Check the Corky Coker Official Blog regularly for updates!

Everyday is a good one in the south, but Monday was another special occasion on Chestnut Street. Dan Haugh discovered that special car(1915 Locomobile) owned by his wife’s grandfather had landed here at Coker Tire Company. He found the car’s pictures on our website and started the dialog with Jessica White about setting up a little reunion. The reunion turned into surprising his wife, as the car was the one they rode away in on their wedding day years ago. (more…)

We were happy to see Carson Newman College luminaries Dr. Randall O’Brien and wife Kay, Trustee Max Bahner and faculty Tim Norton wander into our shop on Monday. We enjoyed visiting with them while they toured our facilities here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. With two Cokers among Carson Newman alumni (Casey 2004 degrees in Interior Design and Retail, Cameron 2007 degree in Computer Information Systems) we figured lunch was on them! (more…)

Bill Smith,former executive director of the Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA)(17 years), and 2005 Car Hobby’s Person of the Year

Apparel associated with automobiles and motor sports have a knack for being pretty flashy to say the least. This little number from the 2009 SEMA Show is no exception, but take a look at the main image on the front! The ‘32 Deuce “Double Exposure” feature both Honest Charley Speed Shop and Coker Tire Company made the feature slot on this limited edition shirt for the show. How cool is that!???!

Special order? Not really, but the whitewalls that Matt and Carolyn Agosta (Steele Rubber Company) picked up were for a special enough car. Pretty special pickup too, as Matt and Carolyn enjoyed a personal tour from me while we visited. Carolyn’s father, Lynn Steele’s 1931 Cadillac has a special place in their family’s history and recent restoration called for nothing less than a new set of Coker Tires. Matt and Carolyn’s company builds weather stripping and and all sorts of rubber parts for vintage and modern automobiles. So it goes without saying that we had plenty in common to talk about while we waited on their flashy new white walls. Matt and Carolyn are great friends, and it was great to have them come to town!

Seems each day starts off with a song.  The appropriate tune leavin’ Winslow is clearly the Eagles hit about standin’ somewhere…

I broke Posie Protocol and hooked us up with an additional non-Posie planned stop at my buddy Rodney Rucker’s garage before we headed out of town.  Rodney is one of the craziest car guys I know.   He loves Movie cars, in fact he owns the original Great Leslie which was the big white touring car Tony Curtis drove in the 1963 movie The Great Race. Remember every time Tony Curtis smiled big his front tooth would sparkle?  Rodney also has the evil Professor Fate’s (from same movie) black scissor car complete with heat cone and retractable cannon in front.  He has some of the most outrageous big vehicles using WW2 tank motors, and supercharged crazy stuff you have ever seen. One year Rodney drove one of his super dooper super charged Peterbilts on the Great Race.  I think he told me that from coast to coast he spent something like $9600 bucks on fuel and that when it was only $1.50 a gallon!  And all you folks thought I was crazy! (more…)

“Amarillo by mornin” was a great country song by maybe George Strait? I know I am going to be hummin or singin it all day!  Remember it?

Wade and I snored each other awake early Thursday morning in Amarillo and bugged out on the rest of the crew to go find a Waffle House at 530 AM.  It’s our duty.  We have to!  Because… (I stole this from my sweetheart Theresa) we are eatin our way cross the USA! After wishing grandmother waitress “Becky” happy birthday and downin our rooster bullets, bacon, grits  n waffles we slipped back into the parking lot fed, full and unnoticed.  Apparently a couple of cars left early, early at 530 AM or so being correctly concerned about the report of snow in the mountains between Amarillo and Albuquerque. (more…)

Wednesday morning all of us PDDT pilgrims were anxious to head west toward Amarillo,  but because Posie said 930 AM start, we were all standing around outside the hotel like we were waiting for the start flag of the Gumball rally.  There was a speech about things like “plenty of time today” and “we should hang together on the road today” and then we were off like a bat outa H E double toothpicks…and the wrong way at that!  We fell for it because we hadn’t set our GPS.  I expected the little femine voice on the GPS to say “bout time you listened to me and not Posie”! (more…)

We started our PDDT Tuesday morning in Springfield, Missouri with a couple of bananas and a cup of coffee.  It had rained pretty hard all night long and was still coming down when we were called together by our illustrious potentate-Posie for a quick meeting to jump start our day.  After a wonderfully inspirational message, (insert tongue in cheek here) we set our GPS’s, cranked our flatheads and hit the road heading West.  It was funny that although we all set our GPS systems for quickest way, and were all going to the same place, ours took us the scenic route on old Route 66,..and we didn’t mind at all!  We saw some remnants of the coolest neon signs, old gas stations and motels.  Wade and I agree that it would not take too much effort to make any of these cool Route 66 towns into 1950’s Movie sets. (more…)

When you have a bunch of Hotrodders going anywhere in their hot rods the last thing any of them want to do is go slow.  So, keeping all the PDDT cars close together so no one gets lost is sort of funny.  Some one always get left at a redlight.  In order to combat this dilemma, Wade and I decided to get up earlier Monday to scoot to Wallyworld to purchase a GPS.   After bagging our direction doctor, we caught up with the Driven Dirty boys for a bowl of Oatmeal (I really ate 3 eggs, bacon and hashbrowns but tell my wife I ate healthy!).

We of course had to wait on somebody again but this time it was Scott Whitaker.  Since his 41 Packard Clipper crapped out last night, he had to hook up with his office to load up his Dynasport on a trailer to bring it to him and pickup the crapped out Clipper.  We finally got on the road to visit not one, not two, but three collections and shops before we were to head west toward Springfield. (more…)

Day One of the Driven Dirty Tour experience started with rooster bullets and coffee at the hotel.  The Coker guys who brung us North and for the meeting bugged out early and headed back to Corkyville.  Wade and I packed up, loaded up and were ready to go.  Too bad my new son in law forgot to put the side curtains in the truck.  I am absolutely sure he wants me to catch pneumonia or something.  Actually he and his guys in our Shop did a great job prepping the truck.  It sure was really really cold without side curtains.  Do you think I’ve made him feel bad enough yet?

We left the hotel promptly at the crack of nine under the illustrious leadership of Dutch Fenical aka Posie.   Our destination before heading west was the historical shop of master painter and pinstriper Don Boeke, more famously known as THE EGYPTIAN.  Now I am sure you are thinkin’ he is like some dark skinned Arabian-middle-eastern guy who just happens to like custom cars and hot rods,.. But no…you are wrong.  The Egyptian is the Egyptian because he was born in Egypt, Ohio.  But he has a cool place, wonderful cars and bikes and a cool old time hot rodder-esq body shop and pin stripe boutique.  His shop is an old sign and fixture manufacturing plant with close to 60,000 square feet of cars, trucks, ‘n junk.  Sorry, important stuff.   Because I was partly raised by my grandfather Pop Coker who came through the depression, I like the EGYPTIAN save everything.  He had lots of Crosleys, Corvettes, Cadillacs and Cruisers.  He lives at his shop which is really a cool eclectic grouping of a lifetime of collecting life experience, friends and vehicles.  Really cool stop. (more…)