This Underground Garage With a Hidden Aircraft Elevator Is What Car Dreams Are Made Of

Every auto enthusiast's car-collecting dreams must include at least one vision of something like Carriage House, i.e., one of the most surprising, awesome, and largest underground private garages in the United States. After all, what good is a collection of cars if you have no room to keep them safe?

Carriage House is just one of the four different properties that make up the Sierra Star estate, a gorgeous enclave on Lake Tahoe, Nevada, in an area that became known as Billionaire's Row over the past decade or so. No points for guessing why.

It was built by former software engineer and former founder of Commerce One, Tom Gonzales, who took particular pride in designing Carriage House.

If the name of Tom Gonzales' company rings a bell, it's probably because it became a symbol of the dot-com boom and bust. He sold the company as business was taking a turn for the worst, which just happened to give him enough free time to build his dream home – one that would also include a dream garage.

Tom, you see, was no regular overworked multi-millionaire with dreams of lavish estates. He was also a passionate car and motorcycle collector, so he wanted to combine the two in a single property. His home, Sierra Estate, would end up doing just that, offering incredible amenities from separate properties, man-made waterfalls, private beaches, and expansive waterfront areas, with a garage that at one point held over $30 million in collectibles.

Urban legend has it that Tom's collection was on par with his dreams for the ultimate garage. Over the years, he reportedly collected some 400 cars and more than 150 motorcycles, though the space in Carriage House would only fit 40 autos in the underground garage and some 50 motorcycles in the upper structure. This would be where he'd bring his most prized possessions.

Over the years, Sierra Estate was valued as low as $50 million and as high as $65+ million. The garage under Carriage House alone cost Tom more than $5 million to build, as he made sure to tell the media when he was trying to unload the property in the early 2010s.

In 2017, Sierra Estate was still for sale, either as a single property or divided into any of the four components. Tom wasn't the owner anymore, though, having sold it to a group of investors. Asked why he'd decided to sell it years prior, especially after investing so much time, money, effort, and soul into the project, Tom was honest to a fault: it might have been his dream house and dream garage, but the place was simply too big for him.

To this day, Carriage House still holds its own as one of the most impressive private garages ever built. And yes, "big" doesn't even begin to do the place justice.

Carriage House is a home in the sense that it offers 2,500 square feet (232 square meters) of living space in the upper part of the structure. In reality, it's a shrine, a haven any auto enthusiast would probably give an arm to own: 12,000 square feet (1,115 square meters) in total to hold a sizable fleet of what-have-you, with half of that space underground, completely sealed off from the world and protected from the elements.

The ground floor is a five-door garage with room for 50 motorcycles. This is how Tom chose to show it off for the media at the time he was selling the place, cramming in there a third of his bike collection. They were all anniversary editions of Harley-Davidsons, some of them brand new, still with their dealer plates and price tags. Many had not even been started, let alone taken out on the road – like the one piece put on a rotating display in the center of the room.

But the highlight of the garage was the "bunker" hidden underground, accessible either by means of a two-bike elevator or the gigantic aircraft elevator that neatly tucked into the driveway when not in use.

Measuring 60 feet (18 meters) in length and 12 feet (3.6 meters) in width and capable of carrying up to 250,000 lbs (113,398 kg) on its two levels, it perfectly blended in with the environment. It even had fake trees and rocks on the upper part, precisely for that purpose.

Tom was very proud of this elevator since he'd been the one to push for it. It was the only way in which he could take his cars down to the underground garage, even if that meant five or six of them at once.

The garage was heated and ventilated and completely protected. It also, quite notably, lacked pillars because Tom wanted a large space where he could maneuver vehicles without fearing he'd bump into obstacles – even if that meant driving nine Prevost RVs in there at once, which he apparently did just to test the capacity of the space.

At one point, the underground garage held $30 million in collectibles, Tom told the media. Whenever he had cameras around, though, these collectibles weren't around, presumably for his own protection. Instead, the garage was packed with more mundane models of Audis, Range Rovers, Jeeps, an ATV or two, and a 45-foot RV that Tom would use on vacations.

Tom used to describe his two-level, dual-elevator garage as "the most amazing garage ever built." He probably did it more to get attention and land a potential buyer for his $50 million property, but he was clearly not telling lies, either. The idea of a four-home compound might seem like overkill - and it's definitely just that -, but this garage would make any car collector happy. It might even get a James Bond villain or Batman to muster a smile.