John and Melissa Dunn visited the Coker companies last week to get the tour, say hello and visit a bit with EG (see EG’s blog at dragracetires.com) and me about the new IHRA Nitro Jam racing series. Kurt Oberholtzer from IHRA was in for the tour n meetings as well. John Dunn is clearly the leader in the lineup of nostalgia funny car drivers and his and Melissa’s “Dunn and Gone” Prostalgia funny car runs in the low six’s in the quarter at well over 200 mph. He is the king of delighting the IHRA crowds with his super long smoky burnouts! The Dunn and Gone car is a favorite every time it’s on the track.

Those big meats under the back of the Dunn and Gone Prostalgia Nitro Funny Car are M&H--he got 'em from us!

Okay,…okay! Why the bringing the knife to a gun fight line on this blog!?? Just to show I was prepared and had the better equipment just this one time over John Dunn! Okay, it wasn’t on the strip and we were just foolin around a bit but we thought it made a neat photo! His Mancini Racing Plymouth Duster featuring a 498ci TFX Hemi is clearly always prepared! Big gun I say, how bout you?! Here’s their link!…………………………….

We grabbed a quick photo before our drag racing friends hit the road.

Was great to be with John and Melissa before they headed back to Illinois….oh by the way…..Dunn and Gone is also very prepared on our M & H RACEMASTERS!

You can just about have a heat stroke mowing the lawn right now. It bumping 100 degrees every day, and has been for weeks. The Portacools in the shop are running wide open and you can barely find relief. We been hitting shows, fixin’ cars and squeezing in some rallying everywhere we can. Oh yeah, and we’re trying to sell cool tires to car folks too!

It’s easy to start to fade late in the summer. So much is going on and so much work needs to be done, but as the grass turns to a crispy-crunchy toast, take the time to clean your old car and drive it into town. The heart and soul of our hobby is seeing that old car at the gas pumps or driving through town. Those little passing moments make car people out of kids all the time. It never gets old for us around here because we love it, and if you love it half as much as we do, pass it on the young ones. 40 years down the road, you’ll be glad you did!

If you follow the blog, then you know that we had a catastrophic engine failure in our GR3 roadster pickup during the Ruff Neck Rally in Ponca City, Oklahoma back in April. We were able to finish the rally with another car, but the pickup made the trek back to TN on a trailer.

Fast forward to July and the pickup sat in the corner of the shop, waiting for its fresh Flathead to arrive. As soon as it showed up at the shop, Keith and Delton jumped on it and got it running within a day or two. During the truck’s down time, Keith also swapped out the Excelsior Comp V tires for a set of our brand new Excelsior Stahl Sport Radials. The tires look just like the old bias plies, but handle much better, especially for rallying.

John Phillips is a car guy from Texas and he has a thing for Reo’s. He planned a road trip through Chattanooga, TN and decided it was time for a fresh set of tires for his 1931 Reo Royale convertible. The car had Lester 6.00/6.50-18 whitewalls on it, and he decided to go with Firestone 7.00-18 whitewalls this time around. The car is simply gorgeous with its elegant front grille and headlight treatment, and it’s now ready for the road once again. Check out the pictures of his very cool (and very rare) machine!

from a power tour participant


Just wanted to drop a note to say hello and thanks again for the wonderful hospitality you guys showed us. Hanging out with everyone in the shop and meeting Corky was awesome and seeing all the great cars and bikes in the museum was a great kick-off to our Power Tour trip. Not to mention the “best parking spot”! We ended up getting some cool pics with the Magnuson’s and our cars nose to nose. And then the icing on the cake was a photo shoot and upcoming feature in Hot Rod with David Frieburger. It was an unbelievable trip for us! The car was so much better to drive after the new front tires were on and we made it back home with no issues. We ended up making 1350 total miles and cannot wait until next year!

I couldn’t find any of the pics on your site so if you know where they are on there let me know please. Thanks again man! And Please tell the rest of the crew we said so and hello from the Granny 5’s crew!

Jason Fiveash

We ran across a very cool story of hot rodding, and it’s actually a modern day scenario instead of old school stuff. The guy’s name is Will Davenport and he’s from Birmingham, Alabama. The following text is a great piece of writing about building an old hot rod and Will just happens to be using parts from Honest Charley Speed Shop and Coker Tire. Check out his adventures so far…we can’t wait to hear more about the buildup and see pictures of it!

“A couple of years ago I got a harebrained idea that I wanted to build a hotrod in the style of the 1950’s. This naturally leads to thinking of the ’32 roadster (unless you’re an American Graffiti fan, and then it’s a coupe), so I started buying magazines and “how-to” books to get an idea where to start. The heart of the ‘50s rod was a flathead engine, and I was fortunate in having a friend who gave me a ’52 flatty and transmission that had been in his father’s car. Mind you, they had sat in a barn since Vietnam, and I never would have thought you’d use a sledgehammer to disassemble an engine – the pistons were that frozen.

