Car-centered TV shows aren’t uncommon these days, but very few feature skillful customizations while combining them with the art of restoring classic autos such as “Gobling Works Garage” does. By bringing modernity and vintage together, the garage’s staff has defied the concepts known so far in the automotive industry, in an innovative way.

To make all this possible, “Goblin Works Garage” has some of the best people in their field, including builder and designer Helen Stanley. Nonetheless, as much as we enjoy her work on screen and her creative-oriented mind, it’s no secret that a huge part of the audience is curious about Helen’s life when the cameras are off, including details about her personal endeavors, other professional outlets, and current whereabouts.

So who is Helen Stanley, and what happened to her? Stay here to know all about this memorable “Goblin Works Garage” star!

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Where Is Helen Now?

Although it’s been a while since “Goblin Works Garage” premiered new episodes, that doesn’t mean Helen Stanley has stopped doing her own thing.

Nowadays, she’s quite busy with several projects, including her artistic endeavors, a paranormal-themed podcast, and her Hel’s Car Cult, which features automotive projects by petrol-heads in an inclusive way, paying special attention to women in the industry. That being said, Helen’s presence online is quite extensive, as besides her popular website and online shop Helen Stanley Official, she’s gained a huge following both on Instagram and Facebook, accumulating almost 100,000 followers to date.

Other than that, Helen and her “Goblin Works Garage” co-stars often attend car-related shows, such as the yearly Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) exhibitions, and are featured by automotive culture-centered platforms such as Meguiars UK and Fast Cars on YouTube. All in all, projects never cease coming Helen’s way, whether on TV or not.

Current Automotive Projects

When Helen Stanley isn’t building amazing cars on TV, she’s busy creating her own automotive-related platforms. One of those projects is Hel’s Car Cult, which started in 2022 with the purpose of entertaining petrol-heads alike and promoting interesting automotive projects.

Although Hel’s Car Cult’s official YouTube channel shared a couple of videos, the project’s primary audience took off in the form of a podcast and an Instagram account. In the latter, Helen promotes her taste in automotive projects with an inclusive focus, while in the former, she and “Goblin Works Garage” co-star Anthony Partridge talk about everything automotive, including petrol-head culture, and the impact of car-related events in pop culture and history.

This isn’t Helen’s first time starting an independent project in the automotive industry, though. In 2014, she launched the customizing shop Skull and Pistons Garage, which specialized in bringing classic cars back to life by putting special emphasis into details and quality.

Excited to see the incredibly cool Helen Stanley wearing a Delicious California Sweatshirt. 100% recycled, Straight to Hell in a fast Car”. Watch Helen’s brilliant show Goblin Works Garage on Quest & Quest OD.
Thankyou @helen_s_stanley for your loving what we do! #ecofashion pic.twitter.com/AvEFOLQsVj

— Delicious California (@DCalifornia1) September 6, 2019

The business was started back in the US, but moved its headquarters to the UK in 2018. Though Helen is no longer affiliated with it, the project served her well in making a name for herself in the British automotive industry back in the day.

Art Endeavors

Helen Stanley’s creative skills extend well beyond cars. While on her website she lists costume design and pattern creation as some of her talents, it’s evident that painting and drawing are her main activities when she isn’t working on cars.

As seen on her website Helen Stanley Official, a vast repertoire of original illustrations is for sale. Her art can be described as a mix of pop art with postmodern elements, often portraying her interests such as cars, animals, and fashion, in colored and vibrant ways.

Although it’s unclear how long Helen has been creating and selling her artwork, in a 2018 interview with Moss Europe she admitted that she’s always been interested in design, art, and architecture, putting all those influences together in an aesthetic way in all her varied works.

Podcast

While the first things which come to our minds with Helen Stanley are her love for design and the automotive industry, she’s a huge fan of paranormal themes and everything mystery-related. That’s why it doesn’t come as a surprise to see her hosting her podcast “Cars of the Macabre”, which focuses on events considered out-of-the-normal and unexplainable, as well as on visiting abandoned places, investigating urban legends, true crime events, and even revisiting some of the most memorable car-related facts in popular culture.

Helen’s love for mystery doesn’t come out of nowhere though, as it’s something she’s been interested in for a long time: ‘I like the paranormal, I like ghost stories, and like abandoned buildings and things like that’, she told the website Detour and Roadtrips, during an interview in which she admitted to combining her hobby of investigating abandoned places with her friends with her love for the road: ‘that’s what I think about when I think about road trips. It’s not just the car, not just the road. It’s everything that makes the road trip’, she said.

