Hooniverse Asks- What's Your Garage Art Look Like?

Robert Emslie

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Whether your garage is a temple to the automotive gods, or a leaky shack that you share with the rats and black widows, it’s still the one place that we, the car nuts, can call our own. And because of that, we tend to dress up the space in artistic accoutrements that perhaps those with whom we share our lives wouldn’t deem fitting for other parts of the house.
For some, it may be something as simple as a calendar from a favored tool vender. Those typically feature twelve months worth of wrenches and sockets, as well as buxom beauties demonstrating the correct hand positions on their various handles and shafts. A fun fact, the pictures in these calendars tend not to get heavily airbrushed and so a game you can play with them is find the boob-job scar on the models.
Along with your calendar, you may have posters of your favorite cars and trucks adorning the open-stud walls and providing a bit of a homey feel. Years ago Porsche mailed out posters of the 930 with the recipient’s last name inkjetted on its license plate. It was a good bit of personalization and I was impressed enough to mount the nearly 6 square foot poster on the wall of my garage, right above the headless Audi I was working on at the time. It was truly inspirational. Some time later I discovered that Jerry Seinfeld had the exact same poster on the wall of his TV show apartment. I felt it brought us a little closer. Jerry obviously didn’t feel that way, although the restraining order seems to have made him feel a little more content these days.
Some go whole hog, wrapping their car cave in photos, memorabilia and parts that turn it more into a museum than a utilitarian domicile for their Dodges and Daimlers. But how about you, do you treat the walls of your garage as blank canvases, as did our ancestral cave painters in Lascaux, France? Is there more than just spiderwebs and empty JB Weld bottles lining the space, or does your utter lack of artistic appreciation extend to your home away from home? If not, what’s your garage art?
Image source: [speedimpulse via imageshack.com]

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Robert Emslie

Robert Emslie

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  1. muthalovin Avatar
    muthalovin

    Sadly, my carport looks like a carport for a typical duplex.
    My dad's garage is adorned with many, many posters he has picked up over the years. My all-time favorite is the Alpine/Lambo poster.
    When I finally move up to lower-middle class with a car-hold, the first poster going up is this:
    <img src="http://www.ryanfellini.com/images/916crate.jpg"&gt;

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  2. Alff Avatar
    Alff

    My garage is mostly functional. The "art" consists of an Alfa Romeo of Palo Alto license plate frame, a 2010 Old Cars weekly calendar, an Ansa Exhaust sticker, some old license plates from various states, a couple of which have been cut up to donate their sheet metal to other projects and a large metal "Peace" sign cut from a Spider trunk lid.

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  3. P161911 Avatar
    P161911

    Right now my garage is a basement filled with tools, junk, and a couple of cars. Not a lot of wall space for decoration.
    When I was single and had a true garage, I took all the posters I had collected from 10 years or so of going to races and car shows and stapled them to the wooden ceiling. I also stapled my Mechanical Engineering diploma on the wall above my tool box. (I had two official copies of my diploma because the one I got at graduation had a big ink smear on it, that was the one stapled in the garage.)

    Reply
  4. lilwillie Avatar
    lilwillie

    The home garage has a few different Miller Lite and MGD signs and some old Rusty Wallace Diecasts on display. The shop/work has many suppliers posters and banners up and the office has most of the performance posters in it. Nothing to fancy or extravagant.

    Reply
  5. SSurfer321 Avatar
    SSurfer321

    Sadly my garage is my wife's art studio so most of the decoration looks like this:
    <img src="http://www.flyinghammerstudio.net/images/0704091118.gif"&gt;
    I do have a few mustang posters/metal signs stashed in my corner above my toolbox.

    Reply
  6. smalleyxb122 Avatar
    smalleyxb122

    There are very few adornments on the walls of my car hole, but 2 lovely ladies from a few year old Stihl calendar hang over my work bench, and along the top of the wall hang expired license plates from every car that I no longer own.

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  7. engineerd Avatar
    engineerd

    My garage doesn't have much wall space since the previous owner decided to put up shelves that are utterly useless. Now that the upstairs of Project House Hell is complete, I plan on ripping out all the useless stuff in there and putting in some heavy duty shelves, a work bench or two and getting everything organized. So, right now the only personal touches I have in there, other than the clutter, are my old license plates.
    Once the garage is cleaned up, I have a BMW Z3 poster I want to hang in there, and if anyone knows where I can find this poster I'd be much obliged.
    <img width=600 src="http://www.ibiblio.org/tkan/audi/we_come_in_peace.jpg"&gt;

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  8. Jim7 Avatar
    Jim7

    An autographed picture of Don Prudhomme and a 427 Cammer from a garage sale. And a Craftsman toolchest autographed by Tim Allen. The rest is, um, junk.

