Sixteen years ago, Brian Bauer made a life-changing decision. He left his corporate job with a telephone company in St. Louis to try something different: making barbecue grills that resembled classic cars. He pulled the first mold off a yellow C-5 Corvette.
From that start, Brian’s company, Car Crazy Furniture, grew to making desks that resembled cars, then expanded to car, train and tractor beds, benches, chairs, couches and counters, both for restaurants and private residences. He now ships hundreds of pieces of car-themed furniture a year from a farm near Montrose.
“It’s crazy how far this has come,” said Carter Bauer, Brian’s son. “He went from selling five pieces a year, barbecue grills and desks, to shipping 100 pieces.”
By 2019, the business was selling 200 pieces a year, Brian said, but not making any money. Then his daughter Kayley, who was finishing her last semester in college, asked if she could do the marketing for the company. Brain agreed, and a month later, the company was getting so many orders, Brian called her and said “Stop-stop-stop.”
Kayley responded “Raise your prices and hire more employees.”
“She grew us 700 percent every 12 months for three years,” Brian said.
The selection of items went from one or two molds to more than 100 molds, Dakota said, and one employee to 10. Brian and Carter recently made a trip to Texas to deliver a large commercial order, and stopped by a car-themed restaurant in Oklahoma, which CCF furnished with 14 pieces. Brian also made a trip to New York to deliver a Volkswagen bus to a marijuana dispensary, where it will be used as a photo booth.
VW buses are popular for counters in restaurants and shops, and for photo stations or booths, he said.
The furniture is made in the barns on a farm north of Montrose, where Brian’s father, Raymond Jones, raised horses and hogs. Raymond also worked at the Montrose Power Plant for 30 to 40 years, Carter said.
Carter remembers visiting the family farm when he was a boy. There were pigs in the hog barn then, he said, which is now the fiberglass shop, where furniture pieces are made from molds.
“We don’t like tearing up vintage cars,” said Dakota Beason, one of the company’s 10 employees, a painter who has worked there for four years.
The barns had to be cleared of tractors and trailers, Carter said, and had no electricity.The floors were dirt until two years ago, when Brian ordered concrete, and he and his employees laid 100 yards of flooring and walkways connecting the buildings, perfecting their technique as they went.
“We did it ourselves,” Brian said, noting that he has never borrowed money, either when he started the business or expanded it.
Customers go online and order the piece of furniture they want, in the color they want, Dakota said. The most unusual commission was from a person who wanted a motorcycle like one in a science-fiction movie to use as a bar.
“We literally pulled it off a photograph,” Carter said. “My father figured out all the measurements.”
On the shop floor now are two Volkswagen van bodies, one destined to be a counter in a car-themed theater room, the other for a dog-grooming business, Groovy Grooming. Car Crazy had to obtain permission to use the VW logo, which is licensed, Brian said, but the rest of the vehicle is not similar enough to the original, he said.
The company has also gotten pretty big into metal work, Carter said. One of the items they make is a metal bench on a frame that resembles a ski-lift chair. They made the first one for the Slusher Farm and Home store in Sikeston, Brian said, to display merchandise.
“I never thought we’d never sell another one,” Brian said. “We sold 15 of them in the last four months.”
The ski-lift chair now on the shop floor is blue, and was ordered by the St. Louis Blues Hockey Club to use as a promotional give-away. Car Crazy has also made the ski-lift bench in gold, green and red, Brian said, with most of the ones they make in red.
“A lot of people put Santa on it out in the yard, with some presents,” Brian said.
Car Crazy goes through 400 to 500 gallons of paint a year, so last year, they bought a Clark’s Paint franchise, which sells automobile paint and supplies in Montrose. Kayley has put the paint into Walmart, Brian said, and also has Car Crazy furniture on Amazon as well as on the carcrazyfurniture.com website.
Despite the prices that custom products bring, Brian prides himself on making furniture for working people. He recently got an order for a car bed from a woman who wanted it for her autistic son, and said how much she could afford to pay. Brian supplied the bed at the price she offered, although he did not clear any profit from it.
Carter, a mechanic and welder, said he has always been around cars. He remembers riding around the farm in the four-wheel ATV when he was 6, and learning to drive a car on the farm when he was 7 or 8.
Brian has been car crazy since he was a teenager, when he had a ’68 Camaro. He now has a Corvette, a ’Cuda, a panel truck and his wife’s car, a ’67 Camaro, and had to put a four-car extension onto his garage.
“I do like to collect cars,” he said. “I have them stacked up on lifts.”
For more information and photographs of Car Crazy products, go to carcrazyfurniture.com or the Car Crazy Furniture facebook.
