Back in the days when a household was lucky to own one car the garage had plenty of room.
“Garages used to be fairly large, if you go back to the 1970’s. Then as the cars got smaller they started making the garages smaller. Now we’re getting bigger cars, trucks and SUV’s, so now we’ve got to make garages bigger again,” says KTRH home improvement expert Jim Dutton.
What might have been considered a Monster Truck in the 1970’s might be parked in your driveway today, and getting it to fit into a 20’ x 20’ standard garage, given that the length of extended-cab pickups can be 21’, can be irksome.
And did we mention height? Those standard seven foot high garage doors might let the pickup through, but the lights on the top are going to get smashed.
People have been accommodating the size of the attached garage that came with the house for years. “You see a lot of people putting stops in the garage, or putting tennis balls from the ceiling. There are even electronic lasers now that light up when you hit the right spot,” says Dutton.
The changes in consumer tastes in vehicles are prompting a new approach to garages. They, too, need to get bigger, and that’s prompting some enterprising general contractor entrepreneurs to specialize in customizing and expanding garage spaces.
In August the sale of passenger cars dropped below 30% of the auto market for the first time in history.