How Many Don't Have A Garage Or A Trailer?

A comment in another thread got me thinking about this:

Almost everyone I know in this hobby has a garage and also a large percentage of them have trailers. I think this is mostly because they are fellow road racers and or doing time trials. Once a car gets past a certain point it just makes sense to trailer it to events.

If you are doing autocross and HPDEs (especially in a daily driver) you don't need a garage or really a trailer for that matter.

So how many of you are doing this without a garage and also without have a trailer?

years ago, I didn't have either and lived in a Boston high rise. Had my MR2 Turbo that I autocrossed and wife had NC2 PRHT as her DD.  I also lived in SF , without garage or trailer for a bit. Had a GSXR for DD and a Miata R for track. 

Glad those days are very behind me. 

When I started autocrossing, I lived in a studio apartment (three floors up) in metro Atlanta. I had off-street parking and a closet in the basement for my tires and jack. 

When I started, I didn't have either. I had a 12x16 shed that I used as shop and storage. My work surface was a sheet of plywood on dirt or the street in front of the house. 

I graduated to an 8x12 enclosed trailer as a garage bay. 

Now I have 4 garage bays full of crap and concrete wrapped most of the way around the house. 

While it makes some things easier, it doesn't make them any more fun. 

Tom1200 said:

If you are doing autocross and HPDEs (especially in a daily driver) you don't need a garage or really a trailer for that matter.

This is me, I have neither. It gets tricky when I want to swap an engine or transmission.

No way would I have a dedicated, unregistered race car without a trailer or garage.

My first apartment when getting into cars had an attached garage (closer to a townhome style situation), but then my wife and I had an apartment near DC that only had a parking garage. Thankfully the management was super cool about working on the car, and the only rule really was "we don't care unless someone complains" which never happened. Next move though was to a house with a large garage

I didn't have a garage when I started - I seem to recall installing my first set of sway bars with the front wheels driven up on a curb. I soon rented a garage to store my car maybe a mile or so away. My next few places didn't have a garage either but I made sure my first house had one. My next house had a bigger garage than the house, although it was a small house.

Now I've got a 30x40 shop and a 16x7 trailer - the latter is rarely used. My local events are close enough that I just drive the car over (wing, harnesses, big splitter, long diffuser, RRs etc) because dealing with the trailer is too much overhead. When I go to events out of town, it's trailer time.

My first foray into the car hobby was with 4x4 trucks while living in an apartment. No garage. No trailer. Minimal tools.   Somehow I managed to swap the heads and intake on my '71 F100 360FE in my apartment parking lot and finished the 6" lift kit installation on my '78 F150 that was started in the back lot at the shop where I worked. 

I have a garage now, but with two cars squeezed into it, there isn't a lot of room to work, which is why I've had trouble finding motivation to work on my cars. 

In reply to cyow5 :

wow in 18 year of Elise ownership, never opened the dash. At least now I know what it looks like

I don't have a garage, but I do have, essentially, a concrete slab behind my house connected to the road by a dirt alleyway.

It works well for it is, but working on or cleaning a car can be difficult during the day because of the Florida heat.

Better than not having anything, I guess.

Garage, no trailer.....

I didn't get a trailer until I had kids.  They couldn't deal with the hour drive home in a stiff car with partially working AC after events.  Strollers the size of a VW Beetle pushed me in that direction too.

I started out with a dirt driveway and no garage.  Most of my motorsport at that time was motorcycles, and they were parked on 4x8 ply sheets under covers.  When I bought a dedicated road race bike, I bought a 6x12 enclosed trailer, and the racebike stayed in that.  I even used it as a paint booth to paint the bike.  I later moved to a suburban house with a 20x20 garage, and eventually bought a trailer when I got serious about the track car.

Completely spoiled now with a dedicated shop, and when I think of my dirt driveway days it makes me cringe...  and it makes my back hurt.

