THE CARS.
THE VIDEOS.
Old cars, odd cars, occasional adventures, and repair bills. This is where the cars get a little backstory and the videos get a place to live.
VIDEOS & SERIES.
Some of these are about cars, some involve a kayak, and future projects will inevitably generate their own chapters.
Adrift in the Ocean
A used EV from a defunct manufacturer, plus real-world driving, costs, fixes, and an alarming number of software ecosystems.
EXPLORE THE SERIES ↘
Alviso, in real time
Unhurried paddles through the South Bay. Most of the drama is supplied by the wind.
HEAD FOR THE WATER ↘More projects, eventually.
The other cars have stories too. They'll get their own video series when I have something worth filming.
NOT A RELEASE SCHEDULEADRIFT IN THE OCEAN.
Seven episodes, one Fisker, and an ownership experience that has rarely been boring. Start at the beginning or jump to the latest.
OTHER RABBIT HOLES.
SLOW TV.
EXTREMELY SLOW.
Want a break from the adrenaline of watching a 50-year-old British car idle? Come kayaking through Alviso Slough. No plot twists, no cuts every four seconds, no thumbnail face. Mostly just water.
You get the whole paddle, including the bits where absolutely nothing happens.
MORE VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE ↗
GARAGE NOTES.
A bit more context behind each video: the decisions, costs, discoveries, and occasional hindsight. Written to be read, not a transcript to scroll through.
THE FLEET.
The current collection, from British classics and old trucks to motorcycles and an unusually interesting electric SUV.
No luck. Try another make, model, or category.
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN.
Some were sold. Some were traded. Some simply wandered off into other people's garages. Fortunately, the photographic evidence survived.
THE
ARCHIVE.
A photo album of former residents, from cherished favorites to projects that moved along.
TWO OUT.
ONE ROVER IN.
The parts MGB GT and Land Rover Series III were traded straight across for the 1970 Rover P6. Which is an entirely sensible way to reduce the car count.
NO CASH. TWO PROJECTS. ONE V8.THE PHOTO ALBUM
Click a car to see the full photo. These are all the real former residents, not stock images.
AND THE ONES WITHOUT PHOTOS
More former residents. Some haven't made it into the digitized photo album yet.
ALSO AROUND THE PLACE ↘
ALVISO / ON THE WATERHI, I'M BEN.
I grew up in the San Lorenzo Valley, a tiny group of tiny towns in the redwoods north of Santa Cruz, CA. My earliest automotive memory is helping my dad bleed the brakes on a Mustang convertible when I was about six or seven years old. It kinda went downhill from there.
I've spent a good chunk of my life around cars, including years working in the automotive industry. Somewhere along the way, I developed a particular fondness for unusual engineering, forgotten automotive oddities, and vehicles that normal people would probably have the good sense to avoid. My collection now spans everything from 1960s American iron to obscure British machinery, Japanese imports, and an electric SUV built by a company that no longer exists. Some of them even run.
I'm also neurodivergent, which probably explains quite a lot about the collection. I've never been particularly interested in sticking to one marque, era, or type of vehicle. Something catches my attention, I start researching it, and before long I'm six hours into a rabbit hole about an obscure engineering decision made by a company that went bankrupt in 1974. Occasionally, this ends with me buying another car.
There's a certain joy in figuring out how things work, especially when they work differently from everything else. I love the research, the problem-solving, the history, and the wonderfully strange ways engineers have approached the same basic problems over the last century. The collection is less a carefully curated automotive museum and more a physical manifestation of my curiosity.
Outside the garage, I'm a professor working with neurodivergent young adults, and I'm currently pursuing a doctorate in education. My research focuses on persistence, particularly how we help people navigate a world that wasn't necessarily built with them in mind. That means looking at both sides of the equation: giving people the tools to succeed on their own terms while also asking why our institutions make things so unnecessarily difficult in the first place.
I suppose there's a common thread between my professional interests and the garage. I've always been fascinated by unconventional ways of thinking, creative problem-solving, and questioning the assumption that the way we've always done something is necessarily the best way. Although I suspect I might not agree with the engineers who decided to put the Rover's rear brakes next to the differential.
Benguin's Garage is my little corner of the internet for documenting the collection, the projects, the road trips, and whatever else catches my interest. There will be some repairs, some experiments, some questionable decisions, and occasionally a kayak. I'm not a professional YouTuber, and I'm certainly not dispensing expert automotive advice. I'm just a guy who likes interesting machines, enjoys figuring things out, and has been accumulating unfinished projects since before I could legally drive, and uses this as an outlet for my excess energy.
Welcome to the garage.
Want to get in touch? Drop me a line at ben@benguins-garage.com.
▶ VISIT THE CHANNEL