Nonetheless, Helen not only takes her enjoyment of paranormal themes seriously to the point of creating a podcast around it, but also to studying Parapsychology in recent times.

Funding Campaign

While Helen Stanley’s professional accomplishments are quite vast, she’s been going through some difficult personal times recently. In late 2022, Helen’s 10-year-old dog named Molly felt sick due to poisoning, which added to the fact she was previously diagnosed with a controllable heart tumor, put Molly’s life at severe risk.

Although the initial treatment was paid entirely by Helen, the worsening state of Molly’s health resulted in a huge bill, which unfortunately the car builder couldn’t afford on her own.

The urgent need for money led Helen to start an online funding campaign, which was meant to buy Molly’s treatment and save the life of who she described as her ‘best friend’: ‘I suffer with severe depression and anxiety, Molly is my constant emotional support and has saved my life over and over again. She is a very special little dog’, she wrote on Instagram.

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Though some of her followers feared that her account was taken over by someone else, who had faked Molly’s illness for money, Helen later took to Instagram to assure her followers that the campaign was indeed real. By January 2023, Helen updated her followers about Molly’s health, that it had improved, and thanked everyone for their donations.

How Did Helen Get In The Show?

Sometimes opportunities come when we aren’t looking for them, and that’s exactly the case for Helen Stanley and the story of how she got into “Goblin Works Garage”. In 2018, the show’s producers wanted to create a reality show from zero, but with a concept so original that it wouldn’t look similar to any other automotive-centered series already created.

In their search for people who would fit that concept, they found Helen, who at the time had recently moved her business Skull and Pistons Garage from the US to the UK. After finding her shop online and evaluating what it was all about, producers thought Helen was perfect for what was to come: ‘that was the car they would do, that was the kind of customization they wanted to do, that was where they were headed’, she told Moss Europe 2018.

Before being cast in the show, Helen was already acquainted with Jimmy DeVille for his work in automotive, and met Anthony Partridge during her meetings with “Goblin Works Garage” producers. In the end, she and the rest of the cast fitted very well together, and that’s how she found her way into the show.

How Did “Goblin Works Garage” Come To Be?

It isn’t rare to find car-centered TV shows these days, but “Goblin Works Garage” producers wanted their show to be unique and something that people hadn’t seen before. That’s how the initial idea for the show came to be in 2018, but there were still lots of things which needed to be put together to take the project to the starting line.

According to the show’s director Benjamin Hirsch, their goal with the project was to create something which could encompass creativeness and technical excellence to an impressive level: ‘Our aim from the outset was to make something unique, a mantra that ran right through the production, from the vehicles to the production techniques’. he told Broadcast Now in 2018.

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The first step was finding a location which allowed the cast to work in a spacious environment, then it was the time to find people who would fit right into the show’s concept. The first one cast was Jimmy de Ville, famous for appearing in other car-centric TV shows. He was followed by Ant Partridge, who was found by the producers by chance, as he was looking for new professional adventures after selling his previous automotive business.

The last one cast was Helen Stanley, who had already made a name for herself with her work at Skull and Pistons Garage. All of them joined together to form what we nowadays know as “Goblin Works Garage”.

Other TV Projects

Although “Goblin Works Garage” is the show which launched Helen Stanley to fame, she has appeared in other TV projects just as impressive. Besides appearing in the spin-off “Goblin Works Mod Shop”, Helen has hosted several automotive shows, such as “World’s Greatest Cars” and “I’m Not Driving That: With Ali-A”.

Nonetheless, her most prominent side-show to date is definitely “Motor Pickers”, which premiered in 2020, and has Helen giving people a hand in their search for their dream car. Along with co-star Paul Cowland, Helen introduces buyers to several cars and helps them experience what it’s like to be behind the wheel, before finally choosing the right car for them.

While the final choice is always a battle between the brain and the heart of the buyers, it’s also an exciting experience for Helen, who admittedly found a thrill in using her extensive knowledge about cars to help others, and push them to discover their inner petrol-head: ‘we hope that by the time they leave us that we’ve helped them, and that the car they end up with gives them a bit more passion’, she told Take To The Road in 2020.

Although “Motor Pickers” hasn’t been renewed since its second season wrapped up in 2021, it gave its audience lots of good automotive moments for as long as it lasted.

