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I have a lift. I built a dedicated building for it on my property with no space or ordinance limitations. I researched everything about lifts back at the time and I was building a multi-use work shop to work on cars and keep my 250 year old house in shape.

So first off you need a minimum of 12 feet ceiling clearance for a full-size 2-post lift. If your primary purpose is for car repair and you have somewhat of a budget, a 2-post lift is the preferred choice. I'm not sure what lift prices are now, but I'm guessing around $4K to $4.5K for a US-made ALI-certified 2-post 10,000-pound lift. I have a Rotary SPO-A10, which my installed price in 2004 was $3,500. IMO, a 4-post is good for storage but just takes up a lot of volume in the garage. Doing oil changes would be easy with a 4-post, but that's about it. A 2-post lift really doesn't get in the way once you get used to it being there, which takes just a few days. Counter that with it takes about 30 seconds to realize having a car lift to do car work is effing awesome. Just sayin'...

Having full open access to the undercarriage does not limit you to what type of repairs you can accomplish. For working on a 3-series, where you have to remove the exhaust for most driveline work, you need full open access. 2-posts are not preferred for long term storage since some people take issue with leaving the suspension unloaded, but I've never had an issue with it, and I've left cars on my lift for 2-weeks straight at a time. My bay is 18' x 26'.

But your issue is space limitations. Most 2-posts need a recommended minimum bay space of 12' x 24'. If you are limited to 21 feet across, using my lift as an example, the overall width is 11'6", so you could snug it up near one wall and park one car in between the columns and the other car adjacent to it. It'd be tight, and then you'd need to consider the parking talent of the person whom you may be sharing the garage with. And the preferred 2-post design is an asymmetric that rotates the columns inward, which allows for wider access to open the doors of the car to get in and out. If you go asymmetric then the location of the lift is about 8" forward of the lateral centerline of the space, meaning if you have a 24' deep bay, the center of the lift will be 12'8" from the entry wall of the garage and 11'4" from the back wall. For me I have no space issues since I don't park in my shop; I have a separate car port for covered parking. I do keep my farm tractor parked between the lift though.

So just digging around on Rotary's website, if you have the budget, an in-ground 2-post lift like their SL210-MP8 may be a better option for you. It's a 2-post lift that sits in the floor, so you can park over it. It has lifting pads that work perfectly for BMW's lifting blocks and it would give you all the open undercarriage access an above-ground 2-post lift would. The drawback is it is twice as expensive as an above-ground lift ($10K) and the installation costs would be far more costly as well $3K is my guess). You'd have to dig a hole for it and the pit for it would need to be concrete with a sump pump I'd guess. Just an idea since I'm not sure what your budget is for the new garage. If you are financing it, then an extra $8K wouldn't be that big of a monthly financial hit.

My advice is find a local automotive equipment supplier who sells lifts. I bought my lift from such a place in Charlottesville. Working with knowledgeable people is the best route you can take. Installing an above-ground 2-post lift is very easy, just locate the position of the lift in shop bay, then drill the concrete and erect the columns and bolt them to the floor. Run the electric. We had mine installed in about 2 hours. Rotary has a neat hydraulic power system called Shockwave, which is a 12VDC system running off a car battery, so the electric installation is nothing more than a 120V AC line to power a DC battery charger. Most lifts need 220VAC.

There are a lot of good choices for lifts: Bend Pack, Atlas, Challenger, and Rotary are the top four. They all offer competing products with one another.