AutoViseur garage
A photo of Autoviseur from April 2009 showing its “Jaguar service” and luxury cars in the lot
In 1981, Serge Attar opened Autoviseur, a car dealership and garage that would become a Griffintown fixture for decades. Attar and his small team’s passion for automobiles shone through the various services they offered. Beaming with pride, Attar recalls, “We did car repairs on old cars, restorations, especially Rolls Royces, old Jaguars, a lot of Ferraris from the ‘80s. We also did car maintenance and sales of special cars. We handled mechanics, bodywork and car sales.” Eventually, Autoviseur was the last garage standing in downtown Montreal—yet another source of pride for the entrepreneur.
The garage has witnessed the complete transformation of the neighbourhood, from an industrial zone to one of the city’s trendiest areas. “When I came to this neighbourhood, it was all parking lots,” Attar remembers. “People would just park their cars in the morning and come back at night.” Over time, he noticed a growing interest in the area. “They started building,” he reflects, “all the parking lots disappeared, and they started building condos.” Still, Autoviseur continued to cater to the downtown clientele, which expanded as people started moving closer to his business. According to Attar, just about everyone downtown knew him and his garage. People even travelled specifically to visit his business. With a chuckle, Attar reveals that “there were always famous people in my garage. Because I worked with some pretty special cars, I had a lot of stars. Roch Voisine, The Péladeaus, René Angélil… I had all kinds of characters.”
Of course, the buzz of celebrity visitors attracted curious onlookers hoping for autographs or to catch a glimpse of special vehicles. Autoviseur became a meeting place for car lovers to check out rare and high-end cars, even when they didn’t necessarily need a tune-up of their own. “My garage was like a car museum,” Attar explains, “nothing but very special, very rare cars.” He also took part in many car shows, particularly showcasing English and Italian cars. But his favourite event by far was participating in the annual parade on Peel Street during the Grand Prix. “I was the one who exhibited all my customers’ Ferraris for a long, long, long, long time. I did that until 2010,” he reflects, looking back on decades of fond memories and connections with fellow car enthusiasts.
The Autoviseur sign, unchanged since the garage’s opening, with the exception of some minor repairs after the 1998 ice storm, represents for Attar a lasting symbol of Griffintown’s industrial past. He designed the sign himself based on a logo he had drawn. Made of closed-channel metal letters lit with neon, it was, in his own words, “very impressive and beautiful” and could be seen from far away. According to Attar, tourists often photographed his sign. “It looked a bit vintage, so everybody took pictures of it,” he recounts. “Especially the Europeans, they all took pictures of my sign. It was very American and very modern too.” Many pictures of the garage can be found on Instagram, Facebook and Flickr, showing its iconic status in Griffintown.
In late 2023, Attar was told by his landlord that he had until March 2024 to vacate the building in which he had worked for almost 45 years. The garage was then demolished to make way for an 18-story tower project by a non-profit organization dedicated to building nearly 300 student housing units. Despite local opposition to urban density, the project is going forward to address the housing crisis and offer affordable accommodation near the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS Montréal), Concordia University, McGill University, and the REM line. Although the project incorporates heritage buildings like the Nouvelle Vague school and the Sainte-Hélène presbytery, promising to find social or community uses for both, the garage sadly has not been spared. “It’s a shame,” Attar says. “There were a lot of petitions to keep the garage.”
Autoviseur may have made way for a new chapter in Griffintown’s development, but its distinctive sign is preserved through the Montreal Signs Project as a reminder of the neighbourhood’s industrial past within the rapidly changing urban landscape.
Writing and research by Marie Bernard-Brind’Amour
Sources
AUTOVISEUR INC. (n.d.). Québec Entreprises. Retrieved April 9, 2025.
Grillo, M. (2024, January 17). Longtime mechanic forced out of Griffintown garage to make way for new highrise tower. CTVNews.
Lebel, A. (2023, November 13). «C’est notre plus gros projet jusqu’à ce jour»: Près de 300 logements étudiants près du futur REM à Griffintown. Le Journal de Montréal.
Teisceira-Lessard, P. (2023, November 12). REM: Un promoteur mise déjà sur la station Griffintown. La Presse.
UTILE. (2023, November 13). Annonce du projet le Cardinal.