Underground Car Silo

I've long wanted a mechanic's garage lift installed in the garage to ease vehicle maintenance. (I've also long wanted enough room in the garage to actually put the car, but that's another problem to be eventually soluted by a small front-end loader and a large skip or catapult.)

The idea is to combine a garage lift with a full elevating platform; an ideal combination for an underground garage silo. And vice-versa. (It's a given that both mechanic's-lifts and car-elevators exist, this idea puts them in the same space-time coordinates.) The lift either lifts the mechanic's frame thingie (whatever), or the mechanic's frame thingie plus the platform.

The garage is vehicularly accessed by a circular platform that pops up out of the driveway next to or in front of the house through a pair of semicircular flat or clamshell doors, which descends into a more standard rectangular room, and is personally accessed through a door in the basement. The flashing lights, and pre-recorded "Thunderbirds are Go !" at each egress, are almost a necessity, at least until such time as the neighbours can get an injunction to stick.

Of course the property then requires a separate toolshed for gardening paraphernalia, etc. but that's more than made up for by being able to move any-sized stuff into and out of the heated workshop in the basement of the house proper without having to navigate up and down cramped basement stairs.

While a little more work is required to actually dig a garage into the ground (namely the actual "digging into the ground" bit), the amount of materials required is about the same.

Needless to say the circular platform is a turntable.

Also needless to say, the first person who comments "And to keep snow off the clamshell doors just build a little house around the top" gets a smack upside the head.