Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine Issue 215 | Page 11

Few automotive enthusiasts can forget
the stir that the GM Parade of Progress Futureliner truck made when it crossed the
auction block a number of years ago. But
that brightly painted, extra large rolling
museum wouldn’t have been quite the hit
it was had it not been for Corky Coker.
When the restorers of the Futureliner realized that they needed to find
rubber shoes for the behemoth, Chattanooga, Tennessee-based Coker
Tire was the obvious choice. The tires used on the Futureliner had to be
custom-made – like nearly everything else about the extraordinarily rare
vehicle – and nobody has the expertise in antique car rubber that Corky
Coker and Coker Tire has.
Known as the Indiana Jones of the automotive aftermarket, Joseph
“Corky” Coker travels the world seeking out vintage tire molds and
spreading the gospel of the collector car hobby.
Coker was able to deliver impossibly large 10:00-20 Wide Whitewall USRoyal GM Parade of Progress tires for the GM Futurliner truck.
Since this extremely rare vehicle is 33 feet long, eight feet wide, nearly
12 feet tall, and sits on an astounding 248-foot wheelbase, Coker Tire
was the only company with the ability to create period-correct wide
whitewalls for this massive and historic vehicle.
Coker didn’t gain his reputation and expertise overnight, of course.
After taking the reigns of the antique tire division of his father’s Chattanooga B.F. Goodrich tire dealership in 1974, the young Coker quickly
recognized a growing demand from collectors for vintage tires that were
no longer commercially available. Since the early 1970s, Coker Tire has
uncovered original tire molds and reproduced new ones to provide a
large array of specialty tires for most antique and collector cars.
In less than three decades, Coker turned a small division of his family tire dealership into the world’s largest supplier of collector vehicle
tires for automobiles, trucks and motorcycles.
With the antique tire division originally operating out of a 500
square foot space in the back of a retail tire store, Coker’s vintage tire
business has come a long way in the past 33 years. Today, the collector
tire business accounts for 95 percent of Coker’s business and the com-

Left: Nobody has helped keep the vintage auto industry
rolling like Corky Coker.
This page: Coker’s classic car passion extends beyond work into
his private collection.

pany’s headquarters alone occupies over 100,000
square feet of space in Chattanooga. Although he
didn’t recognize it in 1974, Coker’s passion for his
hobby and the preservation of historic automobiles
would go on to literally change the face of the automotive aftermarket industry.
In addition to his successful business, Coker
is a supporter of the collector car hobby and frequently speaks on behalf of car collectors, as well as
working with lobbies in Washington, D.C., against
“clunker” bills and other anti-collector car legislation. As one of the most active executives in the
automotive aftermarket industry, Coker was one of
the founders of the Automobile Restoration Market
Organization (ARMO), a council of the Specialty
Equipment Market Association (SEMA).

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