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The showroom at Classic Remise is an amazing retrospective of purpose built race cars, vintage hot rods, and souped up one of a kind vehicles.
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Road Trip: Classic Remise
Classic Remise is a car museum / restoration garage / vintage car wet dream / meeting space / beer hall all rolled into a unique, industrial design. I visited the Dusseldorf, Germany location but there is another location in Berlin as well. Remise means coach house. Both locations have been beautifully restored to exploit the impressive architectural backdrop while housing kick-ass vintage and collector cars rarely seen in person. Get out your drool towel- I salivate just thinking about getting behind the wheel of some of these cars!
The Berlin location opened in 2003 in a former tram depot constructed in 1899. Areas of the building were firebombed in World War I and the remnants of that damage are conspicuous on the ceiling today- street cred. The tram system was abolished in the 1960s and was in decay until 2002 when it was purchased and restored to its current purpose.
The Dusseldorf location opened in 2006. It is housed in a historic roundhouse- a building used to service locomotives- built in 1930. This roundhouse has a semi-circular shape which allowed steam trains to roll in. Since early steam locomotives only traveled forward, a turntable would rotate the locomotive in the opposite direction. This design is emulated in the surrounding office space, shops, and restaurant around the showroom centered in the building.
Generation X supercars:
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Say you happen to own a Maserati and by golly, it’s just not your daily driver. Or you won a $200k Porsche jalopy on a Japanese game show and your mom/spouse/parole officer won't let you keep it in the garage. Most likely, your garage space doesn’t look like Jay Leno’s. So what's a person to do- store it in a shed and fend off cobwebs every time you want to take it out? No way- you rent space here, Baller!
It’s not just garage space at Classic Remise. They’ve got everything from car and motorcycle garages with specialists that perform motor work, body work, repair and repainting, custom upholstery and interior work and restoration to small businesses offering car detailing services, classic car rentals, insurance, and professional estimators. There are also a number of retail shops with out of print books, car magazines, model cars, clothing and accessories, posters and art, and other collectibles. Basically it's a car playground.
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Straight from Miami Vice, the Ferrari Testarossa (“redhead” in Italian), known for its cheese grater strakes covering the giant holes necessary for feeding air to both side radiators and keep the 5.0L 12 cylinder mid-mounted engine from a quick demise. The V12 engine was horizontally opposed, meaning each crank pin was shared by two opposing pistons.
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