My friends Rick Voegelin and Dave Wallace recently forwarded a press release to me about a little community of very upscale car guy condos for sale at a place called Iron Gate Motor Condos just south of Chicago. I investigated the website and I have to admit, these condo/shops are pretty cool. The cars, however, were all Porches, Lamborghinis, and Rolls Royce machines in pristine settings with everybody drinking wine and looking at car art instead of the cars.

That’s way past my pay scale and interests. Frankly, the clientele is probably not the crowd that I would enjoy anyway. I have nothing against rich guys. I know a few and they are very pleasant people. But after a while I think the conversation would always veer off into investment strategies, politics, and business ventures/tax dodges rather than important stuff like the latest cam tricks or how Jon Kaase is going to wow them at this year’s Engine Masters.

I like the concept of a gearhead condo complex but I would think for the average enthusiast it would be more appropriately targeted at less emphasis on a museum-like place for the cars and more on a workable shop with a hoist, ample room for tools, and if you’re really upscale, a clean room for engine building. The condo and living area would be upstairs from the shop. My old Petersen publishing buddy and Hot Rod Magazine tech writer Marlan Davis had an idea for a place like this that he wanted to build. As I recall, it was going to be a round building perhaps because Marlin is a bit eclectic. The downstairs was going to be a shop with the second story open in the middle with a walkway around the entire circumference leading to the living quarters upstairs.

As I remember it, Marlan had professional plans drawn by an architect only to discover that no bank would loan him the money. They told him that it was just too far left of center to be able to sell it should be default on the loan. So he had to settle for a more traditional living arrangement with a separate house and shop.

I can also remember a man I know in my hometown of Boone, Iowa who had what I thought was the ideal shop/living space. He found a building with, if I recall correctly, the equivalent of four-car area downstairs accessed with two garage doors. Upstairs was an apartment size place with kitchen, living room, bedroom and full bathroom. When I was 18 I thought that was the ultimate car guy place to live.

Now that I’m a bit older, I can see a few shortcomings with this plan. First, I think all the fumes from the cars downstairs would quite handily make their way upward – especially in the summertime. I have to admit that even the aroma of VP113 would get old after a short time. The occasional whiff is certainly fun, but 24/7 aspiration probably isn’t healthy. With proper ventilation, however, I’ll bet you could make this work. I have something close to this with my shop located a mere 26 steps from my back door. It’s not the same as living upstairs but I am not complaining. It only took me 30 years to get there.

I think the biggest advantage of a place like Iron Gate would be your gearhead friends would be right next door. That has the biggest attraction to me. Instead of coming over to borrow cup of sugar, they’d be coming over to borrow that nice three-leg puller you recently bought. This idyllic place would be nearby a combination drag strip/road course/autocross track where you would have 24/7 access. As long as we’re dreaming, all my friends would have condo/shops within a short walking distance. Only problem might be too much visiting and not enough wrench turning. But that sounds like a good problem to have! But instead of calling the place something like Iron Gate, I think I’d steal the term from the old paddock area at Indianapolis and call it Gasoline Alley. That just has a great ring to it.