Most of us love our cars, and it’s no secret that concerns about car crime are rocketing. Garages, steering wheel locks, Faraday pouches, even pop-up bollards on the drive – all these and more are common and relatively affordable ways to secure our property. But the stakes are clearly much higher if you own a collection of classic or super cars, with the value of many significant cars outpacing that of gold over the past few decades.
Not surprisingly, the wealthy are going to extreme lengths to keep their automotive investments safe. One company, SHY Automotive, has just revealed a new 50,000 sq ft storage facility capable of accommodating 590 cars. It’s so confident in the security offered by its multi-million pound site that it’s even happy to shout about its location.
Situated just off the M23 motorway, 15 minutes south of Gatwick Airport and 20 minutes from the M25, the new facility is brimming with high-tech features designed to keep millions of pounds worth of cars safe. But how does it, and other car storage companies, compare with the most secure place on earth, Fort Knox?
Reaching the building is a mission in itself
Around SHY’s site, where mega-rich collectors pay at least £100 a week to store each of their treasures, there’s a 10-foot high security fence monitored by multiple CCTV cameras. Without a helicopter or bulldozer, the only way to get inside is through a coded barrier – and only SHY’s staff and on-site security have access to the code.
But it’ll have to go some distance further to match the United States Bullion Depository in Kentucky – more commonly known as Fort Knox. As you might imagine of a building that houses approximately half of the US government’s federal gold reserves, Fort Knox is big on security.
At 12,705 sq ft, Knox’s main depository building is only about a quarter of the size of SHY Automotive’s building. But Fort Knox is surrounded by two separate electric fences and another thick concrete wall topped with razor wire. The innermost fence incorporates searchlights and there’s a watchtower at each of the building’s four corners. And, of course, there are sentry boxes at the gate, manned by guards who keep their trigger fingers sharp at an on-site shooting range.
Biometrics are the only way in
To get through SHY Automotive’s front door requires fingerprint recognition. So without being accompanied by a fully-vetted staff member you won’t get into the building. Then, there’s a secure area within, called the vault, where the cars are stored. This also requires fingerprint recognition from a limited number of staff to access.
It’s a similar story at Vault, an appropriately named car storage company in San Diego, US. “From biometric scans to personalised access cards, every measure is taken to guarantee that only owners, or their designated representatives, can get anywhere near luxury vehicles,” the company said.
Getting into Fort Knox is even tougher. The building itself is made up of 16,000 cubic feet of granite blocks, 4,200 cubic yards of concrete, 750 tonnes of reinforced steel and 670 tonnes of structural steel.
Within that structure, the 4,000 sq ft vault is made of steel plates and steel cylinders encased in concrete. The vault’s walls, 21 inches thick, and are able to withstand an atomic bomb blast.
The cars are impossible to get out
Even if you were able to get to the cars in SHY’s facility, getting them out has been made nigh-on impossible. Each of the 590 cars the company stores is raised off the ground on its own bed. A SHY spokesman claimed, “If you don’t know how to use our bespoke, purpose-built machinery, you can’t even get access to the car.”
If you did manage it, you would then have to get through roller shutters which can only be opened from the inside. And once you’ve got through those, there’s a heavy sliding gate to negotiate to get the cars out of the warehouse compound.
But any car storage facility will have to go some way to match Fort Knox’s physical deterrence. Its vault door is made from steel and concrete, weighs more than 20 tonnes and no one person knows how to get past it. Instead, each staff member is trusted with just one of several combinations, which they must input separately to access the vaults. Once the codes have been entered, there’s a 100-hour time delay lock.
Even the most powerful man in the world, the US president, doesn’t have access. Only one president – Franklin Roosevelt, in 1943 – has ever been allowed into Fort Knox’s vault.
24-hour monitoring is essential
SHY has 40 CCTV cameras throughout its facility, monitoring the aisles of cars inside the vault as well as the exit points and perimeter fences. Outside business hours, when there’s just a skeleton staff, there’s a remote monitoring team.
“If anyone is considering car storage, it’s important to check that any CCTV monitoring includes keyholder notification,” said James Mills from car storage company Racing Green. “If our alarms are triggered, we are contacted within 10 seconds, and if the alarm company can’t reach a keyholder, they will contact the police or fire brigade.”
No matter how thorough the monitoring, it’s unlikely to compete with Fort Knox. Within the perimeter fences, there are high-resolution night-vision video cameras with microphones set into the ground that even the sneakiest mouse would struggle to bypass undetected.
And if you do somehow manage to make it beyond the fences, there are rumours the grounds surrounding the building are protected by landmines, while lasers trigger machine guns when the beams are broken.
Security guards are patrolling round the clock
A team of heavies patrol the SHY premises, both inside and out, to ensure nothing untoward is happening. And access keys to the building are taken off site, so if someone does break in, nothing’s made easy for them.
Even so, the security is unlikely to match that of Fort Knox, which apparently costs the US government $5 million (£3.9m) a year to protect.
How vital is all this?
After a handful of Ferraris stored in managed car parks in London’s Westminster were stolen last year, the super-rich are increasingly turning to purpose-built storage facilities.
Many of these facilities are top secret, so it’s difficult to build an accurate picture of how many there are in the UK. But in 2022, Autocar magazine estimated that managed car storage in the UK was worth around £19m a year – with 15,000 cars in storage around the country.
When you’re storing a valuable car, there are some non-negotiables, such as having a dehumidification system. According to Mills, relative humidity should be set at 55 per cent to prevent steel rotting and plastic and rubber seals drying out.
The SHY facility also boasts a sprinkler system fed by a 90,000 litre reserve tank of water. It’s good to know it’s there, but how necessary is it? Mills said, “In a well-kept facility, fire shouldn’t be a risk. But anyone storing a car should ask if the power supply is isolated when there’s no one in the building. And trickle chargers shouldn’t be run when there’s no one to monitor them.”
Mills also claimed he’s never heard of anyone breaking into a car storage site. But he believes secrecy is the key. He said, “Our 10,000 sq ft site is big enough to accommodate 110 cars, but it can’t be seen from the road and it’s deeply rural, so no one could stake it out without being obvious. That’s an added layer of protection, plus we have someone who lives on site.”
Of course, even that can’t match the US Bullion Depository. It has its own water and power supply – and in case it all kicks off, there are always the 40,000 military personnel at the Fort Knox army base next door.
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