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Jimmy Harrell's car collection

The main reason for the building, Harrell says, is to house the seven cars in his collection, ones he has added since he retired about a year ago after working at Industrial Valve in Mobile where he is still a co-owner.

“I was in business for 44 years and I owned Industrial Valve Sales and Service in Mobile with our main office, had one in Cleveland, Tenn., and one in Bastrop, La.,” Harrell said. “Never had time and I was always a car enthusiast and never had time to go buy ‘em and do things like that. I retired next month will be a year. I said when I retired, I’m going to fool around with them.”

In the almost year since he retired, he began gathering up a few cars to start his collection.

“I’ve only got about seven right now because I don’t have any place to put ‘em,” Harrell said. “I’m waiting on this thing to get finished. I’m planning on buying at least that many more in the future.”

On a recent morning he showed up for a cup of coffee at BuzzCatz Coffee and Sweets in a Jeep he bought after it was customized to his liking.

“It’s a 2019 custom-built Jeep,” Harrell said. “I had it built down in South Florida. They actually bought the Jeep for me and they stripped all the stock stuff off and put all their aftermarket stuff on it. They really did a nice job with that.”

Cars include a 1937 Ford Custom with a Chevy 350 motor in it, a 1963 Plymouth Savoy restored to stock condition with a 426 Max Wedge motor, a 1934 ford also with a Chevy 350 motor, a 2013 60^th anniversary Corvette that sports 638 HP, a 2019 Ferrari 488 Spider with two turbochargers that can generate 671 HP, a 2009 ACG cart that is a replica of a 1939 Alabama Roadster and the Jeep.

The 1937 Ford Custom won the number two car in the world at a Chicago show a few years ago.

“It’s a beautiful car,” Harrell said. “Every year they vote on the best ones and everybody tries to get the number one car and this one came in number two. You can only enter this show one time.”

Another of his favorites is Ferrari 488 Spider.

“It’s a beauty,” Harrell says of the Ferrari. “It’s got a hard top that comes out of the back and goes up. It’s a mid-engine car, the engine is in the back. It’s really fast.”

With the 1963 Plymouth Savoy, Harrell kept it in factory condition and there are no add-ons or customizations on it.

“It’s one of the first muscle cars to come out of the factory,” he said. “Everything’s stock on this thing. It’s got two four barrels on it, too. It’ll turn a quarter of a mile in 11 seconds. It’s fast but it doesn’t have a radio, it doesn’t have power steering, it doesn’t have power brakes, it doesn’t have a heater, it doesn’t have an air conditioner. It doesn’t have anything. But it’s fast. It’s even fast in today’s terms.”

Harrell said he saw another garage built by the Metron Garage company the owner had built for himself. By word of mouth other car enthusiasts expressed interest in having one built.

“This is a custom build here,” Harrell said. “They have kind of a standard (see the video animation with this story) and they are into car washes. That’s what they do for a living but the owner of the company he’s into cars also so he built one for himself in his yard and I think he’s built one other. He hasn’t built many more of these but he’s starting to get into. He’s starting to advertise more in quite a few car magazines and build more.”

The design is quite sturdy with eight-inch metal square poles with a quarter of an inch of metal on each side. The poles each are bolted into a small slab of concrete and then the entire building floor is poured in concrete and covers up where the poles are bolted in.

“It’s all a bolt-on construction,” Harrell said. “No welding. Everything is bolted to the slab and all the beams bolt together, the roof bolts on, the siding bolts on, the inside bolts on.”

Harrell said he estimates the final bill on the garage will be about $3 million. He hired local building contractor JL Loper to put the garage together from materials made by Metron. Loper also built Harrell’s house on Ono Island about four and a half years ago.

“What they do is fabricate the building and everything up there,” he said. “They send it down here and you have your local contractor that is going lay the slab, some of the building and put everything in it and do all of that. All they do is fabricate the building and put it together. You’ve got the cost of that first then you’ve got the cost of the contractor to put it all together.”