What Happened To Her BMW?

Those following Helen Stanley in “Goblin Works Garage” surely know what her BMW E30 looks like, as the customization of this car took place during the show’s first season. Although Helen’s co-hosts weren’t as ecstatic about restoring this car, she was quite enamored with it, despite it not being in great condition.

Although it might seem that Helen’s attachment to this car was a thing of the moment, the truth is that she had a long-lasting love of BMWs which came from her teens, when her father bought an E36 and let her drive it as a practice for her driving license, not realizing his daughter would never forget how fast and amazing the car was upon her first try: ‘I fell in love there and then, and from that day on I’ve always said I would love to have a BMW one day’, she told Hagerty in 2022.

In 2019, Helen saw an E30 on an online auction and brought it to “Goblin Works Garage”. While her co-stars couldn’t see its potential at first, the long hours it took in restoring, modifying, and redesigning it made it all worth it in the end. Late in 2022, Helen switched the E30’s color from gray to a colorful pop-styled aquamarine, and it looks as amazing as ever.

Helen’s Lost Car

There’s always a car which marks people in some way or another and it’s no different for Helen Stanley. While the first cars she ever drove were a Ford Fiesta and her father’s BMW E36, there is another car that Helen still regrets saying goodbye to.

That is what happened to her Ford Sierra XR4i, or as she nicknamed it “Sid the Sierra”, for having ‘much personality’, according to Helen. She bought Sid in 2015, and despite envisioning its sale for her then-business Skull and Pistons Garage, she quickly became attached to it: ‘it made me feel special when I drove it. I am such a boy racer and it was a boy racer car without having to do anything to it’, she told Hagerty in December 2022.

After restoring and bringing out the best of it, Helen sold Sid the Sierra for almost double the money she had bought it for. However, not even the profit made it easier for her to say goodbye.

So far, another Ford Sierra XR4i hasn’t found its way to Helen, but she’s always on the look-out for one. It’s these kinds of stories which make Helen’s journey as a petrol-head more relatable, and explains very well why she’s so well-liked by her audience and fans.

Luxury, riches and fame are considered blessings for most people, but not even the biggest fortune in the world could compensate for repeatedly going through the tragedy and the misfortunes that the Onassis family has gone through. One of the richest families in the world and with an entire shipping empire to prove it, the success achieved by the Onassis at the business was counteracted by their tumultuous and highly enduring personal issues.

So what is really behind the downfall of the Onassis? Is the curse of the family real and what happened for them to gain that fame? Where are the Onassis family members these days and did they lose their fortunes? How did the past members of the family die?

Stay here to know all about the rise and downfall of the Onassis’ and they’re up to nowadays!

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How Did They Become Rich?

The Onassis family’s riches came over a long time, ever since the family settled in the city once known as Smyrna, in Greece. However, the later occupation of said territory by Turks in the 1920s resulted in the loss of the assets owned by the Onassis, and the relocation of the surviving family members to Greece.

Once a refugee with barely $250 in his pocket, Aristotle Socrates Onassis moved to Argentina in 1923, where he studied business while working as an operator in a local phone company. Once his studies ended, he briefly worked in the country’s customs services, then started a small Turkish tobacco business, reportedly earning around $100,000 during the first year. By the late 1920s, Aristotle had founded a shipping company on top of managing a major international trade agreement between Argentina and Greece.

In the early 1930s, Aristotle took advantage of the reduced prices product of the Great Depression and bought his ships, eventually expanding his operations nationwide. He moved to the US not long after and diversified into the oil and airways industries. By the time he died in 1975, he’d accumulated a fortune of over $500 million, over $2 billion as of 2023. However, Aristotle’s riches are only partially what made the Onassis’ so famous, as continued tragedies and scandals would mark this family for the next decades.

Aristotle’s Life Scandals

Throughout his life, Aristotle Onassis made headlines for his bold and unorthodox business moves, but also his scandalous personal life. It all started when in 1946 he married Athina Mary Livanos, Greek socialité and heiress of the Livanos business empire, considered a rival of the Onassis one.

Although the high-profile marriage resulted in the birth of Aristotle’s two children Christina and Alexander, it didn’t last long. According to reports, Aristotle’s flings with several women eventually led to the couple’s divorce in 1950.

