What is a template exactly?
 

Alright, I am trying to learn to customize vBulletin and what not, and have an idea for a script I want to make but I need to figure some stuff out first.

1)What is a template exactly? From my limited experience it appears to be a single page that can be loaded over and over again with different information displayed on it (in the set areas of the page) from the database.

If I am correct, then I also have a more specific question. I am trying to make it so paying members can have a personals page to display their automobile pictures and modifications to the car. Could I just create a template and load each members data onto the template from the database?

1) yes, it is like conditional hTML stored in the database
2) yes, this would take a little more work (query, some coding) unless you did each manually

Have you taken a look at the vbgarage hack? It might already do what you are looking for. I am not sure if it can be limited to specific usergroups since I never used it.

The problem with vBGarage is that I am trying to give my users a sense of seperation from the forums. The vBGarage hack is very blatantly obvious that its running right off the forums. I would like to set something up on my homepage so members are not aware its connected with the forums aside from having the same UserName and what not.

like this to give you a general idea...
http://www.viperalley.com/viperinfo/index.php

template = A document or file having a preset format, used as a starting point for a particular application so that the format does not have to be recreated each time it is used

To create personal pages with vb, will take a lot of knowledge and experience. A faster turnaround would be to use an existing hack and modify it to fit your needs.

If you cannot modify vbgarage to fit your needs then you will have a much harder time creating this from scratch.