I guess I should add my timeline as well:

I was still living with my parents when I started road racing motorcycles.  My little 125GP bike was stored inside our  6 X 8 shed. I'd have to pull out the lawn mover and roll the bike onto the patio to work on it.

The first year we ran the Datsun it was still registered; by 1991 I had a garage and I bought a cheap single axle trailer.

So I've not been without a garage or trailer for the last 34 years.

Garage, no trailer. No place to store a trailer or I'd have one. First HPDEs I didn't I didn't have either. Same with Autox. I was able to get some major work done to cars, but it was always over at a buddies house. I didn't do a ton until I was able to keep tools near my car. Carrying them out from an apartment was a non starter.

I currently don't have either one. Just a carport.

My first car was repaired regularly on my parents' dirt driveway and under a tarp if it was raining. After college I first started renting garage space a mile from my house which was magical. Now I've got a spot to work on one car in my parents' garage with a lift. Oh the joy of a lift and having my car in the same building as my bed.

I've never been able to justify owning a trailer with how little I use one. For the longest time we drove the racecar to and from races except for the more distant tracks. Renting a UHaul car hauler here and there was always cheaper than buying and maintaining my own trailer. One guy on the race team does have a nice car hauler and tow vehicle but he's 4.5 hours from me, so not super helpful for me. I'll probably end up with my own trailer/dolly after I get my car back on the road I suspect.

In this part of the country, tornado alley, having a decent car with no covered parking is a risky proposition. Obviously if a tornado hits your house it doesn't matter, but we also get LOTS of hail storms. Hence our Mazda 3 being totaled from hail damage back in September. 

When I was in high school, my parents divorced when I was about 10 and lived with my mom and sister in a trailer park, if hail storms were coming. We would drive around the corner and park in the car wash to protect the cars from hail damage. 

My fiance and I both have talked about getting a project car because she would like to learn more about how cars work and all that jazz, but our 2 car garage already has her '23 CX-5 and my '23 BRZ. And with the petty crime from the "youths" in the neighborhood, I refuse to have anything that isn't in secured parking. 

For reference, it didn't even rain at our house, but the storm nailed her car a few miles away while she was at an eye doctor appointment. 

In reply to z31maniac :

Damn!!!

Tom1200 said:

In reply to z31maniac :

Damn!!!

Yeah, both A pillars were hit so hard it cracked the paint, same with the C pillars. Busted the side view mirrors, got the doors, the tailights, every panel on the car. Even dented the plastic bumpers! It really sucked because we had just paid it off a few months before (I was super upside down in it to start from getting rid of the 135i). But she REALLY loves her CX-5. And from the settlement we were able to put $16k down on it. 

It's pretty funny to see how small the BRZ looks next to it, you can see the top of my car is the bottom of the windows on hers!

Tom1200 said:

In reply to z31maniac :

Damn!!!

A lot of new car dealers here in the OKC metro have huge canopies that all the new cars are parked under to protect them from the severe storms we get. 

MadScientistMatt said:

I currently don't have either one. Just a carport.

Ditto 

When I went looking for a house in 2011 to get out of NKY & into Dayton, with my ex-GF, my only requirement was a garage.  Hers was a decent backyard for dogs and a garden.

The only thing that will get me to move, short of fire/tornado/etc, is a much larger garage for reasonable price.  And that's not happening anytime soon.

No trailer.

Ever since I've been into cars I've been lucky enough to have  a garage, or access to a garage.  I've mostly been into Jeeps, street bikes, and sports cars but never a dedicated race car.  I did trade a dirt bike for a car hauler once, but only owned it for a brief minute. I couldn't get the unloaded car hauler in or out of my driveway without scrapping. 

I currently dont even have a driveway.  No major car work for me.  Which makes it hard to claim I am currently part of "the hobby".  I still have no idea how I'm going to handle some of the things I need to do to my current project :(

When actively participating, I've always had a place to work on a car.  Never had a trailer though.