When parking is really at a premium - where to store your collector car

[Guest Texas Old Car Guy]

Most of us have seen this 1955 vintage photo of a high rise parking structure in downtown Portland, Oregon. The concept was called Pigeon Hole Parking.

Of course there's nothing new under the sun so Volkswagen developed their massive Autostadt (Car City) in Wolfsburg, Germany, where new cars awaiting delivery are stored in two 200-foot-tall towers with lifting platforms.

A view from the top of the VW Autostadt.

Not to be outdone, Smart Cars in the Netherlands are parked like this.

Then there's the Parkhaus Engelenschanze in Münster, Germany - as you know most parking garages are dark and claustrophobic. Not this one - the walls are glass and there's a running creek with a waterfall inside.

And the parking garage at 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami; this wall-free multi-use supergarage cost $65 million to build.

Or if you are a run-of-the-mill Billionaire, you can park your McLaren on your 158-foot yacht and go for a little cruise - who said you can't take it with you?

Or just keep your baby where you can watch it - in your living room! Holger Schubert won Architectural Digest's Design Driven contest in 2009, as well as an award by Maserati for parking his Ferrari 512BBi in his living room overlooking Brentwood, California. It is said that his neighbors hated him for it.

And believe it or not, there is a car parked 80% of the way up the Burj Kalifa - the tallest building in the world in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, making this the world's highest parking space (and likely the most expensive, too.) If you want to see for yourself click here http://gigapan.com/gigapans/48492/ then use the + function to zoom in near the top of the building - keep zooming in and you'll see it.

To put things into perspective, the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) in Chicago is 1729 ft. tall with 110 stories, the Empire State Building in New York is 1250 ft. tall with 102 stories but the Burj Kalifa is 2,717 ft. tall and 163 stories - that's 217 ft. higher than TWO Empire State Buildings standing on each other or said another way, it's 77 feet more than a half mile high! To learn a little bit more about the tallest structure in the world, click here: Visit the Burj Khalifa -- The Tallest Building in the World It's worth watching and includes about a 3 minute video including some great time-lapse photography of the construction of the building.

Of course if you are like the rest of us, you just park your collector cars at home.:cool:

Yeah, right!

Fred

Edited January 25, 2013 by Texas Old Car Guy (see edit history)

[dan at larescorp]

Great photos! Thanks for sharing.

[auburnseeker]

No matter which one I had my wife would still say "it's not big enough for you, you will never have enough space"

[The Continental]

In my dreams I'd have a Burj Kalifa tall building with a 40x40 Guggenheim inspired car museum with the VW style lifts with a waterfall and river that flows out to the Pacific that I can get to my yatch in my Amphicar or I could take the Aerocar, and I'd also have the penthouse with furniture based on cars and atleast one whole car.

[Guest Graham Clayton]

And believe it or not, there is a car parked 80% of the way up the Burj Kalifa - the tallest building in the world in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, making this the world's highest parking space.

Texas Old Car Guy,

The Burj Kalifa photo reminds me of this picture:

Photo taken from the web.

I'm still trying to work out how the car got there!