Here at Coker Tire, we’re known for (you guessed it) our tires. However, many folks are unaware that we also build wheels for all sorts of applications, from standard Model A wheels to one-off rims. Known as Stanweld, the rim shop is set up to do many different styles and diameters, even oddball rims like the ones for Alan Woolf’s American Underslung. They measure 32 inches in diameter, so finding replacements is not an option, unless you call Coker.

Coker's rim shop, Stanweld can build many styles of wheels, from these 10-inch wheels for micro cars to massive 32-inchers for Alan's American.

Machinist, J.D. Scott built these massive lock-ring rims, felloe bands and lug hardware in house and Alan was certainly pleased with the result. Here’s what Alan has to say about his project:

The car is a 1914 American Underslung Type 644 four passenger touring. The engine is a six cylinder T head with a displacement of 572 cubic inches. American Motors Company was in business from 1906-1914. During that time they built approximately 4500 cars. The company was located in Indianapolis, Indiana. The American Underslung cars are unique because of the arrangement of the frame under the axles. This gives the car a low porfile especially compared to the typical cars of the teen era. Most of the Americans also used very large wheels and in this case they used a 32 inch wheel and tire. The only other production car that used a larger wheel was the Oldsmobile Limited. They used a 33 inch wheel and tire.

Alan Woolf's 1914 American Underslung Project

Unfortunately I don’t have any good pictures of it together because when I got it was literally in pieces. Even though it is not obvious in the picture I do have 90% of the car. Right now it is a big jigsaw puzzle scattered around the shop.

Stanweld built the lock-ring style rims, the felloe bands as well as the mounting hardware.

Mounting hardware for Alan's American rims.

That's Alan on the left, and machinist J.D. Scott on the right posing with new rims.

So there you have it–A happy customer with a cool project that is sure to turn heads when it’s finished.

Coker Tire has a brand new catalog for 2010 and, it’s pretty awesome if we do say so ourselves. A heavily chopped and channeled Model A sedan landed on the cover, and it has the right look with a set of big-n-little Firestone wide whites. The red wires are easy on the eyes, too! If you haven’t already picked up a copy, make sure you do, because there’s lots of new photos, new products and all sorts of cool stuff inside. You’ll also find all of the sizes, specs and prices on the new Excelsior Stahl Sport Radial, and plenty more in the full color 72-page catalog. The catalogs are free, so don’t be bashful–grab a few for your buddies, too.

John and Paulette Lozier from Gorham, New Hampshire.

We have guests in and out of the showroom all the time, but two folks walked in this week that have a significant relation to the 1909 Lozier, one of the rarest and most valuable artifacts at the Coker facility. John and Paulette Lozier are the grandchildren of Henry Lozier, founder of the Lozier Motor Company, and came down from Gorham, New Hampshire. They knew Corky owned a Lozier, but didn’t expect it to be the first thing they saw when they walked through the door. Naturally, they were excited and were pleased to see the car in such fine shape.

The premier indoor car show of the year is undoubtedly the Grand National Roadster Show, held in Pomona, California. Hundreds of immaculate hot rods and customs fill the Pomona Fairplex. America’s Most Beautiful Roadster is crowned at GNRS but there are other prestigious awards to be had. Countless entries roll on Coker tires, so it’s great to be so widely represented at such an incredible event.

For loyal Coker Tire customer Bo Huff, this year’s GNRS proved to be a great one, as he returned to Utah with a trophy for Best Radical Truck Custom. His ‘57 Ford Ranchero is nothing short of amazing with its reworked top, Air Ride suspension and of course, wide white radials and custom steel wheels from Coker Tire. Rounded corners, deeply tunneled headlights and tons of other body modifications are covered in a slick coating of black with white scallops. Bo’s son Junior masked off the flames and then pinstriped the car from front to back.

A killer interior by Megan Prater and Doug Thorson fits the bill, and its complemented by a narrowed ‘59 Impala dash, fit with Haneline gauges. The engine is a Ford 292ci Y-block which breathes through a pair of lake pipes. We liked his Ranchero so much, we thought it would be a good idea to show it to you guys, too. Yet another happy customer with a very cool car.

Jim Hildebrand’s wife Connie had a plan. Not quite a ninja-stealth plan, but a good plan to surprise her sweetie with an early Valentine’s Day present. She’d plotted to have the Ringgold Middle School Chorus, under the direction of  Jané Ellis and David Kammerdiener, deliver a singing-love-gram to Jim at work. Im pretty sure everyone one in the company sniffed it out but Jim. It didn’t help that they were a half hour late, risking exposing the master plot to embarass/surprise Jim. He even came down to investigate at one point, convinced he’d seen his wife’s car in the lot from his window(we convinced him otherwise and sent him on his way). Connie hid in the bushes until they arrived and set up the angelic chevron to deliver the show to a surprised Jim. They sounded great and half the company sneaked down to spy on them(good luck keeping a secret in this joint!).