    Reply
  9. Jeff Glucker Avatar
    Jeff Glucker

    I have four neon beer signs that I need to find new homes for…
    -Sam Adams
    -Pacifico
    -Newcastle
    -Corona

    Reply
    1. Jeff Glucker Avatar
      Jeff Glucker

      I think I just spammed my own site

      Reply
  10. Peter Tanshanomi Avatar
    Peter Tanshanomi

    As a Hooniverse contributor, I had the unfair advantage of a heads-up via e-mail this weekend, so I actually snapped a few photos and dug some old ones out of my photo album.
    When I was a bachelor living in Idaho, my garage looked like this: (I've arranged three photos into a pseudo-panorama. Yea, you'll have to scroll, but otherwise it would be too tiny to make out any of the posters.)
    <img src="http://www.tanshanomi.com/temp/garage-art-triptych.jpg"&gt;
    Today, I don't have nearly as much…
    <img src="http://www.tanshanomi.com/temp/garage-art-0517.jpg"&gt;
    Car show dash plaques, plus some trim from the old GMC Handi-Bus.
    <img src="http://www.tanshanomi.com/temp/garage-art-0524.jpg"&gt;
    Old, worn-out joke, but it's for an old, worn out watercraft.
    <img src="http://www.tanshanomi.com/temp/garage-art-0520.jpg"&gt;
    I put very few posters in a frame, but this one got a bit scuffed up over the years, and deserves protection. I've had this since '83. It's an original factory poster from 1979. (My first brand-new bike was a '79 Bonnie).

    Reply
  11. longrooffan Avatar
    longrooffan

    Unfortunately, I live in a condo near the Florida Atlantic coastline and do not have a garage. Yes, rust is a big part of my life. However, as I am single, every wall and surface in my condo is covered with automobilia. I can't seem to embed any of my original images here in the comment section but I did do a blog about it a while back. You can see it by clicking on the following link.
    http://oleragtop.blogspot.com/2008/12/could-i-be-…

    Reply
    1. jeepjunkie Avatar
      jeepjunkie

      Having enjoyed happy hour many times at the longrooffan's…I think if he knocked out the bedroom, kitchen, and what ever the hell that other room is, it would make a really sweet garage….plenty of space to put the stuff my wife has no idea I own in….
      of course that would limit his living space, but then that just gives more room to enjoy happy hour in….

      Reply
  12. Age_of_Aerostar Avatar
    Age_of_Aerostar

    At the current time, it's got piles of stuff for a garage sale. There was a garage sale 2 weeks ago, but everything didn't sell, and it's now waiting for another weekend, so it's a risk to even open the door.
    (bad hoon)

    Reply
  13. austinminiman Avatar
    austinminiman

    My garage is largely functional with a couple exceptions. There's an old fridge in there which looks cool, but it also works, so that's only kind of decoration. I mainly try and keep a clean aesthetic. The garage itself is a 1890's horse stable, so some of the wood working in the roof is art unto itself.
    One bit of decoration I did recently, however. Because the garage has been added on to so many times there were windows that went nowhere, they'd been plywooded over. So I cut one out, reglassed it, paneled it, and made some shelves out of old dog crates(I'm into reuse.) It currently houses a collection of GM dealer models. They're the models dealers used to show customers the colors available. My great uncle had them, and when we inherited the house from him they came with it. Luckily he was a car-nut as well.
    <img src="http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/9747/shopcab.jpg"&gt;
    <img src="http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/3056/20100502194209.jpg"&gt;
    <img src="http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/9293/20100118211146.jpg"&gt;
    <img src="http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/3015/20100118211126.jpg"&gt;

    Reply
  14. earlofhalflight Avatar
    earlofhalflight

    – Posters from various race meetings of years gone by
    – Posters of some cars I like (most of which are Sunbeams)
    – some old number plates
    – some memorabilia from events I've been in (rally plates, certificates, etc)
    – a slot car layout up against one wall which will hopefully one day look more like garage art when I get around to adding scenery

    Reply