We peek inside the minds of authentic car nuts to see how they live with their cars.
What Kind of Person Decorates a Garage?
Subaru people can identify with SVX driver Toly Arutunoff. He's a distinguished vintage auto racer, now 74, whose heart has a soft spot for cars that perform better than they're expected to.
Although Arutunoff has been involved with various
businesses, including oil drilling and auto dealerships, he hasn't had a
"normal" career path. He was born into privilege - his Russian father
had invented equipment that proved invaluable to the oil industry - just
before World War II. After Toly Arutunoff earned degrees in English,
philosophy, and math in the 1950s, he followed his lifelong passion to
race cars.
Because of his family's fortunes, Arutunoff's only limit to what he could do with his cars was his own good sense. The garage he built at his Tulsa home is not outrageously outfitted, nor are his cars priceless collectables. In fact, his 12-car, French-door structure could probably be duplicated by an enthusiast with an average income. (The massive pool with waterfall, fountain, and hot tub are likely out-of-bounds.)
Unlike some of the privileged, Arutunoff hasn't
simply purchased the fastest Ferraris and the latest Porsches with which
to go racing. Instead, he favors cars he can drive on the highway to
the races and back and not attract much attention. He also has an
appetite for a good story, and quirky orphan cars from unusual
manufacturers delight him.
He calls his rare, old Italian Lancia Appia "the
ugliest car ever made," and he has a unique model of a Cooper roadster
(a 1960s sports car by the same company that produced 1960s Grand Prix
cars and the original Mini Cooper) that even Peter Cooper himself could
not identify.
He also has built his own car, a unique canvas-bodied, eight-cylinder two-seater called the Lapine Agile (quick rabbit). Surrounding his cars are leather director's chairs and coffee tables on top of woven woolen rugs, which offer inviting places for visitors to relax and listen to Arutunoff's racing stories. A wall-sized trophy case is actually contradictory to his personality that shuns showing off, but his small office filled with pictures of him racing against world champions like Phil Hill, Richie Ginther, Bob Bondurant, and Dan Gurney lets visitors know that Arutunoff has the qualifications to be a star.
How do People React to Stunning Garages?
Ron Mintle built his enormous 12,000-square-foot San Diego garage one year before he and his wife finished their mountainside dream home. The first question many people ask is, "What does your wife think of this?" Mintle responds, "I told her we needed it to store building materials for the house." Today, Mintle's garage has a playroom that holds a television lounge, a bar, and a pool table. In the main workshop is an ocean-going yacht that Mintle is building, next to his Chevy muscle cars.
Peter Nettesheim built a large, barn-style garage on the back two acres of his Long Island yard to work on and display his collection of more than 50 vintage BMW motorcycles and four classic cars. Soon, he ran out of space, and so he added a second living room to his house in which to display his most historically significant bikes, including the first motorcycle built by the BMW company. "Other guys bring their wives here, just to show them that the guys aren't as crazy as they could be," says Nettesheim, who works as a truck distributor for his day job. "The wives look around at all the furniture and decorations, and all they ask is, 'Who dusts?'"
What do Car Nuts do in Their Garages?
Cincinnati banker Harry Yeaggy's garage has black walls, a black ceiling, super-glossy black ceramic floors (except under his hydraulic lift), and just a few bright neon signs. When Yeaggy needs some quiet inspiration, he said he turns off all lights with the exception of the neon signs and sits on the garage's couch and watches the colorful neon reflect off his award-winning collection of Auburns, Duesenbergs, Ferraris, and racing Corvettes.
Similarly, Beverly Hills developer Bruce Meyer said that after a night out, he comes home to his garage at 11:00 p.m. and ponders his cars in the dark, lit only by the glow of their instrument-panel lights.
Seattle building company owner Ken McBride's garage has a kitchen, miniature slot-car track, and living room in an upstairs mezzanine overlooking his 60 cars. He said, "I'd live in here if my wife would let me." McBride's garage had an indoor basketball hoop until a rambunctious teen knocked out an antique windshield. (Don't laugh. Chicago auction owner Phil Kuhn's garage has one over his six Ferraris.)
When Did Garages Become the New Kitchens?
Two cultural events have changed the definition of the word garage. It was originally from the French and roughly translated as "to dock at a port." It is now better described as "a playroom for adults." The first event was the emergence of home improvement as a widespread hobby at the end of the 20th century. The second was the concurrent trend in the building industry to expand the size of garages to house outsized lawn tractors, quad-runners, motorcycles, snowmobiles, classic cars, camping trailers, and our overload of sports equipment in addition to cars. New housing developments in California come with a minimum garage size of four cars. While the garage is the last room of the modern American house to be remodeled, it is also the largest room.
The concept of a garage you can live in is not new. Horace Dodge, who with brother John was supplying parts for Henry Ford's Model A in 1905 in Detroit, built an admired and dedicated garage with a single door and a car-sized turntable to fit 10 or so cars inside. From it emerged the first Dodge automobile in 1906. Demolished in 1989, the Dodge garage was likely the first "man cave," a term coined by The Boston Globe in 2007.
Early man cave creator Gordon Apker envisioned the modern car nuts' "Garage Mahal" in 1972. That's when he expanded a large chicken coop on his Puget Sound farm into what is now a cluster of seven buildings that hold his collection of 70 or so cars. He filled the buildings with displays of "petrobilia." These are items that remind experienced car nuts of the atmosphere and decoration that surrounded their first exposure to cars, likely before and shortly after World War II. Apker has auto dealer and service station signs by the hundreds, made with ceramic coatings and neon lights, hanging above his rare cars and collections of tools, antique picnic supplies, and motoring clothing draping full-size mannequins. Recently Apker purchased two lighted neon signs at the Barrett-Jackson auction extravaganza in Scottsdale, "... and I paid $20,000 for them. That's more than I paid for all of the hundreds of signs in the chicken coop."
Thus has evolved the garage you can live in. It's not just a museum or gallery, but an active room with machinery for work, pool tables for play, kitchens and bars for entertaining, and stuffed couches for relaxing. It's decorated with petrobilia that reminds car nuts of the atmospheres where they first fell in love and deep obsession with the automobile.
Automotive journalist Phil Berg has been writing about cars for more than 25 years. Among his projects are three volumes of Ultimate Garages. Find out more about him on his website www.philberg.com. Article original published in Winter 2012 issue of Drive magazine.
