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As a petrol head and car enthusiast, I don't need to tell you how exciting the prospect of building a garage/workshop to expand our business was to us.
I had visions of a old school American workshop, dripping with vintage signage and burnt wood - somewhere that like minded people would not only enjoy visiting, but most importantly, somewhere they'd trust to leave their car.
Of course, we welcome any ride, but our passion is with modified street cars, I think the décor reflects that.
Garage OD's former life was our old car dyno facility, a huge fan connected to a hole in the wall delivered air to simulate flow and cooling, exhaust fumes exit the building, via another large vent in the roof.
But these huge vents didn't just expel exhaust gas - needless to say, they released a tonne of noise too!
We're situated on a industrial estate which is awkwardly close to a small housing development; although the thrills of a V8 at 7000 rpm, or a Hayabusa turbo, screaming it's way to 13K make the hairs on your arm stand on end, and leave you with a boyish grin, but we were very conscious, our not so far away neighbours were undoubtedly nearing the end of their tether with us disturbing the peace on an otherwise rather civilised industrial park.
We made the decision to decommission our dyno facility and look to the future.
Of course, we're sad to see the dyno go, we've worked with some epic cars over the years, met some fantastic people and Mark has done an excellent job at tuning cars, but what's really exciting for us now, is the opportunity to create something even more special; we want to build a community, for petrol heads and car lovers alike - the Garage is just step one!
So the project began!
The first task was to fill in the gigantic hole in the floor where the rolling road once sat, to create a nice clean, solid base for a 4 tonne ramp. This was by no means a pleasant experience, filling the hole was one thing but if anybody has experienced the joys of sanding concrete, you'll know it's not for the faint hearted.
This did however very quickly give us a clear visual of exactly what we were working with, and so the design process began.
With some cleverly angled photos and mad ipad skills, we created a few different designs, playing around with colour combinations - this of course made the job far more difficult than anticipated as you could spend hours, days, weeks umming and ahing over a multitude of design combinations...
With the colour scheme finalised, it was time to bring the plan into fruition, long days and late nights gradually transformed what was once a dirty, dingy shed, into a new age retro workshop.
With a 4 tonne ramp, injector testing facility, tyre fitting and balancing machines and hints of our turbo roots dotted around the building, we celebrated the launch of our new Garage with a special visit from Forge Motorsport and their awesome Golf MK8 R project car!
Forge brought the car to us as part of their YouTube 'Project R' series, for us to fit some nice anti-roll bars supplied by Eibach UK, to further weaponize their new Golf MK8 R!
They've been posting some great videos documenting their project build so head over and check out their channel.
Of course, we took the opportunity to get some moody shots of the MK8.
It looks truly fantastic with the custom wrap! Not to mention its dripping with tasteful mods.
The anti-roll bars were a nice compliment to the already very capable MK8, paired with some stickies from Nangkang, there's no doubt Forge's hatch will be a LOT of fun on track!
Keep an eye on their social media for updates and of course, stay tuned for some exciting projects coming out of Garage OD.
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