Happy Valentines Day to Jim and Connie and all of you too! (more…)

The Coker Tire museum continues to grow, and we don’t plan to slow down any time soon. Why would we stop when it’s so much fun to dig up these pieces of automotive history? New additions are quite common, and this very rare Pierce motorcycle is one of the most recent artifacts to enter the facility. And when we say rare, we mean it. There aren’t many of these Pierce motorcycles left, and the interesting design is definitely worth a quick history lesson.

You may have heard of the Pierce Great Arrow Motor Car Company, founded by George Pierce, but lots of folks don’t know that he also founded the Pierce Cycle Company. George’s son, Percy played a large role in the motorcycle business and developed a unique motorcycle. With a steep price tag, compared to other cycles of the time, Pierce didn’t sell many units, which is one of the factors in the cycle company’s bankruptcy in 1914.

The new addition to the Coker museum is a 1910 Pierce Four, which features an inline T-head four cylinder engine coming in at 696cc. It produced 7 horsepower and sends power to the rear wheel with a multi-disc clutch system and a two-speed transmission. The most interesting aspect to the Pierce motorcycle is its frame, which is made of 18-gauge steel and measures 3.5 inches in diameter. The Keystone system was applied in the design, which means the engine acts as part of the frame structure. The frame tubes are copper plated on the inside to prevent corrosion, as the tubes actually double as the gas and oil tanks. The top tube holds seven quarts of gasoline and the down tube holds five pints of oil. Is that cool or what?

Class is over, so get back to work on your project car or motorcycle. Spring time is just around the corner, so you don’t want to miss out on any opportunities to get out and drive!

If you’ve been around the Tennessee Valley for long, you know the weather can be anything but predictable. Last Friday, we were hit hard with snow and the folks with window offices or cubicles had the luxury of watching the snow accumulate on the cars, roads and grass surrounding the Coker Tire headquarters in Chattanooga.

The phones don’t stop ringing just because there’s snow on the ground, so the Coker employees were in for the long haul. When it was time to head home on Friday, short drives turned into hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic, but everyone made it home safely. The snow is gone, but we’re still here answering questions, selling tires and having fun!

Our founder, Harold Coker, turned 80 years old on Christmas Eve.   Don’t hardly sound fair to have one’s birthday the very day before Christmas!    I can imagine when he was a kid, he probably got all of his birthday presents wrapped in Christmas paper.   Dad tells the story that when he was first married that he and Mom were so poor that he got a very much needed pair of dress shoes one at a time!   You guessed it!   One for his birthday, and one for Christmas!       Well, this year we had a big surprise party for Dad and a bunch of family and friends came.   I think that Mom fooled him, but heck…when I get to be 80 I will probably be able to hide my own Easter eggs!   My sister put together a memory book so everyone could write something in it.   I wrote this poem about my Dad, Harold Coker turning Eighty:

Eighty

He just turned eighty so i hear
and here’s a little rhyme
about our Dad, who’s probably sad
he’s running out of time.

But who’s to say we know our day
cause no one knows the clock
the good Lord keeps, before our sleep
and on Heaven’s door we’ll knock.

No use to fret or even cry
its all part of the plan
we live, we love, and even die
but hopefully grow our clan.

First of three from Mom and Pop
came Harold with his brothers
the tallest sure, more hair than Pop
but smart just like the others.

He met his girl in Athens town
a daughter of Doc Thomas
They courted, spooned and surely swooned
before their marriage promise.

He joined the Guard, and began to work
for Pinky List each day
to learn the biz of selling tires
so he could make his way.

Along came one to him and Lill
a son in fifty four
but they weren’t through
another two for them to so adore.

The next came soon to him and her
in fifty six I think
It was a girl, her name was Chris
but not enough he’d wink.

Another son was born to them
September fifty nine
And then enough he said to Lill
They’re family was devine.

He started his own in fifty eight
not kids but company
next door to Pink but soon he
moved it South in Tennessee.

He moved his Lill and kids to boot
to Chattanooga town
and thrive he did a sellin tires
to everyone around.

He bought a farm for kids and cars
and thought he had arrived.
His kids grew up and then moved out
Good Lord he had survived.

He got involved to rock the vote
because he had been moved
to be involved in politics
His town must be improved.

Was Eighty Eight he ran for House
against the witch he lost
but nevermind his head was high
no matter how high the cost.

Soon kids had kids for cousins camp
to the farm they all would come
to play and play with Gram all day
until they all were numb.

