Protect your car

At www.CoverGarage.com we strive to bring the highest quality, precision-made products to your door for the best possible price you’ll find anywhere.  That’s our promise to you. See, we know what it’s like to sift through all the clutter and useless tripe to get to that one little nugget of gold.  We’ve not only checked out and evaluated nearly every auto product available - we’ve even designed some of them.

Here’s how two average guys with a passion for automobiles “fell into” this business we love.

We, J and R, not having wholeheartedly embraced the life of corporate politics, wanted to get out of the rat race and earn our bread and butter doing something that made getting up in the mornings more worthwhile.

Late one night following a gut-busting cook-out, we were sitting outside watching the stars blink on as the night sounds set in, tossing back a couple of brews.  We’d been throwing around what seemed like a hundred different new business ideas, every one of them coming up short. 

<>R finally sighed in disgust and said, “It’s a waste of time.  You know, what would make me happiest would be to have a place where I could work with autos and all the really cool stuff out there made for them – I’d like to critique products designed for autos and maybe improve on the good ideas that are just poorly constructed.  After all, so much of its junk – I hate to see people spend good money on either something useless or that’ll fall apart the first time it’s used.”

<>“I hear you,” J replied, draining his beer.  Then we looked at each other in stunned silence for what seemed like an hour, but likely was only a few seconds. 

<>A light bulb had just exploded over our heads…and we forged our business together that night. 

With high hopes, a little luck and an abundance of sweat and hard work, we now do what we love best…play with autos and auto accessories full-time (…work – we meant work with autos and auto accessories full-time - we don’t want our wives thinking we’re just goofing off!)

After all, automobiles are embedded in our DNA.  Both of us had grandfathers who worked directly for Henry (not the Deuce, but Henry 1) Ford.  J’s in design, R’s as a driver/laborer.

Since our parents were also close friends, we’ve been friends and partners in crime together since birth.  We learned to crawl, walk and talk together.  We rode bikes, chased girls and tuned engines together.  Later, we designed and perfected cars for the Big Three together, from the central cockpits in Detroit. 

J‘s background is in design/launch planning.  Because he’s serious about style and form, he doesn’t tolerate poorly designed products anywhere near his ride – an '03 Toyota Landcruiser 4x4 offroader.

J may not like to see this in print, but it shows how his mind works:

After descending from the upper offices to watch Jacques (Ford’s former president) introduce the new AstinMartin, J became fixated on the flawed, blemished production car parked front and center. 

He kept scanning the crowd gathered there.  What could the “heads” be thinking? Putting on display a car with such an obvious flaw?  Looking around, he couldn’t believe it…didn’t everyone see it?

Right there, right in front of the whole world, were three gaping sink marks on the sail (that’s auto-geek-speak for the little corner at the front of the door/window where the side mirror attaches)…well, maybe not gaping, but definitely clear to anyone with eyes…man, didn’t everyone else see it??

Afterwards, J being J, he marched right up to the VP of Design’s office and left a detailed note outlining in depth the horrors of this ghastly crime…
 
J spent the last several years at Ford’s as a cubicle warrior, fighting the bureaucrats to ensure cars got made that could still excite the senses.  While his focus was keeping to schedule with projected launch dates, he made sure the critical people were involved in decisions and was an absolute advocate for common sense (something he insists is sadly lacking in the land of corporate politics and bureaucracy).

Now R, on the other hand, is gifted with an eye made to ferret out the tiniest detail; being a quality control/numbers floor engineer.

R’s daily ride is a 1983 Porsche 928 in “arrest-me-red” – a rescue car.  (He comes by it naturally – his mother takes in rescue dogs from the local shelter.)

In a weak moment, he placed a bid on eBay and to his surprise (and his wife’s consternation) promptly became the proud owner of a vehicle in such bad shape the “doctors” told him the only humane thing for him to do was to shoot it. 

R was heartbroken when he finally got it home, but couldn’t bear to put it down.  Each free hour was spent nursing his Porsche 928 slowly back to life - a drop of fluid here, a replacement part there.  Now, with a new clutch, new transmission and half a dozen other diseased parts either replaced or repaired, his rescue car has a second chance.  Although requiring nearly some form of daily restoration work, his rescue car is on its way to burning rubber on the streets again, in all its crowning glory.

Since, in all fairness it wouldn’t be right to spread rumors about J without passing the fun around, this showcases R’s personality perfectly:

 R was on the factory floor, doing quality control…checking the hundreds, no thousands of details for the few parts in process - we’re talking lots of steel with “thousandths of an inch” tolerances. 

 Minutes stretched into hours, yet R still crab walked from machine to part, back to machine again.  Over and over with his little instruments and clipboard. 

 At times he’d even shut down the production line.  R didn’t seem to care that his actions made him less than popular - with laborers and management alike. 

 With almost a sixth sense about him when it came to spotting the bad apple in a box of finished goods or on the line when a machine began to spit out the spec part, R would unerringly toss the reject.  Every time.

You may laugh at this, but he had dreams where he walked up and saw parts in a box…they were either red or green.  That’s how clear it was to him.  The guys on the floor would watch him do this…and just shook their heads in amazement.

And R was known to argue for weeks with a supplier’s engineer over a corner radius or a surface finish.  The checklists he brought to those meetings were 5-10 pages long – and that was for a simple part.

So, folks, the bad news?   We admit it freely - we can get pretty “anal” about details in our work. (By the way, the dictionary definition of anal is “obsessive neatness, stubbornness, and frugality” – we’ve pretty much got that covered between us!)

The good news (for our valued customers) - this guarantees the products we scout out for you will be of the highest quality for the best price we can find! 

We simply won’t tolerate anything less.  Quality over quantity…even though the quote above is 2000 years old, it holds the test of time and has become our mantra. 

And now, after years of designing for the big boys, we’ve left our Big Three jobs to pursue what we love doing best, on our own terms – where we can eat, sleep and breathe automobiles and auto accessories all day long if we so desire (although our wives tend to have a few words to say about that!)

We also love to get together and mingle with other “auto fanatics” to showoff our latest acquisitions and share in the unique blended camaraderie found with other true auto enthusiasts. 

We’re never too tired or too busy to talk cars and accessories.  So if you spot us out and about – give us a shout!

One last thing…

We may, on occasion, have differing opinions about the best way our business should be run. 

But the one thing we always agree on…every item we carry must be made of the highest quality material available with unparalleled, unsurpassed workmanship.  Period.

And we never question each other when it comes to our innate focus on detail.  In this, we trust each other’s judgment implicitly. Here you'll find Car Covers, Car Bras, Seat Covers, Tonneau Covers, and Dash Covers.

Thanks for stopping by, we hope to see you again soon!

Happy cruising!

R and J