Garage

Basic Information

A garage is a building designed for the storage of land vehicles (compare the French gare - a railway station). The term may also be correctly used of facility for the repair and maintenance of land vehicles, including a business undertaking such work.

In the UK, the term can also refer to a business selling fuel for land vehicles - which would be more normally called a filling station in the US.

Sources

Bibliography

1. full source reference

Game and Story Use

• The "parking garage" (multi story carpark to those of use using British English) is a common meeting place in fiction. When free of vehicles it is easily re-purposed for pretty much anything needing lots of undercover space.
• The private garage attached to a domestic home is, ironically, rarely used to store cars and tends to be used as additional storage space or for hobby and utility activities.
• The lockup garage (a domestic sized unit, usually remote from the owner's home) is the same only more so - they tend to be a staple of crime dramas as a place for pretty much anything to be stored, especially since ownership can be very difficult to trace in some instances.
• The maintenance business is a fairly common one and potentially a good cover for all sorts of activity - automobile crime is the most obvious, but given that a good turnover of people and vehicles can be expected, it can also be a good front for a spy cell or a base for The Agency.
• For the fans of the Pulp era - such as Call of Cthulhu aficionados - it should be noted that it was entirely common for maintenance garages to also store cars for people and/or provide rental services.
• Car mechanic is a relatively transferrable profession for a working class character - valeting is more of a (sub)minimum wage job except at the very highest end.
• Expect to pay a lot more for maintenance and valeting when it involves no-questions-asked removal of combat damage and bits of dead people on a non-state-actor basis.
• Consider also the chop shop - which may have a legitimate repair shop as cover and/or for sale of the "recycled" parts.