However, the most publicized of Aristotle’s affairs was with famous opera singer Maria Callas, of Greek descent as well. The affair reportedly started in 1959, as the pair embarked on a cruise of the Greek and Turkish coasts, at a time when both of them were still married to their respective partners. Although Aristotle eventually divorced Athina Livanos, he and Maria never married, but continued their relationship for many years, ending when he married Jacqueline Kennedy, the widow of American President JF Kennedy in the late 1960s.

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While it’s widely reported that Aristotle and Maria’s relationship might not have been as idyllic as thought, both of them allegedly comforted each other amid her career’s downfall, and his son and Athina’s death in the early ‘70s. Maria died in 1977, only two years after his death.

Death Of Alexander Onassis

One of the biggest tragedies ever suffered by the Onassis family was the death of Alexander, the only son of Aristotle and Athina Livanos. Born in New York City in 1948, Alexander had an informal education, and began working for his father at the early age of 17, a job which reportedly he wasn’t too happy about.

Alexander’s lack of commitment to following in his father’s footsteps in business was an issue in their relationship, which was worsened by Aristotle’s disapproval of Alexander’s romantic partners, including models Odile Rodin and Fiona Thyssen. Alexander and his sister Christina also openly disapproved of their father’s marriage to Jacqueline, though they reportedly went along well with their stepmother’s children.

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In the late 1960s, Alexander developed a huge interest in flying, a hobby his father approved as he was eventually named head of Olympic Aviation, part of Olympic Aviation. While Alexander couldn’t be licensed for air transport due to his poor eyesight, he was a commercially licensed pilot. Unfortunately, his involvement with the aircraft industry led to his death at 24 years old, when he was severely injured in the crash of a plane he was supervising in 1973.

Heartbroken by the loss, his father Aristotle reportedly wanted to embalm his son’s body, but it was eventually embalmed. One year later, Alexander’s mom Athina died of a drug overdose, followed by Aristotle’s death in 1975.

Death of Aristotle Onassis

Previous to Aristotle Onassis’ death, he was surrounded by lots of controversies and scandals, most of them related to the death of his son Alexander in 1973. According to the biography “The Deadly Sins of Aristotle Onassis” by Stuart Speiser, the fact that Alexander was the only one to not survive the plane crash which resulted in his death was tremendously shocking to Aristotle.

Looking for answers, Aristotle blamed the plane’s auditioning pilot Don McCusker for supposedly not being experienced enough to pilot a Piaggio 136, the aircraft in which the accident occurred. Some other accusations by Aristotle included a plot against him planned by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The Greek forces in charge of investigating the case eventually issued a final report on the investigation, concluding that the crash wasn’t McCusker’s fault: ‘(it) was not the result of poor technique or mistake of the pilot. The main cause of the accident was the mistakes of the maintenance personnel of Olympic Airways’, as recorded by the journal Kathimerini, which also pointed out that it was Aristotle himself who had purchased the airplane in question.

Given the results of the report, Aristotle fell into a depression which also affected his physical health. He was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, and died from complications of it in March 1975.

Christina’s Scandals

Upon the death of her father Aristotle, Christina was the only surviving member of the Onassis family. Her father left 45% of his fortune to found the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, while $500 million were destined for Christina, who became chief of the family’s business.

Money was the least of Christina’s problems, as her personal life was constantly troubled. In 1971, Christina married Joseph Bolker, a Californian businessman 27 years older than her and divorced father of two who was also a philanthropist. The marriage lasted less than 10 months and was strongly disapproved of by Aristotle.

Following the deaths of Christina’s brother and mother in the first half of the 1970s, she was reportedly briefed on the insides of the Onassis business empire by her father. She was expected to marry Peter Goulandris, to merge his and her family’s shipping empires, but she refused, and instead married Greek businessman Alexander Andreadis, but whom she divorced 14 months later.

Her third marriage was to Sergei Kauzov, whom she divorced in 1979 after only a year of marriage. She then married a French man named Thierry Roussel, with whom she welcomed their daughter Athina.

Her turbulent romantic endeavors weren’t the only scandalous aspect of Christina’s life though, as she famously renounced her American citizenship to reduce taxes, among several other questionable but legal business moves, along with allegedly suffering from an addiction to drugs and alcohol.

Christina’s Death

Christina Onassis’ longest relationship was with Thierry Roussel, but the pair’s marriage wasn’t successful at all. Shortly after the birth of their only daughter Athina Hélène in 1985, Christina discovered that Russell had cheated on her with model Marianne Landhage, who had also given birth to his son Erik.

