Just heard about CarSpace

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with this place.

I saw an ad for https://www.carspaceinc.com/ on Facebook and clicked through, thinking despite the photo int he ad that maybe it was some sort of maker space or shared garage or something.

Nope. It's an upscale car club that has a website that reads like somebody with a newly minted Masters in Marketing chugged 25 marketing keyword cocktails and then power-vomited them all over. 

What's interesting is that I kept reading and one of the primary draws seems to be that it's a shared office space. Which might actually be brilliant. We've talked about how there is a non-zero number of people who are now working remotely, and a fraction of those people may desire an office space that still allows social interaction, networking, etc. 

I don't think that it's for me, but I've never seen anything like it. Heck, they might do great advertising in GRM or Clasic Motorsports.

What does the hive think?

Two similar places just opened near me. They're billing them as "owned car condos."  There's a small bar and a shared office space there too.

The demographic here is old, white and rich, so I suspect it's a very expensive place to get away from the wife. I was interested as an alternative to home ownership, until they told me you can't live in them, despite the fact that you can spec them out with a upstairs room, bathroom, etc.

I think the very base package, one car stall was $80k and they strongly encouraged you to buy a bigger spot and deck it out. My guess is that most of them fall into the $150k+ range, and I believe there are "membership dues" every month. 

They should just buy up those abandoned Carvana vending machines.  You could store a boatload of cars in them, and there is already a system in place to retrieve a single car.  

It's high end but I can see it–like a golf country club for car people. 

We just published something that touches on this topic over in Classic Motorsports.

A friend of ours has a "car condo." He can't live there but keeps his cars there. As he told us, it's social and keeps him working on cars. It also filled a niche in their life: How to downsize their home yet still have space for the cars.

The "You can't live here" might well be a city zoning requirement.  Often these sorts of places are in areas zoned industrial.

We have something similar to that up here in the Seattle (and another in Dallas) area.

• Valet parking with unlimited in-and-out privileges
• In-house wash bays and detailing service
• Private member's lounge
• Conference room and shared work spaces
• Special events, classes and meet-ups
• 55,000 sq ft of climate-controlled storage
• Lifts available for reservation
• Food & drink by Derby restaurant
• Private card room
• Door-to-door covered transport service

  https://theshopclubs.com/

It's quite popular, and there are lots of fun cars to go see. They do weekly cars and coffee events, usually themed, have special guests that come in (they had the Singer Turbo Study here in the last month). Quite a few local car clubs use them for events. 

They seem to be doing well and I visit every few months or so.

I just started keeping a car at e3 Storage https://www.e3storage.com/. It's a lot less "high-end" than those options, but more expensive than a typical self-storage unit. I also like having access to the lift.

E3 does storage and just general membership.  So you don't have to pay the full cost of leaving a car there, but can pay just to have access to a lift, air tools, oil draining, etc.  I've lived in an apartment in the middle of the city for a while and it's a life saver.  They have an office and such, I've gone up there during the day and taken a quick call in the office or the garage.

I would think these work well for people in large urban areas.

David S. Wallens said:

A friend of ours has a "car condo." He can't live there.....

Oh you can if you don't get caught......

(this is one of YouTubers I enjoy)

for $95 a month you get racing simulators, golf simulators and a place to go hang out /w free beer during happy hour.  That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.  If you can get car storage in addition to that and the price of storage isn't that much more than the price of a self storage place it sounds like a great business model.  Office space for $800 a month is probably a bit high compared to something like WeWork but the specialization for the car community and specifically car influencers who would need an office space could be worth it.