Part Nostalgia, Part Prophecy: Inside Larry Warsh’s Collection

Photographer James Jackman

Tucked away on a quiet stretch of New Jersey road, a car repair shop has been taken over—not as a place for fixing engines, but as a vault of visions for the future of civilisation. Once the domain of grease-stained mechanics and the steady clink of wrenches, the space now glows with the presence of extraordinary vehicles reimagined by some of the most influential artists of our time: Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ai Weiwei, Daniel Arsham, KAWS, Jean Tinguely, Barbara Kruger, Ugo Rondinone, Arman, Sylvie Fleury, Carmen Herrera, and many more.

These are not cars in the conventional sense. They are sculptures on wheels, artefacts in the ongoing story of human movement: part nostalgia, part prophecy. Together, they speak to an era that once worshipped speed and the freedom of the open road, yet now stands at a turning point, confronting the climate crisis and questioning the fossil-fuelled dreams that defined the last century.

At the heart of this improbable sanctuary is a single, passionate figure: a collector whose devotion to art and belief in its power to shape our shared future has turned a derelict workshop into a private temple of ideas. This is his laboratory, where the car; an object so central to the modern age; is transformed into a vessel for culture as much as for travel, a mirror reflecting both the roads we have travelled and the ones we have yet to imagine.

Here, in this quiet place, the past and the future converse in steel, paint, and concept. It is a secret space, known to only a handful of visitors, where civilisation’s next chapters are quietly being dreamt up: far from the noise of the highway, but never far from the pulse of history.