Why Mission: Collector Car Vault

Down a quiet street in Santa Paula, behind an iron gate and surrounded by art installations, citrus, and succulents is the largest classic car storage facility in Southern California.  The Collector Car Vault has been providing shelter to rare beauties, vintage racers, and even some everyday drivers for nearly a decade. 

The historic building was purchased by Xavier Maignan in 2014 after a friend referred him to the property as a potential place to store his collection of cars. The building, an old Sunkist packing warehouse, had been used as car storage since the late 60’s and had even housed the paint shop of infamous pinstripe artist Von Dutch.  What was going to be a deal to rent became an opportunity to buy and Maignan found himself overhauling the entire property and securing a conditional use permit to house 450 cars.

“That’s when we opened to the public and at first people thought it was kind of far to travel but they liked coming here.” says Maignan. “We started events with the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles and then with other people and this became a destination and a gathering place.  Now we have more of a social space than a storage facility.  We like to have meals; we like to break bread with people and make new connections and nurture them.  It’s not only about car storage it’s about a lot more.”

Fast forward 10 years and Maignan had the opportunity to invest again, this time buying out his business partner at Collector Car Vault.  He’d been on the hunt to find a financial partner who could close the deal and a chance meeting with Mission Bank Relationship Manager Quincy Dungan helped him turn the corner.

“We met at this networking event, and we didn’t know each other but I had my name tag on and he had on his Mission Bank vest and he said he knew my name, that I wanted to buy out my partner, and he said Mission Bank could help.” Says Maignan.

Maignan’s request was ambitious, close the deal by the end of the month, giving Dungan and Mission Bank 28 days to do the impossible.  Dungan rolled up his sleeves and made it happen.

“Between his multiple entities, the appraisal, lots of moving pieces and parts we were able to close on a project he’d been trying to complete for the last two years.” says Dungan. “We worked with six attorneys, the county and everyone under the moon to get this done.”

“This was nothing short of a miracle, but it worked, it was efficient, and it felt so good.” says Maignan. “There hasn’t been a day where I haven’t been thankful because they enabled me to take it to the next step and now we have amazing projects together to add to our portfolio and we look forward to them.”