Werkstatt 80
Charlotte, NC | December 2, 2025
Photographer: Peter Stuppard
Behind the door of a workshop hidden in plain sight, a sanctuary where vinyl, vintage cars, bikes, and good company define the space.
“You can love your objects by yourself, but my favorite moments are when ten people I care about are all nerding out over something we love.”
Tucked into a quiet pocket of downtown Charlotte, wedged firmly between bars and restaurants, is a space that shouldn’t exist. At least not here. Werkstatt 80 feels like it belongs down an alley in Berlin. But this one belongs to Andrew.
Growing up in central Connecticut, the garage was the family’s gravitational center. A lifelong car guy, Andrew’s father would spend nights wrenching on a Porsche 914, then later hunting down G-body 911s. It was the kind of environment where you have no choice but to learn. In high school, he and his friends spent half their lives in the school shop, tinkering with a 1964 Plymouth Savoy.
College made building cars near-impossible, but the urge to tinker found another host: instruments. He’d buy beat-up, forgotten bass guitars and bring them back to life. After graduating, the garage called again. First a Miata. Then a BMW 535is. Then the realization that project cars multiply faster than you have space for them. In Connecticut, he found a shared garage, a communal workshop where people drifted in and out, and he fell deeper into car culture. COVID only intensified it. Cars, photography, and evenings spent at shows became the ritual, a form of therapy everyone could stand six feet apart for.
Today, Andrew works in finance. But his sanctuary is Werkstatt 80, a 1,200 sq ft workshop designed with intention. Miraculously, the garage has AC, no small victory in North Carolina, and yet the real luxury is the contrast: When you’re inside, you’re gone. When you roll the door up, you’re back in the middle of everything, practically able to bike into the heart of Charlotte’s nightlife.
Inside the garage, music spins the way it’s meant to, not as background noise, but as full albums, front to back. The collection is still young, but it has soul: mid-to-late ’50s jazz and R&B, early funk, late ’90s hip hop. Records that help you keep your head down in a project, or up talking with friends.
“There’s no car scene, no car culture without people”
Andrew’s favorite memory here is a rotating cast of people, old friends and new friends, dropping in and grabbing a wrench to help rebuild the 911’s suspension. A garage is many things: workspace, sanctuary, storage. But the best ones are ecosystems. And Werkstatt 80 thrives on that.
The projects here span continents and eras. Vintage Japanese and Italian track bikes. The dream of one day making room for a BMW E9 or an Alfa 115. There’s always something underway, always something about to begin.
And when Andrew isn’t in the building, he’s helping build the scene around him. In Charlotte he runs Parallel, a car community bringing a different kind of show to the city, including events with curation, music, ambiance, and intention. Less “cars in a parking lot,” more “culture meets machine.”
That ethos lives in every corner of Werkstatt 80. It’s a workshop shaped by relationships, by shared obsessions, by the energy that unfurls when people gather around something mechanical and beautiful and real.
Behind the roll-up door of Werkstatt 80, the city fades. Stories gather. The music spins. Tools in hand and the warmth of good company, Andrew keeps building cars, bikes, instruments, memories, and community, as if they’re all just different expressions of the same idea.
