When cars reach the end of their life, an artist in Atascadero breathes a second life into their parts.
Ben Harvey turns his passion for cars into art by salvaging parts, cleaning them and turning them into decorative pieces at Ben’s Automotive Décor on El Camino Real.
“We furnish showrooms or people have car caves where they keep their car collections,” Harvey said. “Our main business is making coffee tables out of car engines, sofas out of cars and lamps. We also make a lot of smaller gift items, like little table clocks out of pistons and beer openers.”
Community members and car lovers can now walk into the new branch of Ben’s Automotive Decor, which celebrated its grand opening on August 2. Harvey said the space has a showroom and cafe where people can stop by to check out the displays, grab a cup of coffee and watch some racing. Harvey also takes custom orders with custom auto parts.
Cars were a constant part of his childhood in Devon – a town in the south-west of England that, Harvey says, reminds him of the Central Coast, with its beautiful beaches, idyllic farm life and lush green hills. Cars of all kinds have remained a constant in his life.
“My family has a garage there, so I grew up taking engines apart to get out of trouble. They always gave me the old, broken ones, and I thought they were really cool,” he said.
After Harvey met his wife Chloee, a San Luis Obispo County native, they had to decide where they wanted to live together: the Central Coast or the U.K. They chose California after Harvey said he fell in love with the “up-and-coming town” of Atascadero and the hiking trails the county had to offer.
“I was a mechanic here in America and I built a coffee table that everyone thought was cool and I thought maybe there was a market for it,” he said.
This is how the story of Ben’s Automotive Décor began in 2012, where Chloee takes care of the paperwork and Ben is responsible for the crafting.
“People often have a passion for a particular car and I’ll build them a table out of it – for example, if they’re into Ferraris, I’ll build them a piece out of a particular Ferrari that they like and that means more to them than just some generic engine,” he said. “We also get things with racing history. If a famous racer raced with an engine and it’s retired, we can get the engine and build a piece of art out of it and that means a lot to them.”
A huge racing fan himself, Harvey said he was lucky enough to be able to build a table out of one of former Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher’s old engines and it remains one of his favourite pieces.
For those who want a custom part but don’t have access to a readily available engine, Harvey said he takes the time to find the right parts through a network of sources he’s built over time.
“Actually, not very many come from here; a lot come from Britain because there are a lot of big races there,” he said. “I send a lot over from England and go there to network and find contacts.”
The production of individual parts can take between a few weeks and several months.
Harvey said most of his ideas come to him at night while he is sleeping. For example, he built battery-powered turntables that show how an engine actually works, with the valves moving up and down with the pistons. But since he is not a great draftsman, everything he thinks up is brought to life directly from memory, he said.
“I’m just terrible at sketching. … I see what I need to do, but I can’t draw it. Just yesterday I was working on a special project for an NFL football player, and he asked me for a sketch, and I said I can’t give him a sketch because it would look terrible,” he says, laughing.
While the engine is his favorite car part, Harvey also creates pieces with other elements, such as a toilet paper holder made from a wrench.
“When people come in, there are a lot of different things available to them,” he said. “They can buy a custom watch or just come in and say hello.” Δ
Reach editor Samantha Herrera at (email protected).
