The Center Bay

Ft. Lauderdale, FL | January, 2026

A garage three generations deep, layered with eccentric objects, wild rides, trash treasures, and the center bay he grew up in. The more you look, the more you find.

“I have a very particular recipe - big wheels that shouldn’t work but do, white walls, lowered. If I do the interior, I prefer it color-matched. I go for the unexpected, but in a way that works.”

“The rug? Picture this - a 500+ horsepower Shelby GT350R, carbonized grey with Recaro seats, rolling down the street bulk-trash hunting in the rain. And then, I spot it on the side of the road. It took hours of pressure washing to get the stink out.”

There are garages built for order, silence, and restraint. Then there are others - loud, curated mess, overflowing with stories stacked three generations deep. This one began with his grandfather.

A big, solid hot-rodder who believed in two things: hard work and buying land, because “they’re not making any more of it.” With his friend, he built the shop that would house their trucks, their work, and a 50-ton, 50-foot-long wrecker. It wasn’t designed to be pretty.

Decades later, his grandson is still using it.

Meet Tony. The shop has become his personal garage, a living workshop, and a sprawling museum of curated maximalism (his phrase). A mix of “a bunch of bullshit, but good bullshit,” arranged with intention, instinct, and a sense of humor only someone raised inside a family shop could possess.

The center bay is the heart of it all, anchored by a chandelier so massive it required a forklift to install. It once hung for twenty years in a buddy’s powder-coating shop. When he asked if it was ever leaving the building, his friend said, “You serious? Come get it Saturday.” It barely fit in the truck. The centerpiece broke on the way home, so he spent years hunting for the perfect replacement. He found it, not in a lighting store, but in a dented, rusted VW Bus hubcap now bolted proudly to the bottom, glinting down at you like a wink. Below it sits an oriental rug rescued out of bulk trash. In the rain.

This center bay is where Tony grew up, first sneaking in as a kid to play with tools he wasn’t supposed to, then building his first car, and every car since then. This garage is an I Spy book brought to life. Every corner has a story. Every story has a twist. Need proof? Just look at the deer head sporting a mullet and gold chain.

“I’ve been in this center bay since I was ten. Sneaking in to play with tools I wasn’t supposed to.

Every car of my life has been built right here.”

He grew up in a family of builders. His grandfather deep into hot rods, father obsessed with muscle cars. When he was young, he wanted to build big-power classics too, but didn’t have the money. So his father pushed him toward air-cooled Volkswagens: cheap, simple, and honest. His first was a ’74 Super Beetle. Then a New Beetle (the first one delivered in the U.S.), then a Tiguan on Bentley wheels, then a Mustang.

The recipe is always the same: Buy something. Work on it. Improve it. Enjoy it. Sell it. And through sheer repetition, persistence, and raw instinct, he built the collection he has today.

Some of the cars stay forever, like his black Beetle. Some are “build cars,” projects destined for eventual sale once they reach their best version. Cars purchased site unseen, rebuilt from the ground up right in this garage. Even the little Bantam, purchased with bare metal body, was resurrected piece by piece with new wiring, drivetrain, and interior.

“I’ve got my core collection, they’re mine. Then I have the ones I buy just to enjoy. I fix them up, make them better, and eventually someone always wants to buy them.”

Family legacy extends beyond the walls of the shop. His father raced circle track his entire life. They rebuilt two 1969 Camaros one for him and one for his dad, so they could run Hot Rod Power Tour together. His father’s old 600-horse small-block sits in his own car now, a high-RPM animal that destroys tires at will.

He laughs as he describes his Camaro: “At low RPM the car’s a dog. But at 60 on the highway? It’ll blow the tires off.”

His favorite part of the garage? The same center bay he worked in as a kid. Every car he’s built, sold, or kept has passed through that slip.

Why does the garage matter? Because he was raised in it. Because everything he loves passes through it. Because it’s where stories become objects, and objects become memories. And because, like all great garages, it’s his, and there’s no mistaking that.

In a world obsessed with minimalism and restraint, his workshop stands in defiant celebration of the opposite. A maximalist’s cathedral. A family legacy. A creative junkyard. A lifetime of stories layered on top of each other like paint on a well-used panel.

Tony’s playground.

Additional pics below. To see more, watch the film (coming soon).