Vamos! Cars in Nashville

In which Sid and Doris find the car scene in a city famed for its music.

WARNING.  There are going to be LOTS of pictures in this post.

First stop today was a Caffeine and Chrome morning at Gateway Classics, which while advertised as in Nashville was 14 miles out in the boonies. We were there early so there was much more to see inside than in the car park. They have cars from $20,000 up to $100,000, some quite original and others retro modded (so old cars with new bigger engines). Right inside was a real old Ford Woody from 1950 with a cutey model Woody in the back.

Other Bonkers’ favourites include a Morris Minor with a Buick 3.5 V8, which is normal-ish in UK where a Rover V8 is much the same. The original Ford Thunderbird is the most expensive in the shop at $100,000, and very nice.

In Monterey there were lines of Ferraris. Next to the retro modded cars are at least 15 Corvettes of various vintages.

And so back into Nashville for the Lane Motor Museum, a way of displaying one man’s collection (if not all of it).  The museum is in a large converted bread factory, with high ceilings and tons of natural light.

The museum does not take itself too seriously, although it is very, very serious about creating and preserving its collection.  Here is a fine example (you may need to use the LightBox function to see the detail – hover over a picture and press the magnifying glass).

Each car has a full page of information for those hopelessly addicted information-readers such as S and D Bonkers, making for a somewhat protracted but immensely satisfying visit.

There is a gallery of microcars including BOTH models of Peel (sorry Joe) together with videos of Peter Lane driving them.

There is a gallery of bicycles, chosen to illustrate successful and unsuccessful developments in ideas about propulsion.

There is a gallery of land and water based vehicles driven by air propellors.  The picture of the canoe hasn’t come out very well (too much background clutter which the human eye filters out in real life) but if you look closely you will see a shiny wooden propellor and green engine mounted at head-height behind the dinky wicker seat.

There is a gallery of fabric-covered cars and a fabric-covered float plane described as “just plain scary when sitting on the water”.

We were promised on the web site that there would be a Vault Tour at 11:30, limited to only 30 people, tickets available only on a first-come-first-served basis.  Unsurprisingly, we arrived early enough to get tickets.

We descend the stairs into the lower level of the bread factory.  There were perhaps 150 cars upstairs and there are another 750 downstairs.

We see the Mercedes designed by Josef Ganz and Ferry Porsche – acknowledged to be the precursor to the VW Beetle.  The story has now been told in this documentary.

We see Charles Taylor’s almost-complete version of his gyro tractor – a project which Lanes are trying to complete.

We see a car designed to be narrow enough for Ladies to be able to get into it inside their houses, drive out of doors to the shops and back again.

We see a normal-looking Toyota that, much to Sid’s irritation, he does not recognise.  The dude giving the vault tour is very supportive of questions and allows Sid to poke around in the car.

We see many, many other cars.

And, of course, there is always room for a Mini.

Really, I don’t know why I am posting all these pictures.  After all, you are going to visit some day.

We tear ourselves reluctantly away, pausing only to look at one final extraordinary thing in the museum and something else extraordinary in the visitors’ car park.

PS For the hopelessly smitten, there is now an option to drive some of the Lanes collection yourself.  Sold out for 2021 but maybe a date for your diary in 2022…