PLANS, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES; Custom Mopar collector has a big piece of Pennsylvania in his garage.

Byline: PHIL BERG

Buying a house in 1994 that had an attached garage, one in which the previous owner had installed a commercial-grade hydraulic four-post lift, was just part of Don Williams' plan. "When I saw the lift in it, that clinched the deal,'' recalls Williams, who retired from the advertising business in 2005. "It was the first garage I had with equipment more than just a tool box.'' But the three-car garage left Williams with five of his favorite cars and a few motorcycles scattered in a five-mile radius of warehouse storage spaces, and his prized yellow AMX-a former personal car of American Motors design boss Richard Teague-was in storage in another state.

So Williams embarked on a plan to build a new garage adjacent to his suburban home by purchasing the residential lot next door. It took lengthy negotiations with his township homeowners association to get approval to build a garage on the vacant lot. The biggest hurdle for Williams was matching the brick of the new garage to that of the 10-year-old house. The brick company no longer made the bricks, and even though Williams had promised to pay them to refire the old style, the brickmakers said they couldn't match them. Undaunted, Williams found an artisan who hand-painted bricks and made up a sample. Williams and his brother laid a course of the bricks on a wall. "They were dead on'' in color, he remembers. The new eight-car structure was approved and finished in 2004.

Inside the building, which is attached to the house by an archway, are a few 1960s muscle cars, a couple of 1930s street rods and two modern cars. One is a 2005 Dodge Neon SRT4 that Williams loves so much he says he's keeping it for "a very long time.''

The other specials include a custom rust-free Dodge Dart that Williams is ...