Despite the infidelity, Christina and Thierry didn’t separate right away. It wasn’t until Christina discovered that Thierry and Landhage had welcomed a second child that the marriage came to a definite end in 1987. Nonetheless, it didn’t take long for tragedy to hit the family once again.

Christina was found unconscious by her friend Marina Dodero and maid Eleni on the morning of 19 November 1988, in a mansion in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Reports pointed out that she might have fallen ill while preparing to go swimming, ultimately falling unconscious in her room’s bathtub.

Christina was declared dead at 37 years old, but while it was suspected that the cause of death was suicide, it was later determined that pulmonary edema had caused her a sudden heart attack. Reports also point out that Christina had long suffered from eating disorders, which could have contributed to her death. Her remains were flown to Greece, where she was buried on the family’s private island of Skorpios.

#OTD in 1988, Christina Onassis, heir to the billion-dollar fortune of Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, dies of heart failure at a country club swimming pool about 25 miles northwest of Buenos Aires. She was 37. pic.twitter.com/uXAehjbkpI

— Mace (@RoyaleVision) November 19, 2020

Athina’s Young Life Problems

Despite being the last Onassis, and so sole living heir of her grandfather Aristotle, things weren’t easy for Christina’s only daughter Athina. At the time of her mother’s death in 1988, Athina was only three years old, and was left to the care of her father Thierry Roussel, who was given an allowance to raise his daughter but not access to the Onassis’ fortune, which was managed for the time being by the Onassis’ estate board. Athina was raised by Thierry and his wife Marianne Landhage.

As stated in Christina’s will, Athina was to be raised surrounded by Greek culture, learning the language and under the faith of the Greek Orthodox Church. These stipulations were rejected by Thierry, who was not only unhappy about the financial limitations imposed on Athina’s future fortune, but didn’t encourage her to immerse herself in Greek culture either.

According to The Scotsman, Athina’s fortune was affected by Thierry’s decisions as well, as he had apparently withdrawn large amounts of money and sold part of her shares in the family’s business.

The dispute over Athina’s fortune reached its lowest point in 1998 when Athina declared she didn’t want anything to do with her Greek heritage and family: ‘I want to forget the name Onassis, it’s the cause of all the problems’, she told the magazine Oggi, though nowadays those statements are considered to have been influenced by her father.

Her Fight For Her Inheritance

While Athina’s bond with her maternal family and the Greek culture seemed to be irreparably severed by the late 1990s, that wasn’t the end of issues for Athina. During her father’s dispute to expand his control over the Onassis’ inheritance during her teens, Athina renounced her family’s heritage in a court for minors in Switzerland, claiming her supposed aversion to ‘everything Greek’. Another court took Athina’s inheritance away from the Onassis’ estate board, and transferred it to a firm in Switzerland.

On Athina’s 18th birthday, she was legally able to receive the $800 million passed down to her by her mother. However, her father took control of it under a power of attorney authorization, and soon put the money under the control of numerous international finance companies to manage the assets, leaving Athina with a $10,000 monthly allowance.

Although the young heiress was apparently comfortable with the deal at first, in 2004 Athina grew angry at the constant limitations her father put on her money, requesting an accounting of her assets, and revoking the authorization she gave him. In the end, Athina took control of her assets for the first time in 2005, but was denied the chief spot of the Onassis family estate, due to her lack of connection to her Greek heritage.

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Did The Onassis Lose Their Fortunes?

While the Onassis estate hasn’t lost its riches, the truth is that the business isn’t what it used to be back in the 1950s. Even as early as 1975, New York Times financers reported that Aristotle’s large assets in the tanker business were going through a crisis, as a result of the market’s depression which followed the closure of the Suez Canal in the late 1960s.

Although his business hadn’t entered a crisis, by the time of Aristotle’s death in 1975, the Onassis family business wouldn’t be the same from then on. As reported by Forbes, it’s unclear what business moves and deals took place during the period in which Thierry Roussel and the Onassis estate board managed Athina’s assets, making it difficult to know what exactly she inherited from her mother Christine on her 18th birthday.

Athina Onassis’ net worth is calculated at less than $1 billion nowadays, but after the legal battle she faced against her father in her 20s and a very publicized divorce in 2017, the millionaire heiress prefers to keep a toned-down public life these days, maintaining some distance from the privileges that her fortune offers, and from the speculations of the alleged curse her family carries.