Well time has passed, the kids are gray
were all are now old and farty
We love you much and thank you too
cause its sure been quite a party

Corky

This year we celebrated the first anniversary of our 50th Coker Tire Christmas party (that’s 51 for the math challenged!).   Now I can’t say that I’ve been at every single one of those parties, heck, I’m only errr uh….29….ok… 31!  Actually I was away at college some too so I did miss a couple.    Back about many, many years ago my parents, Harold & Lill Coker, would have the employee’s and their families over to our house for a Christmas dinner.  My mom would read the children the story of Jesus’ birth explaining the true meaning of Christmas.

We would all have good ole home-made food that my Momma cooked.  Granted, back then when my Dad started with just him and a helper and maybe another guy or two it might have been a total of 12 people including children, but I remember it as great fun with all of us gathered in our farm house to celebrate Christmas together. Since those early company Christmas parties in the living room days, our numbers have certainly grown larger, and the most important part is there were more kids!  Our Christmas party got bigger so we moved it into the barn at Coker Farm which would have tires, horses, cows and of course at one time or another it also had tires in it of course!  This was our third Christmas in our headquarters complex Car Museum and we all feel just as blessed as ever, especially me.

Check out the picture of all the kids with jolly old St Nick! (Here’s also a link to all the other pictures)  I think ole Santa even had a great time with all of our kids!    We might not now always have story time read by my mom, but there is always a prayer before we have our Christmas dinner thanking the Lord for all of our blessings, especially sending His Son which I know to be the real reason for the season!

We thought we were going to have a big dilemma this year!   You see since Santa ALWAYS shows up for our Christmas party, we knew we had a problem because the roll up garage door had been temporarily replaced with a double walk in door which was fabricated by the Honest Charley Garage guys so we can put it in and remove it.   This limited the width of the Santa delivery vehicle to the width of two regular 36 inch doors.   Santa figured it out though and arrived in full form riding in one of my collector bikes in the sidecar!    The motorcycle and sidecar fit through the double doors perfectly and Santa even squeezed into the sidecar easily.   He told me that if he could squeeze down all those skinny chimney’s all those Yankees have up North, he could fit in that sidecar!

I know I am posting this after Christmas, so sorry for being late with it.   Just know that we celebrate it right.  It’s about giving…not receiving, and the kids, and eatin big, and don’t forget the real reason for the season!

HAROLD AND LILL COKER HELP CELEBRATE THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY FOR THE CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO

On December 1st, the Chattanooga Choo Choo celebrated its 100th anniversary, and a sizable crowd of people joined in on the festivities. Two of the folks within the crowd were Harold and Lill Coker, all dressed up in vintage attire. Everyone gathered to hear the various speakers, which included gubernatorial candidate Zach Wamp. Other notables on hand for the ceremony were Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield and Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey, so it was a full house of well-known Chattanoogans.

Each person that entered the Choo Choo celebration passed by a 1903 Columbus electric car, owned by Harold Coker. The car is a very rare machine, but electric cars were fairly common in the early 1900’s. Up until 1912, gasoline-powered cars did not feature an electric starter, and it kept most women out of the driver’s seat, as these cars proved to be very difficult to crank. The electric cars were known as ladies’ cars because most men bought these for their wives, so the women could get around town without a great deal of effort.

The Columbus is an 84-volt car and it’s completely silent as it goes down the road, according to Harold. He purchased the Columbus from Wayne McKinley, a retired Chevrolet dealer from O’Fallon, Illinois. The car was restored quite a few years ago but overall, it’s holding up pretty well for its age. Harold parked the Columbus at the front door of the Choo Choo, as this would have been a common sight when the station opened its doors on December 1st, 1909.

The Choo Choo was first called Terminal Station, and Donn Barber, a graduate of Paris’ Beaux Art Institute, designed it. And if you can believe this, Terminal Station cost $1.5 million dollars to construct at a time when the average U.S. worker brought home less than $500 a year! So, to say this structure was a grand addition to downtown Chattanooga is a huge understatement. After its completion, Terminal Station was a vital factor in the city’s development, as it was common to see fifty or more passenger trains arrive and depart every day. However, the ‘40s and ‘50s weren’t kind to the Station as automobile and airplane travel took over. In the early ‘60s only a few trains passed through each day and by August 11, 1970, Terminal Station was vacated and boarded up.

Fortunately, a group of local investors purchased Terminal Station 1972, saving it from demolition. One year later, the station was reopened as the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hilton and Entertainment Complex, and featured authentic sleeper cars, which had been converted into guest rooms. Today, the Choo Choo is a member of the Historic Hotels of America and it will continue to be a landmark in Chattanooga for centuries to come. Harold and Lill Coker had a great time in their era-correct attire, and helped celebrate the anniversary of the Chattanooga Choo Choo in fine fashion.