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Its a good place to wax the Ferrari at midnight

Hal Nichols was an automotive late bloomer. He had no car in high school. In college, he finally got his first car, a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere, and was drawn to tinker with it, upgrading its V8 as was standard in the day.

"I put on a manifold and two four-barrel carbs, and it never went any faster, but it made a lot of noise and used a lot of gas," he recalls.

Nichol's fraternity brothers had cars that interested him more, including an MG TD and an Austin-Healey Bugeye Sprite.

"I got to like sports cars, and when you get into sports cars, you get into racing. Road racing. I always went to Watkins Glen, Mid-Ohio and Nelson Ledges," he says. He also subscribed to Competition Press, and he has kept that subscription through the magazine's evolution into AutoWeek.

He completed his dream garage only two years ago-a detached, 1,000-square-foot, two-story, three car place that matches his brick home in Ohio. Before that, the bank consultanct chairman had owned a slew of modern Ferraris that took turns residing in the home's normal sized attached garage.

"I've had a 348, a 355, a 360 Spyder and now the 430 Scuderia. In this one, my wife will actually ride with me on a trip," he says. He also owned a Maserati Quattroporte and "three or four" BMW M5s that he commuted with and ran on the track.

Nichol's 26-year-old son, Raymond, who also is called R.H., was one catalyst for the new garage, as well as for the Alfa coupe racer parked in one stall. When R.H. was 16, Nichols was a fully committed Ferrari fan.

"I was worried about him driving the cars and coming back alive," Nichols says. "The solution was that instead of giving up my sports cars, I took him to the Mid-Ohio teen-driving school. THen we did a Skip Barber three-day course. He went faster than I did. THen we went to the Jim Russel school in Sonoma."

The racing bug bit father and son hard enough that they entered the Skip Barber open-wheel-racing series at Road America.

"R.H. hit the tire wall in the Hurry-Downs. I wrote a big check to Skip Barber that weekend and decided that it would be better to own a full-body car instead of paying Skip Barber to se their cars," Nichols recalls.

So the duo brought the Alfa coupe, and now they drive in vintage races. "The Alfa's great, because I have not so much money invested in it that I'm afraid of it on the track. I just got it back from the shop-somone hit me at Blackhawk during the last race-but it was only $800 to fix it."

Nichols drives the 430 on the track, too, but only in autocrosses.

"We took the Scuderia to BeaveRun in Pennsylvania. Compared with the Alfa, the Ferrari is a rocket ship. It has horsepower and speed, and the shifting is amazing. The Alfa is 186 hp, 2,000 punds, and you slide it around corners. In the Scuderia, you just put your foot to the floor, and the technology takes care of the rest. The sound it makes is phenomenal."

With the Alfa, the Ferrari and a '67 Austin-Healey 300 MK III that closely resembles Nichols's first sports car after college, he knew that he had to have a garage bigger and brighter than the one that came with his house. He planned 11-foot ceilings for future lifts and wanted a ceramic-tile floor that was easy to clean. "I knew that epoxy and plastic flooring wasn't going to do it for me," he says. Fifteen double-light fixtures and white walls keep the space bright." I had to have a lot of light. I wanted to be able to wax a car in the middle of winter, in the middle of the night."

The full bathroom under the stairs opens to the backyard pool, so it doubles as a changing room. "My wife was the biggest help in decorating. She picked the colors, the fixtures, the towels. She helped with the painting the Ferrari racing stripe, getting the matching throw rugs for the floor and the stripe up the stairs. It was all JoAn.

"I wanted a lot if white wall space because I wanted to display photos. I had a lot of auto artwork in my office, and it didn't really fit there," Nichols says.

The Ferrari emblem was handpainted on the wall by well-known car artist Michael Goettner-not on a canvas, because Nichols has no intension of ever mocing. "I am absolutely ecstatic about the way the garage turned out."