You spin me right round: Turntable driveways for your car
Anybody that lives on a busy road or has a lot of cars knows that getting vehicles in and out of the driveway can be a logistical nightmare. Traditional options for curing this problem range from widening the driveway to creating one of those horseshoe-shaped driveways. Pouring concrete can get pricey too, but an old auto show staple, the turntable, is now available as a cure for parking problems.
Turntables aren't just for locomotives and auto show displays anymore. You can have an automobile-sized turntable installed in your garage or driveway for around $8,400 and up. There are some very expensive options, too, which need a foundation of poured concrete and can cost upwards of $40,000. For the same price as the car they're spinning, these Lazy Susans had better work as advertised. Apparently some folk, however, are willing to spend a lot of dough to forgo rearranging the driveway at 5 AM. The scribes at the Wall St. Journal even found compiled a list of companies that make and install turntables.
[Source: Wall Street Journal]
Get a WordPress.com Blog
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
SPG 12:10PM (10/05/2007)
"You spin me right round baby right round like a record baby round round round round"
Anyhoo, I like the driveway turn table thing.
Anything beyond a two point turn is hardly fun.
Reply
ironpony42 12:30PM (10/05/2007)
I viewed a show featuring "ultimate garages". And my favorite by far was a classy underground affair, layed out like a flower. Center was the turn table, and each car stall a petal. Probably 8 car stalls full of hand built customs and classic Bugatti's and such. The whole thing was amazing, as any ultimate garage should be.
Now I can't wait to see these on MTV Cribs in Puffy's driveway - Escalade rotatin' while it's 24" spinners are spinnin'... Oh, man I think I threw up a little...
Chad 12:24PM (10/05/2007)
I love my car but I don't know if I'm that materialistic.
Reply
PhilJ 12:36PM (10/05/2007)
Nice Meatspin reference
Reply
retoor 12:45PM (10/05/2007)
Meatspin.....
Because nothing existed before the Internet.
The reference could not have possibly been a hit 80's song.... no, it must be Meatspin.
eDamo 3:01PM (10/05/2007)
Haha retoor, so true!. Don't worry, I knew it as that awesome 80's hit.. I was like "meatspin? wtf?".
The Other Bob 5:59PM (10/05/2007)
Seems to me that someone with a little ingenuity could fabricate one of these for much less than $8400.
Reply
DelayedZ 12:47PM (10/05/2007)
This is really handy, if I needed one I'd be all over it, lol
Reply
Alex 12:48PM (10/05/2007)
my wife could use of these. driveway is huge and yet she still can't line her car up for the garage.
Reply
500 12:59PM (10/05/2007)
So she'll be able to line her car up with all four wheels on one of these?
Laughing at you 1:18PM (10/05/2007)
She will have one wheel off the platform and the spinning of the other three wheels will tear your car apart.
Just divorce your wife.
Alex 3:28PM (10/05/2007)
umm... i'm thinking that it would flat spot the tire but not hurt the car.
mike 1:26PM (10/05/2007)
I used to live in an old apartment building in San Francisco that had a turntable in the garage - it hadn't been used for decades, and the garage had been renovated and expanded to allow turning aroud, but I always thought it was a cool idea... Now I can buy one for my own!
Reply
ckm 12:59PM (10/05/2007)
My parents had one of these in their garage in the 1980's. Because it was an old townhouse in the middle of a city, there was a very, very narrow (as in fold your mirrors) ramp leading down to the garage and pretty much no way to reverse out of the garage, so a previous owner had installed a turntable. By the time we lived there, I'd guess it had probably been there 20 years or so, so it was likely installed in the 1960's.
Chris.
Reply
naggs 1:35PM (10/05/2007)
i bet i could make one out of some used playground equipement and an old garage door opener for $50
Reply
sirholio 1:43PM (10/05/2007)
I wonder how it handles the snow. - living in upstate NY, that could be a problem.
Reply
tom sullivan 2:01PM (10/05/2007)
i would buy this if it could be left continuously on... it'd be all about the timing...
Reply
rgseidl 2:00PM (10/05/2007)
VW uses a turntable-cum-elevator to warehouse its inventory of finished cars in Wolfsburg, Germany:
http://img.stern.de/_content/55/72/557274/Autostadt600_600.jpg
Reply
Kowell 2:40PM (10/05/2007)
Cool.....I want one!
Reply
wettlaufer 2:43PM (10/05/2007)
We had one of these in our garage when I was a kid. It nearly took a finger off one day when we were playing with it. Yeah, I know, dumb kid probably got what I was asking for. Maybe they're safer these days, but looking at the turntable above, I bet you little fingers fit nicely in that gap.
By the way, stainless sheet costs about $5,200 per ton. That looks like an expensive disk of metal there.
Reply