I have good news, dear reader. A car genie has emerged from your vehicle’s oil pressure warning light. He wants to grant you one wish, but with one caveat. He is willing to give you a brand-new garage and any vehicles that you want to put into it. The catch is that this garage has a magical limit of 10 wheels. You can put anything in this garage so long as the wheel count doesn’t surpass that. How are you going to spend your 10-wheel budget?
For the purpose of this exercise, dually rears are counted as four wheels. Likewise, if your vice is aviation, every landing gear with more than one tire counts as more than one wheel. However, I will add a twist, and it’s that this magical garage will fit an unlimited number of vehicles with zero wheels. So, if your dream is to own a fleet of Sea-Doos that don’t have trailers, congratulations!
I sometimes like to think about what I would do if I were forced to dramatically cut down on my fleet. What if I were allowed to have no more than maybe three vehicles total? What would I do?
I think I would go back to my roots. As much as I love my Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI and as much as I adore my MGF, they would have to go. I would spend eight tires of my 10-tire budget on Smarts.
Specifically, I would keep my very first Smart, my 2012 Smart Fortwo Passion Coupe, and I would keep my second Smart, my 2016 Smart Fortwo Edition #1. These two cars got me through some of the hardest parts of my life and were there for some of the best parts of my life. Yes, I have “better” cars in my fleet, but I don’t think that there’s a better pair of cars that represent who I am as a car enthusiast and person.
That leaves me with two tires, and I would spend them on my 1976 Suzuki RE-5 Rotary. This motorcycle was one of my holy grails, and I finally have it. I’m never letting it go!
Now, it’s time to have some fun with my wildcard. For my vehicle without wheels, I’d choose a Saunders-Roe Princess.
Only one of these was ever built, and it was the largest all-metal flying boat ever constructed. Look, my garage is really big. The Princess is so huge that, come to think of it, the flying boat could have made for a pretty awesome flying home. The failure of the Princess project could be a fun story for another time.
Here’s where I turn things to you. You have a budget of 10 wheels and as many vehicles without wheels as you want. What are you choosing?
Top graphic: Audi
I’m going to assume the genie doesn’t know about my other garage, where the normal cars are parked. It’s none of his business anyway. So I choose three silly fun vehicles for the magical garage: a Morgan 3 wheeler, a Reliant Robin, and an Audi ur-Quattro. Ten wheels, seven of which are driven.
BMW X5M Competition, Russel Built Porsche Baja, and a BMW R7. Hell, round it out with a Cessna 195 on skis or floats? I’ll figure out how to fly…
I actually already have 10 wheels and rotate them regularly:
2013 Focus ST
1995 F-150
2006 Honda VT750 Shadow
But if I can spend some money:
Audi R8 V10
Ford F-150 Raptor
Hmm, not sure what type of bike, I haven’t been in the market. Maybe a newer Honda Shadow, that bike has been dead reliable with almost no maintenance.
So, just thought of it.
For off-roading and commuting, a M8 Greyhound. With 6 wheel drive and a 37mm gun, there is little that will stop you on or off road.
That leaves a boring minivan for my wife.
To avoid having to transition to rotary wing, lets go with a Cessna 170 (not a 172) on skis (work just fine on grass strips!) So, I’m still at zero. 1957 Thunderbird (with the supercharged 312). That makes 4. An old school Bronco for the Mrs. We’re up to 8. And I’d LOVE to have Grandpa’s war-surplus Indian again (My cousin ruined it!) That’s my 10.
1971 Triumph spitfire
1984 Chevy K10 extended cab.
2022 KLR 650.
1965 Riviera GS
2024 Ram TRX
2020 VMAX 1700
Porsche Panamera Hybrid
Spouse’s comfy car (If pressed, I could come up with one in 10 minutes)
A really nice commuter bicycle
Bell 429
I already have a fleet with 10 wheels that will fit in a garage:
-1969 Triumph GT6 EV conversion (4 wheels)
-custom-built electric trike(velomobile with a body on it), 10 kW peak (3 wheels)
-Milan SL velomobile EV conversion (3 wheels)
The electric motorcycle disguised as an unmotorized mountainbike can be stored in the house.
I would have the garage built in Quebec and have an unlimited numbers of vehicles, since all would have “roues” rather than “wheels”.
I dunno, I feel like a clever genie would sense what you were poutine out there and make you roue that decision.
I’m going to go with:
A Vector W8 (4 wheels)
A Carver One (3 wheels)
An Elio (3 wheels)
And
A Unicorn.
I figure I will find the Unicorn will be easier to find.
I figure if this is a Mythical Garage, I might as well fill it with Mythical things.
where would you find a working Elio?
Next to the Unicorn in the Vector section of K-Mart.
Surely, as a hoser, you mean Zellers rather than K-Mart
I’m not a Canadian, but my wife is almost one and I grew up watching Doug and Bob and eventually Red Green and consider them all my idols.
Haha. I watched Red Green all the time as a kid in Western NY, then I ended up moving to Canada when I was about 18.
Let’s just say that My wife has never found me Handsome.
What about tracks? How does a snow cat or a tank count? Is there a hard limit on the number of helicopters? What if a car doesn’t have wheels, like I choose a base C8 Corvette and a ZR1X, but only one set of wheels that they share? Does a dragster with a wheelie bar count as four or six wheels? What about one vehicle that exceeds 10, like an 18 wheeler. Could that be my one choice, or is it automatically disqualified?
