Shed Hero

When Chris Gaunt erected a multi-car garage in his back garden, little did he suspect it would become his living

Man cave full of Yank tanks turns a car-tinkering hobby into a flourishing business.

Igot my first car when I was 16,’ says Chris. ‘It was a Ford Cortina MKV, a Crusader 1.6 in really nice condition. I paid £650 for it and counted down the days until my driving test!’ Chris is standing among friends and their cars, a cup of coffee in hand. He’d persuaded his father to show him the way round the family motor, but being able to drive at 11 meant an even more tortured wait for a licence than the rest of us.

‘If I couldn’t drive around, I could still learn stuff about cars,’ he says. ‘Dad taught me about brakes, springs, gearboxes, engines, everything really. I’ve always been hands-on.’

Despite this, his working life was to involve far bigger vehicles than family runabouts.

‘I was a train driver for 13 years. I was still happily doing that when I decided to build a big ‘lads’ den’ for myself and my pals Sean Robinson and Paul Jenkinson. It was going to have leather sofas, beer fridges and lots of room to keep cars like my Dodge Charger. Then I got notice of redundancy.’

It was Sean who said the fateful words – ‘This is a business’ – and from then on, he wouldn’t let Chris look elsewhere. ‘He was really firm,’ says Chris. ‘He told me not to apply for a single job, not even to get a CV together. Focus!’ Crucially, some other mates had already been asking him to do bits to their cars and before he knew it his time on the trains was ending, and he took the chance.