Hey, that’s not a bad thing, right? We’ve been working hard this year, and barely took the time to realize this is Coker Tire Company’s 55th anniversary! The company has come a long way from its early beginnings as a BFGoodrich tire dealership, as we are now the world’s leading supplier of tires and wheels for collector vehicles! Continue reading
We have just been informed that the Great Race television show will air on Speed Channel on Saturday, March 23, at 10:00am EST. It airs as a special episode of Hot Rod TV, and it’s going to be awesome! Coker Tire is a major sponsor of the event and it’s an extreme passion for all the folks involved in promoting the event, so seeing it on Speed will be great! Continue reading
What does that mean? It means Coker Tire Company took part in an event known simply as MPMC, which stands for Motorsports Parts Manufacturers Council. The event took place at the Embassy Suites in Santa Ana, California, and it is a “speed dating” style event that involves parts manufacturers setting up a small demonstration booth inside a hotel suite. Continue reading
The America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award is one of the most prestigious awards in the hot rod world, and it’s given away every year at the Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona, California. We were on hand for the Roadster Show, and speculated that John Mumford’s 1927 Ford Track-T roadster would take home the 8-foot tall trophy, and we were right! John’s roadster is top notch in every way, and it fully deserves the AMBR title. Since it wears a set of Firestone Deluxe Champion tires, we figured you might want to see more of it!
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Winter time for us southerners is quite tough! We struggle to make it through the winter without getting cabin fever, but Southern California hot rodders can get out all year long! In fact, one of the best hot rod and customs shows in the world happens in January, so it gave us a nice break from the cold. It’s called the Grand National Roadster Show, and it’s a hotbed for the coolest customs, wildest hot rods and baddest gassers in the country. The best part about it? A huge percentage of the cars roll on Coker Tire products! This year, we attended the event with a camera in hand and grabbed a bunch of great photos for you guys to enjoy!
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…goodness gracious it’s Governor Palin!
Well, its January and again I had the opportunity to skoot on out to Scottsdale for all the party around several great auction companies in Scottsdale. A friend of mine in the marketing/pr kinda business named Richie Fliegler lives in the Phoenix area. One time I was doing a radio interview with him at the Car Crazy radio booth there at Barrett Jackson with Alan Taylor. Richie admitted his addiction to the Barrett Jackson Auction. During his admission, he related that he had discovered “car-porn” ….which Richie related is highly addictive. Watch it all day in person, and when you finally have to go home or to your hotel….you watch it live on Speed or on your Tivo. Car Porn. I thought it was inventive.
This year before I got started at the auctions, I had the opportunity to meet with my friends on the Board of Directors of the Collector Foundation. We are interested in “bringing back shop class” and making sure that kids get fired up about the collector vehicle hobby. We fund programs around the nation that jump start at risk young people around building, restoring and fixing collector vehicles. We also wanna make sure that no skill is lost! Think about it. Some of these guys are older than dang it now, and are dying off. These guys need apprentices! The young people need a passion for a life’s work! To do this good work, we need good folks to help financially so we can fund these programs. Check it out at www.collectorfoundation.org
Lots of cool cars. Barrett-Jackson had a lot more classic and high end cars. Good job Gary, Craig and Steve and all the crew at Barrett Jackson. Glad to see you bring back in some of the hard core vintage stuff. We just picked a 56 210 Chevrolet two door on Barn Finds television, so it was nice to see this one bring 87,000 bucks. Son in law Manager of Honest Charley Garage said I should not expect that ours will be an 87k car, because we are spending about 30 to 35k worth of time on it. Our 56 Chevrolet resto-mod will reveal on television some time when Travel Channel puts the show on the air.
Several of us hopped over to the Biltmore on friday to see RM Auctions yank 7.4 million out the crowd for a SWB Ferrari from the sixties. Amazing such a GREAT BIG PRICE. Yowza! I also heard that Gooding had sold one as well the day before for the same money or maybe 100 grand more! Two Yowza’s!
Wade (Coker Group Executive VP and head LA wheel dude) and I stopped by to see my buddies Josephine and Drew Alcazar’s Russo and Steele Auction for a few hours yesterday too. Drew is always gracious and puts on quite a theatre of car stuff. His arena is kind of like a gladiator ring. If you get a chance, you gotta go to Russo and Steele. Great cars, and Great theatre. Ring man, Marty is THE best in the business! Wade, and Barry Meguiar and I were participating visually ringside when none other that the Governor herself came in the ring riding shot gun in a Shelby Cobra. Yep…. Todd’s wife……the former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. Now I know that I like her. She hunts, shoots guns, believes in smaller government and is a CAR GIRL!
From the road,
Corky
Some people might call it an addiction, but I love finding old neon signs! If you’ve ever visited our place here in Chattanooga, Tennessee (by the way, we have free tours Monday through Friday at 10am and 2pm) you’ve probably seen a few of my signs. I’ve bought some from the ‘Pickers, and I’ve bought a bunch of other ones, too! In our museum, we have a nice collection of signs, but I wanted a big one, so I picked this one up! This week, my boys installed it on one of our semi-permenant trailers at the loading dock. Check it out…it’s huge!
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A couple weeks ago, our cohorts across the street at Honest Charley alerted us of a very cool project that we might want to document. So, we did just that and the car is now complete. It’s a 1980 Fiat 131 Abarth tribute car, and it has lots of cool parts on it. The wide fender flares and paint scheme are in-your-face aggressive, and super wide Michelin tires are a perfect fit.
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We often get opportunities to see great automobiles, but anytime a Packard pulls into the parking lot, we take notice. This one in particular caught our attention because it has a set of our tires and wheels on it! George Hubbert is the proud owner and drove it up from Duluth, Georgia to have a couple of new tires installed on the car. While he was here in Chattanooga, we took the opportunity to take pictures of his car and he even let us take it for a spin around the block.
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Local hot rodder, Lee Schmidt came by the office this week in his beautiful ’32 Ford roadster, so we didn’t hesitate to ask for a closer look and a ride around the block. Thanks to a tasteful mix of components, Lee’s roadster sits just right and has a super clean and traditional appearance. A set of our Firestone Dirt Track tires and Hot Rod Wire wheels sets it off perfectly!
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