Monday in Rogers, Arkansas started with a steady rain. I have been rallying for many years and have always rallyed in an open car. Our new 32 Ford Roadster pickup has a wonderful new Rodtop which performed beautifully all day. Greg Cunningham and I stayed perfectly dry all morning during the constant rain.

We rallyed thru lots of small town Arkansas eventually lunch stopping in Van Buren. It is a really cool Main street kind of town straight out of the Victorian period. I love old brick buildings and this town was full of them!

We finished the day without rain and it sure was nice being dry. Did I mention the cool Rod Top on GR3?

We finished in 7th place with a 17 seconds which was pretty darn good.

Day/Stage 3 started with lots of sunshine so we took off our top and plastered on the sunscreen. Visibility for signs is so much better if there is no top at all.

There were 36 pages of instructions which took us through Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas. We had lunch in Joplin, Missouri in a restored building in downtown.

The afternoon started out with a bang and a tingle tingle and a glass crash when our headlamp ring and lense fell off on one of the rough roads.

We finished with a 14 and 10th place. The deal is to continue to be consistant and turn in a great score and one can rocket to the top!

We’ll see!

From the road,

Corky

For Pictures of the entire GR3 build, visit the gallery !

Code name GR 3 is the new Honest/Coker 32 Ford roadster pick up, and it was just finished Saturday morning by Greg Cunningham, Mike Goodman, Delton and Jim Scott, Keith Brown and Andrew Givens. David Turner came to touch up clean up his fine “bare metal paint job”. The Kyle Wilson upholstered seats are really fine too! We loaded our unproven, just finished GR3 in the Featherlite gooseneck and headed west to Rogers, Arkansas. Our 700 mile transit got us in to Rogers, Arkansas about midnight. Sunday morning saw great sunshine and lots of Great Race friends,…only this is the VCRA which is the Vintage Car Rally Association started by Rex Gardner and others. It is great to see old friends and make new ones. A number of the Great Race grand champions are here. Gary and Scott Kuck,Teeter and McKone, Bobby Hadsky and G R Pike, Reeder and Stone and of course my new navigator, Greg Cunningham. The Rally is organized well and spirits are high to have a great time!

Our new truck did very well today. Original 32 Ford steering sector now appears to be fine after Honest Mike Goodman expert adjustments. GR3 appeared to be the talk of the rally. All seem to like the stance, the bare metal, the extended cab and of course the tires as we all know that it is “all about the tires” !!!!

Team Mom, Ms Theresa saved our patookskas with our forgotten essentials ….as she says it…”Mom’s the bomb!”

Greg and I rallied well together. This is the first time I have rallied with someone other than Theresa in a long while. Greg does great, but I did miss getting to kiss the navigator when we get a good score though! Oh yeah, we had a 4, 3, 1, and a 1 for an age factored 6 second day to place 9 out of about 60 cars. Greg and I both feel good about the day since it was our very first time rallying together not to mention the very first time GR3 was on the road.

We know where 3 seconds of the 6 came from so, here we go! 5 days of rallying in the Hemmings VCRA rally here in Arkansas!

Until later!

From the road,

Corky

For Pictures of the entire build visit the gallery !

(June 19, 2008) a fleet of slick full-size Chevrolets invade the Coker Tire headquarters in Chattanooga,TN. The club consists of only 1965 and 1966 Chevy big cars and left quite an “impression” on the show field, while they toured and visited our headquarters. Super sports and rare caprices were among this one of a kind tour. Visit our photo gallery for more highlights from this cool tour.

Casey Coker and Tony Thacker chat about the recent Hot Rod Reunion tour, the late Wally Parks and Tony’s visit to Coker Tire headquarters.

Tony Thacker is the Executive Director of the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum. Before joining the Museum, Thacker was the marketing vice president for So-Cal Speed Shop. He also worked for seven years at the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) and was the first editor of Performance Aftermarket magazine, now called SEMA News. He has written more than a dozen books on hot rods.

HotRodHotline.com has posted a nice article about the Coker Tire and Honest Charley Exhibits at the NHRA Museum in Pomona, California.
Swing by and check out the press on this cool site!