Mercury Charlie Garage

04/17/2026

04/13/2026

We’ll be enjoying the show from the spectators side this year. See you guys around the spots. We missed burgers at Ski Shores Sunday to any times. Cheers to all the Round Up folks. Have a great car show week. 🍻

02/07/2026

02/07/2026

Finally. Something good in the mailbox.

01/22/2026

Some cars carry more than horsepower.

This ’71 GTO started as a father’s vision — big block Chevy, side pipes, attitude — and now lives on under his daughter’s care. Our job was to bring it back to life without losing the soul: full rewire, A/C, modern touches like cameras and controls, all blended carefully into the original theme. Loud, raw, and unmistakably his.

Alongside that, it’s been a week of fundamentals and faithfulness:
– A Little Wings Cobra getting sorted after a fuel system failure and dialed back in
– A period-correct GT40, Weber-fed and prepped to FIA-spec, waking up after long storage
– Careful teardown, ultrasonic cleaning, re-jetting, and first fire on a true 180-degree header car

This is the work most people never see — the quiet passes, the problem solving, the responsibility of getting it right.

That’s what we do here.
One car at a time.

Mercury Charlie’s Garage
Austin, Texas

01/14/2026

A minute with Jimmie Vaughan inside Mercury Charlie’s Garage — where Austin style, music, and custom cars grew up together.

For 50 years, Charlie’s has been the quiet heartbeat of Austin’s hot-rod culture.
Gary Howard. Jimmie Vaughan. The builders, the players, the midnight grinders… all trading stories, steel, ideas, and inspiration under one small Texas roof.

Jimmie talks about the days when customs were an art form, when Gary Howard was shaping metal like a sculptor, and Charlie was learning, building, and sharpening his craft right beside the legends.

It wasn’t about fame back then — it was about soul, style, and the Austin way of doing things.

This little shop has seen half a century of it.

Mercury Charlie’s Garage.
Where the culture never died — it just kept getting cooler.

🎥 Clip pulled from a recent sit-down with Jimmie Vaughan.
🔧 Built on tradition.
🔥 Still rolling.

01/12/2026

Saturday at Charlie’s.
One of those walk-around days where the shop’s got a little bit of everything going on.

You pass the wall first — all those hand-built models Charlie made back in the day.
Funny how that’s where it all started: one guy messing with little cars before he ever built the big ones that put this place on the map.

Then you look up and the lineup today is wild.

The Econo-line by the front door.
The GT40 sitting center with the downdraft Webers doing their thing.
Lights hitting that chopped Merc nose above the bathroom — classic Charlie touch.
Roadhouse Relics art on the wall.
The ’61 Starfire hanging out like it’s waiting for its turn.

And then the two headliners:
the GT40 and that one-off ’69 Mustang from a serious collector — the same guy who built the MiCurato app.
He built it to keep every detail of these cars documented and dialed. We’ve been tasked to keep the metal part just as tight as the digital part.

Cool cars, good people, and a shop with enough history in the walls to fill a book.
Just another Saturday at Mercury Charlie’s.

01/10/2026

Some artists paint. Some carve. Charlie builds.
It doesn’t matter the scale or the decade — he’s always had a wrench in his hand and a picture in his head. What you see in this glass case isn’t just memorabilia… it’s a lifetime of obsession. A craft so deep it becomes the man.

In Austin, we’ve seen a lot of talent come and go.
But every once in a while, someone shows up who’s completely submerged —
living it, breathing it, never stopping. That’s Mercury Charlie.

Here’s to 50 years of doing it the only way he knows how:
one cut, one weld, one vision at a time.

01/10/2026

Remember when south congress wasn’t condo country? We do.