Detroit Enthusiasts Are Reviving An Old Service Station To Give DIYers A Place To Wrench

Over the last twenty years the automotive hobby has become increasingly less personal. Hanging out at the local hot rod shop or corner gas station has been replaced by forums, in turn killed off by Facebook's mad grab for your attention time with Groups. The late-night pizza-fueled wrench sessions with your buddies was replaced by a YouTube video instructional. Even the car shows of today seem to be more about who can prove to their followers on Instagram that they were there. Perhaps it's just my perception of it, but the car hobby seems more walled off, and less accessible than ever before. Who is going to invite the next generation over to show them how to tune a carburetor? 

In 2026 there is a distinct lack of in-person space for car enthusiasm to just exist and flourish. That's why I'm so excited about Sykes Self-Service Garage, currently in progress in Detroit. You know, the Motor City. This guy Devin Sykes bought an old 1920s-era service station that had been abandoned for years. While it was once a gas and wrench, Sykes is turning it into a rent-by-the-hour shop space for Detroiters to come and get their hands dirty without having to pay the inflated cost of buying their own tools, hoists, or garages. 

With the help of local volunteers, Devin has started rehabbing the old filing station to make it a nice place to hang out, a backdrop for your car's social media photos and a quality workshop. It doesn't hurt that the old car hobby folks will be there ready to lend a hand when some young whipper snapper rolls in looking for a place to install their new exhaust or save a few bucks doing their own oil change. This kind of DIY service garage is invaluable, and particularly helpful in the midst of the current national economic situation. Why pay someone else to service your car when you can just do it yourself?

I am extremely bullish on the Rust Belt right now. Draw a triangle between Chicago, Columbus, and Buffalo, pick a cool spot like Detroit or Cleveland, and move there. It's all happening here right now, and you don't want to get left behind. The Great Lakes are here, the culture is here, the cost of living, the weird Eastern European meat products, we have it all! 

While much of the country loves to bulldoze old buildings to put up a Chic-Fil-A or whatever, the Midwest has reverence for its artifacts. This old building may have sat abandoned for decades, but now it's getting a fresh lease on life, and it will help the surrounding community come together, develop camaraderie, and get their own formerly abandoned cars back on the road. 

There's something to be said for the folks who live in that region. This is the kind of person who does the hard thing explicitly because it's hard, and they do it on purpose. We live every day for type three fun. We go the extra mile, we help each other, we put in effort, and while we don't ever smile we're definitely happy to see you. 

Building a DIY workshop in Detroit just makes so much sense. The real estate is cheap, the car enthusiasm is at an all-time high, and everybody is looking for a way to make their dollar stretch. A bit of advice I learned from ten years selling car parts, when there's an economic recession, high unemployment, and runaway inflation, people start doing jobs themselves they normally would have paid a shop to do. While I'm not hopeful for the near future of the nation, I am hopeful for folks like this who are putting in the work and developing their communities. 

I've used a couple of these rental shop spaces in the past. Back before I found my own space, I had previously tried out Wingman Garage down in Akron, and it was an absolute joy. I had a similar experience wrenching on bikes with the unfortunately shuttered Skidmark Garage here in Cleveland, and I absolutely love Moto Michigan up in the Detroit area. These kinds of shops are great spots to gather, to wrench, and to be among your crew. They're also outfitted with way more tools than even my home shop is, including the weird specialty stuff I usually have to run out to get in the middle of a project. 

For the people who live in the neighborhood and don't have their own garage, working on your car can often mean wrenching on it while parked at the curb. I don't know if you've ever done that before, but it's a massive pain in the butt, and occasionally can be met with a fine from your local municipality. And that's before you even think about the weather implications of working outside without cover in a city that sees snow five months of the year. 

Sykes and his crew have already committed to a ton of effort getting the place up to snuff. It wasn't cheap or easy to get the old fuel tank out of the ground, and putting a roof on a 100-plus-year-old building isn't exactly the work of a moment. If you're interested in helping Mr. Sykes and his crew get the project across the finish line, they're accepting donations, or if you're in the Detroit area and need a place to hang out with other like-minded DIYers, you could consider pre-purchasing a membership to use once the building is completely sorted.