour of the Garage Mahal: the exotica in the living room, the McMansion for your supercars, the cluttered hometown treasure, and the spotless shrine to priceless icons. Here, in the central chamber of Garage Mahal, we find that these separate strains need not be kept divided. This blacksmith/welding shop, restored into a gleaming temple to car culture has a back story too long for a brief summary, and too many photos to contain in a top-ten gallery. Check out the thread yourself on the garage journal.
If you haven't already done so, go through and watch the slow process of restoration, and feel the lightness of 48 tons of scrap being expunged from the dusty, abandoned site.
Photo Credit: Thomas