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AutoONE’s beginning was like a love child, having just watched Mamma Mia – the sequel, it struck me as a familiar story.

A few years ago a NEWCO was formed from the ashes of 5 souls in need of saving.  AutoONE was born as a result, the child flourishing without ever truly knowing its roots, but born to carry on all the best attributes of each.

In the early days we struggled to find an identity, and as it slowly came together, it was helped by the tale of the two tables that today give meaning to who we are.

Who hasn’t seen an episode of Top Gear, and marveled at the crazy things they did with cars, and dream about participating in just one of the amazing drives around the world. And of course wonder in awe at the coffee table where they conducted the celebrity interviews – well I for one did. 

It seemed to me that I wouldn’t get invited to Top Gear, but I was a car guy and have had many an adventure driving around the world – but let’s keep that for another time – and I do consider myself a bit handy.  By way of some back ground, I found myself in possession of a Porsche 928 engine – which unfortunately had a little hiccup on one of my car rally’s and decided to blow a casket -literally, in the middle of Utah.  Eventually the car and said engine were returned to me in Toronto, and I found myself in need of a replacement race engine, and now a spare.

After considerable thought, and an inability to let things go, it struck that I could finally create my own Top Gear, and I could turn AutoONE in to the repository/strategy of who we are!

A dab of paint here and there, some castor wheels, brackets and of course a piece of glass, and the first AutoONE themed artifact was born – the Porsche Engine Table, and now on display for the Top Gear in all of us.

You may wonder how you top that – no pun intended – but you need to try, and so we decided to throw a party to show off the expanded AutoONE’s 30,000 sq. ft of indoor showroom and cool automotive themed décor.

James Bond was the theme of course, but we needed more than that, after all we were raising funds for charity as well.  So, we reached into to our recent past in hopes of making good from some of the bad that bestowed our parentage.  It so happened that the recession left a little carnage behind, and for AutoONE hat meant a repossessed Lamborghini, resold to a young man who didn’t like the $20,000 worth of aftermarket rims on the car.  Fortunately for us he bought himself new ones and let us keep the old ones – with all of 1500 km on them – what to do?

At this point with a looming charity auction approaching, the natural thing to do was make a Lambo RIM coffee table….and it’s a beauty.

The auction was a success and a new AutoONE division of automotive art was born – just kidding, we mostly lease cars and of course sell them if we can’t convince you to lease them.

This of course leads us to today, and will help explain why we are happy to make automotive art so we can give a little bit of AutoONE to you, Good Luck in the contest.