TT 412: Lane Motor Museum

Nashville photos

Jun 30, 2024

The city of Nashville is generally associated with Americana, but the Lane Motor Museum boasts

….The largest European automotive collection in the U.S. The vehicles date from the early 1900s all the way up to modern day and feature a varied collection of microcars, amphibious vehicles, military vehicles, alternative fuel vehicles, prototypes, one-of-a-kind vehicles and motorcycles.

I was frankly astonished to walk in and be surrounded by so many types of Citroën, including a 1952 “two-headed”Citroën 2CV. Every which way but loose.

Jeff Lane has a special interest in the Tatra brand.

From Wikipedia:

Among Western collectors, Tatra automobiles remain largely unknown. The largest display of Tatra vehicles in the United States is at the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. The museum's eclectic automobile collection contains 12 Tatra models, including a T-613 ambulance. When talk show host and car collector Jay Leno visited the museum, the founder picked him up in a 1947 Tatra 87, prompting Leno to purchase one himself. Leno soon became an advocate for the brand.

The Tatra is a good-looking item, you’ve seen them in a few movie or documentary moments from behind the Iron Curtain —

— and a bumper sticker on the 1950 T-600 Tatraplan sums up the museum’s aesthetic pretty well: “Why be normal?”

The headliners are mid-century esoteric prototypes and one-offs proclaiming the new space age. Many were made by a lone visionary in a garage somewhere.

Fascination by Paul Lewis:

Future by Sigvard Berggren:

The great emperor of this idiom is the 1933 Dymaxion by Buckminster Fuller. Lane has replica.

I joked to Darcy James Argue (a major Fuller fan) that he would have trouble driving a Dymaxion around Brooklyn, but that it might be feasible in Frankfurt. (DJA is taking over the Frankfurt Radio Big Band from Jim McNeely.)

My own automotive tastes are comparatively conservative, and the only two items I felt like taking for a test ride were German Auto Unions from 1958 (yellow) and 1962 (reddish-brown).