A coworker might already have the ultimate 10 wheeled garage (For him).
He owns a Greyhound Armored Car (6 wheels)
A Jeep (4 wheels)
2 Sherman tanks (tracked)
1 Stuart Tanks (tracked)
1 M36 Tank Killer (tracked)
1 Huey Helicopter (skid)
Sort of… He volunteers at a small local museum. Since he passes all the background checks and LOVES tanks, he has the ATF license on several of the vehicles that have destructive weapons.
Immediately thought of *one* car that would fit in such a garage (provided it’s not in the process of testing a sample tire): the Michelin PLR https://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/images/news/french-freak-citroen-plr-by-michelin-was-a-10-wheeled-monster-built-to-test-truck-tires-188543_1.jpg
Per Wikipedia: “The Michelin PLR, internal name Citroën DS PLR Break, Poids Lourd Rapide [Break] means “fast heavyweight” [Station wagon], nicknamed as Mille Pattes, the French word for centipede, is a tire evaluation test car.”
This may be the most I’ve ever wanted a Citroen.
I saw a Smart the other day pulling a utility trailer.
Both the trailer and the Smart were in great condition – so this person ran this setup by choice instead of necessity. Pop a quad on that trailer and that’s a full garage!
F150 Raptor R
1969.5 Dodge Coronet Superbee 440-6
Ducati Scrambler Cafe Racer Edition
Some sort of Nice Boat (I don’t know anything about boats)
Cessna Caravan on Floats
The floats are a stroke of genius!
Are hovercrafts allowed on roads? Because then I can just have an entire fleet of them, plus room for the vehicles I really want.
Going to the corner mart? Grab the single seater hovercraft.
Going to the park with the family? Grab the 4 seater hovercraft.
The bonus is that you can live out your Star Wars dreams of being in speeder, because they look very similar.
The hard thing with hovercrafts is stopping.
Just make sure the inflation skirt on it is very large and inflated, you go from being a hovercraft to a bumper car!
Isn’t that more of a problem for whatever is in your way?
What I’ve seen is the problem is more of turning. You can spin and point a new direction, but you still have the same momentum you had. So now you are just going sideways instead of actually changing direction.
Yeah, a hovercraft is more or less just an air-hockey puck with a fan on top to give it thrust. It’s more akin to maneuvering a rocket than any kind of regular land vehicle or watercraft.
Not to say it doesn’t look fun, but I have no idea how to take a typical right turn into a driveway without bouncing off the mailbox.
I imagine you’d have to turn and burn: flip the craft nearly 180 degrees and throttle up to stop it, then turn left (since you approached backwards) into the driveway. That is, unless they have some version of reverse thrust, then you can just reverse-thrust until you’ve almost stopped, and turn left to reverse into the driveway. Either way, you’d turn left to go right.
FL5 Type R
GMA T.33 Spider
Triumph Thruxton RS
And a Citroen 2CV that’s been converted into a giant roto-tiller or something.
3 Reliant Robins and a unicycle. It’s the only sensible answer
Frankly that’s one car, a set of winter tires, and a spare for each season.
I guess my cars will all live outside since my bicycles will use up all the available wheel spots. (Enduro, XC, Gravel, Ebike, and the loaner XC bike for the kid’s MTB team)
If it has to be 10 wheels and cover all my foreseeable driving, I’d go with a Lucid Air (daily / family car), a Morgan three wheeler (toy), and finally some form of Piaggio Ape with an open deck (hauling stuff around town).
Clever! I didn’t think of trike options.
Of course, one working, reliable car, and ~4 cars with never more than one wheel installed at a given time, if any at all, so in theory I can boy-math my way to 2 functional vehicles, and several jack-stand occupying to-do lists.
That’s the creativity I was hoping to see!
Rules are made to be broken, and hoarding knows no limits, just workarounds!
I’m simple. (Or boring?) I want space for just my current car and a trailer for hauling lumber/reno materials/furniture building supplies.
The rest of space can be used to setup a nice and large woodworking workshop. Right now, the driveway is my workshop. I play a game of jenga every time I want to do woodworking pulling tools in and out of a small shed. Right now, if I need to use my table saw, I have to move my mitre saw, router table and packout onto the driveway. Getting the thickness planer out is a horrifying game of carrying/dragging a 90lb tool out onto a portable wheeled toolbench that is permanently located on said driveway.
So if I get to dream, that would be my ideal setup. The bonus is a woodworking workshop also has the ability to be a car workshop as well.
Just read through all the comments so far. Gee, a lot of folks like motorcycles!! So far I’m the outlier with using a trailer to fill the quota… I guess I am indeed boring in my dreaming. And that is a-ok to me.
My dream cars have always been a ’66 Shelby GT350 and a later F40. Pretty easy there. The last two wheels are some kind of midsize sport bike, probably a Ducati 748 single-seat?
NON-WHEEL vehicles, though. Hm. 1996 Polaris XCR 440. A smaller Bobcat track-mount, like a T550. Some kind of smaller helicopter (assuming the genie can also provide aviation lessons.)
I’m a gal of small, simple pleasures (and one F40.)
Hmmm, well the wife would get the Volvo SUV she’s always wanted. That leaves me 6 wheels with which to do some fun. A 1935 Morgan Super Sports substituting the original engine with an engine from a Honda SuperHawk (VTR1000F) and a Mazda T2000 3 wheel truck. In reality, I’d end up with a truck and an offroad motorcycle.