If Detroit, the Motor City, can boast the Motown Sound, why can’t Nashville, Music City USA, have a car museum? Happily it does, and has since 2002 when Susan and Jeff Lane opened the Lane Motor Museum. Touting “Unique Cars from A to Z,” it has marques from the British ABC to German Zundapp and misses only a few in between, though most of them are not exactly unique, as in one-off.
Housed in a former Sunbeam bread bakery, their 40,000 square foot museum is big on eastern European marques, including some 13 Tatras, made in the former Czechoslovakia. Other Czech makes include Skoda, Aero and Jawa; Germans are represented by Auto Union, Goliath and Hanomag, as well as the renowned Trabant from east of The Wall, while the ABC’s fellow countrymen include a pair of BSA three-wheelers and the tiny Peel P50 and Trident, both made on the Isle of Man.
French dressing appears in the form of multitudinous Citroëns, a Panhard Dynamic with center-drive steering, and a Renault Dauphine and its electric clone, the Henney Kilowatt. Kilowatts were converted in the US by the makers of Eureka vacuum cleaners. Another electric was the Peugeot VLV, a World War II alternative-power vehicle.
There’s a generous contingent of Nissan products, most on loan from Nissan USA, which is headquartered nearby. The retro-looking Figaro is actually from 1991 and sold only in Japan, though the model has since become trendy in Britain.
From the USA come the three-wheel Davis, William Hewson’s one-off streamlined 1946 Rocket, and a McQuay-Norris Steamliner that Jeff and Susan drove in the 2005 Great American Race. Three of James V. Martin’s cars are present, the 1928 Aerodynamic, said to have been built for Billy Mitchell, and the 1932 Martinette (right) and 1950 Stationette. Stranger still is the Gasporter, an airport tanker built on Crosley running gear that is driven standing up. In 1947, designer Ben Gregory came up with a rear-engine coupe using front-wheel drive. This, too, is a one-off. Have you ever seen a Towne Shopper, one of the multitudinous postwar minicars? I hadn’t until I visited this museum.
Taking the term “self-propelled” to its limits are two aircraft-inspired machines, the 1932 Helicron from France and the “Wind Wagon,” a home-brew contraption built by the late Ted Jameson, uncle of racing driver-turned motor sports commentator Sam Posey.
To be sure, Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame, with the Grand Ole Opry the city’s major attraction, also has some cars: Elvis’s Gold Cadillac and the Pontiac Bonneville of Webb Pierce, the latter with an over-and-under trunk ornament and six-gun door handles. Perhaps more to the point is Hank Williams’ liquor cabinet. Country music is fun, but I’d rather spend my quality time at the Lane Motor Museum. The cars you see here are just the tip of the iceberg. The museum is open Thursday through Monday, from 10 to 5.
