Ever wonder if your priceless exotic car really looks great? Ralph Lauren knows which ones do.

He runs his own billion-dollar company, grew up in a middle-class neighborhood where the high school was an archetypal blue-collar 50’s “Grease”-era institution, and he started his business relying on his belief in his ability to turn normal schmucks into people who looked and felt like the world’s elite.

Every day in the late 1950s young Ralph Lifshitz did a double-take during his pedestrian commute in New York City to his job selling ties at Brooks Brothers as he passed import car dealer showrooms. His car nut side developed at that time, when he hoofed his way through Manhattan passing Jaguar and Morgan shops at a time when not many places in the U.S. had those rare imports on display. He thought the cars were beautiful.

He was so smitten by post-war sports cars he actually purchased a Morgan while he was a working stiff in car-unfriendly New York City, yet had to sell it because he had no place he could afford to park it. The loss of the off-white Morgan drop-top was but one tough break for the budding clothes marketing genius until the late 1970s, when he finally started buying the cars he loved.

Because this garage is 20 feet deep instead of the normal 15 feet, it has room for a workbench.

Add Extra Space for a Doorway and Workbench

If you’re building a new home or putting on an addition, adding just three feet to your garage can make a world of difference. You can use that extra space for a workbench and a full-size entry door, which new garages don’t have. Most builders and remodeling contractors assume you go from your car right to your house when you pull in the garage. Car nuts don’t live that way. Most of them have more cars than spaces in their garage. So they put special cars in it and their daily drivers stay outside. All of the Ultimate Garage owners I’ve met spend more time in their garages than in their living rooms. They use their garages to work on cars so expanding the back or side of the garage just three feet will give you plenty of room for a workbench. One confirmed car restorer built his workbenches the width of a carpet runner, which covers the bench and is two-feet wide. When the inexpensive runner is full of grease and grime, he replaces it.