Dispatches from the Ultimate Garage Tour

Right here we’re going to take you on a Spring tour, a virtual road trip to visit a halfdozen garages all over the country, all created by our kinds of guys, die-hard car guys. These garages reflect glimpses of the places we all want to live, and who we all want to be.

When I asked, magnificent Bentley restorer Gary Wales was standing amidst his collection of four garages in the mid-February climate of Southern California, and he answered my question about why he moved out to the overcrowded, smoggy L.A. suburbs 25 years ago from the pristine, expansive Midwest. He looked at me, and the normally succinctly spoken, profoundly busted-knuckle, grey-haired mechanic Wales said, as he gestured toward the warm sun, “Well, duh.”

Car weather.

Creator of the modern journalistic car review, Brock Yates, also a curator of his own horse-barn-turned-garage, says everyplace in America has three awful months (except San Diego, he qualifies.) Cannonball Run founder Yates preserves in his garage inspirational sprint cars and hot rods that have begotten modern American Ferrari-killers. Yates’ New York garage exists like most of the rest of our car spaces, in changing seasons, and that means we all wait for several months while our garages hibernate like Brown Bears.

But the North is not the only hostile place for cars. Former Pebble Beach chairman Gordon Apker, who built his ultimate garage in the Northwest in 1976, recently discovered the pitfalls of moving some of his prized classics to his brand new garage in Scottsdale, where garages need air conditioning all summer, and in fact he explains he can’t drive them from May to September, because the heat cracks the leather and dries out other fabric parts. So for him Spring comes in September, but it’s the same car weather we know.

Peter Klutt’s stunning 150-car Toronto garage displays the paralysis of winter. All of the available floor space in his 50,000 square-foot complex holds parked classic muscle cars that are hiding from the winter. The aisles between his displayed favorites are packed with friends’ and clients’ loved ones.

But every year we awake from hibernation and check to see if our batteries have survived. This year my wife’s Miata and Z3 batteries were dead. Note to self: put the new cars on Battery Tenders, too. The anticipation of opening the garage to life again outweighs the hassle. Spring is here. So get everything out. Wheel it all into the driveway and start sweeping out Autumn’s leaves from four months ago. “Ungridlock,” says 20-car classic collector Mark Thomas. That’s so you can drive the cars, he explains. Space-plus-one equals gridlock, Little Deuce Coupe creator Clarence Catallo is remembered saying, and so he kept an emergency car-hauling trailer outside his Methodist church-turned-garage for the inevitable overflow of cars.

In Michigan, the Points and Condenser Preservation Society holds a drive every Spring to celebrate car weather, and when the 50-plus collection of everything from Alfas to ’49 Roadmasters, Gull-wing Mercedes and MGs returns from the road, the participants gather in their common shared warehouse-turned-garage and cluster in a lounge area and swap drive stories while seated on a circle of couches, or while milling about other members’ uncovered special cars.

So plan to turn the beginning of car weather into your own celebration, a gathering, a drive, or a group detailing and waxing event. Car and Driver magazine’s John Phillips used to hand-wash cars in his driveway even when his bosses scoffed at his inefficient use of time when compared to the local car wash. But Phillips washed each surface by hand, tracing the compound curves into his mind’s eye and relearning the appreciation of the physical shapes of cars he loved.

We all love those shapes, and the rite of Spring rebirths our garages like Lotus blossoms, pun absolutely intended. Dean Stanley removes the covers from his Lotus Seven every April, and starts his routine of cleaning, tuning, and firing up the tiny beast, then straps on his leather helmet, goggles, and gloves and braves the fading chill for an hour’s drive, and a two-hour cool-down while he tinkers with the machine in the clean well-built space of his self-built sanctuary.

See you there.