From that point, a road trip to Honest Charley’s in Chattanooga yielded a Pete & Jake’s ’32 frame, dropped front I-beam suspension, and a narrowed 9 inch rear. This next bit isn’t a marketing plug, but an honest statement – you will not find finer people on the planet to deal with than the guys at Honest Charley’s. Plus, if you go, it’s like the pilgrimage to Mecca for a car guy – parts, cars, car guys, and Corky Coker’s car collection. Anyway, when the suspension parts came in, I got the frame and 9 boxes on a pallet and thought “is that it”? It was, and I’m not kidding to say if you’ve got a set of socket wrenches, screwdrivers and a hammer, you can build a rolling ’32 chassis from Pete & Jake’s. Coker Tire supplied the ’40 style front wheels and rear Gennies, all wrapped in bias ply Firestone rubber. Running the big & little combo gave me a 5° rake – perfect for my plans.

I took the engine block to PSI in Fultondale, and if you’ve never been – GO. These are three retired guys who’ve been drag racing forever, and they have fun toys in that shop. Laying around were a built 409, 389 with 3 deuces, piles of small and big blocks, and more engine parts than you can shake a stick at. Plus lots of greasy old machining tools. Cool. And the guys are great just to hang out with. They’ve vatted the block, and fortunately everything was copacetic, so the boring and align honing have begun. They’re also replacing the ring gear on my flywheel, and polishing the holy grail of the engine – a ’50 Merc crank with a 4” stroke (yes, I’m building a stroker flatty). That part came from a great guy in California who’s built hotrods since the ‘50s. Once PSI is done, the block is coming home and I and the fellow who “donated” it will build the engine.

My thought is to get the frame and driveline buttoned up, and then head back to Chattanooga and drag home a Brookville Roadster steel body. I’ve already come up with a ’40 Ford column with the shifter, ’49 Merc gauges, bomber-style lap belts (I’m not using bomber seats – those look ridiculously uncomfortable), and a bunch of other small parts to make the car period-correct. The overall goal is to build a car that looks like what a guy would have done in his garage in 1952 – not a ratrod, just a cool old school hotrod. I’ve learned one thing about the dangers of hotrodding. Not long ago, I was standing in the barn with the ’56 Caddy on one side, and the ’29 Model A roadster on the other and thinking, ‘wonder how hard it would be to drop the Caddy engine in that thing….’” –Will Davenport

Chad Caldwell’s 1931 Auburn was awesome when it got here. It was drop-dead gorgeous when it left with a big ol’ set of Excelsior Stahl Sport Radials on 20″ custom rims built right here in our shop! That’s right! His old set of 17 inchers just didn’t do that big old speedster justice and after a few pow-wows we had a plan in place to get that car’s stance where it needed to be. Chad’s car is a beautiful rolling billboard for what a collector car should be…. ON THE ROAD!!!!

Yeah that’s plural! In the history of sports cars there are few names that conjur up such romantic visions of automotive glory as the Mercer Raceabout. We’re were so excited this morning we couldn’t stand it, and within minutes of opening up the shop everyone was outside to watch not one, but two Mercers roll off the trailer and into our lives! It’s an honor to be the caretakers of such wonderful pieces of car history, but mostly it’s just AWESOME to see these cars!

We didn’t have our rig set up at the Goodguys Nashville Nationals this year, but the show is just too close to home to pass up. It’s always a great mix of hot rods and muscle cars, and the swap meet is generally packed with good parts. This year, attendance appeared to be down slightly from last year, but that was to be expected with most folks’ apprehension concerning the massive flooding a couple of weeks ago. We saw lots of cars rolling on Coker tires and grabbed a few shots while we were there. Check it out!

David Kennedy rolled into the Nashville Nationals in this low slung Deuce roadster pickup, which sits on a set of Excelsior Comp V tires. The satin black paint scheme looks great with the deep red accents.

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My grandfather, Pop Coker had three boys who he passed the “old car disease” on to by blood. Dad’s the oldest, middle one is Bob, and the youngest was Bill. Bill died a few years ago. We miss him. This blog ain’t about Bill though. It’s about Uncle Bob. Many of my car guy friends know Uncle Bob. He’s crazy. But in a good way. You can find him at Hershey or Charlotte and coming up this summer you can find him at the Buick Club National Meet. He likes Buicks. In a big way.

He ended up with a really rare Buick. It is a 1954 “ONE of ONE” Landau special body car made specifically by Buick for the Autorama or something. It is really a special car. Here’s the video about the car:

The You tube video was done by Lamar Brown from Athens, GA. The older guy is my Uncle Bob. Am proud of him. He’s done good….and he’s a good guy…..even though he’s got Buick’s on the Brain!

From the road,

Corky