What the hell am I looking at? A Day at the Lane Motor Museum

Call me jaded, but these days I’m starting to get to a point where I’ve seen a ton of really rare and valuable cars. This is a pretty good problem in life to have. Ferrari 250 GTO and 250 Testarossa? Sure, been there done that. Bugatti Chiron? Old news, saw it a while ago. Prototypes, concept cars, one-offs… Check, check, and check. I know there’s a ton out there I have yet to see, but sometimes you need a good reminder of just how true that statement is. If you’re like me and want to check out something besides your average muscle car and hot rod show, head down to Nashville sometime and prepare to be amazed.

Just outside of town is a building that once housed a large bakery. It was granted a new life thanks to the obsessive collecting of Jeff Lane, a man who was bit by the car collecting bug at a young age. After his collection repeatedly outgrew the storage spaces he was utilizing, it was suggested to him to open up a museum. That was probably for the best, as he now has about 450 cars under his care, and has actually began to store some off-site from the museum. When you’re this into the hobby, the obvious course of action is to continue buying until you outgrow an entire factory.

As you probably have guessed by now, the collection focuses on anything that might be considered rare, innovative, or just downright strange. A good portion of the cars are European, including the largest collection of Tatras in the U.S. Tatra still exists as a manufacturer of trucks, but their passenger cars went out of production in ’99. They never really had much success outside of their native Czechoslovakia, despite sporting some gorgeous styling and a highly innovative rear-mounted V-8 engine setup.

Just for the fun of it, let’s list a few brands you can find under the roof of the museum: ACOMA, Adler, Deutsch-Bonnet, DKW Auto Union, Duport… I could continue, but the point is I haven’t even heard of half these brands, let alone seen an example in person.

The kicker?

The museum’s goal is to keep every one of these cars in operating condition, with an on-site restoration crew and team of mechanics to accomplish this goal. Even a giant LARC amphibious landing craft still gets around from time to time. At any point, there are about 150 cars on display in the main gallery of the museum, with a further 250-300 in the basement. For a little extra cash, you can receive a guided tour of the basement collection to see what everybody else is missing out on. I can’t recommend this highly enough.

Let’s take a look at a few of my favorites, starting with this Nissan GT-R LM Nismo race car. It’s the most modern competition machine in the place, having been retired in 2015. What sets it apart is a truly weird drivetrain layout: a front-engine, front-wheel drive setup, with the option of diverting some power to the rear wheels if needed. 14-inch-wide tires handle the power and steering up front, with the rear tires only being 9 inches wide. It was a miserable failure in competition, but will definitely be remembered.

As a fan of Jeremy Clarkson-era Top Gear, it would be a massive oversight on my part not to include a Reliant in this article. According to the museum staff, they really do tip over with alarming ease.

Honda’s pint-size K-car roadsters, the Honda Beat and it’s S660 spiritual successor, were both on display, alongside a number of other rare JDM cars you’re unlikely to see anywhere else in the States. These roadsters shrink down the traditional mid-engine supercar layout to an extreme.

Group B rallying produced some of the most hardcore and dangerous racing cars in the history of the sport. Much like what happened to Group C endurance cars, the speeds were just too much to keep the racing safe. Group B rally cars were beginning to approach Formula 1 levels of performance. Pair this with the fact that fans like to jump out in front of the cars to snap a picture, and you have a recipe for disaster. This car is an MG Metro 6R4, and museum staff refers to it as “the car that tries to kill you”. We saw this car in the basement storage area, where the tour guide passed on stories of mechanics finding fingers in the bodywork during races from fans who just didn’t get out of the way in time. No wonder the series was shut down.

Back to cars that don’t typically maim and disfigure bystanders: here’s a 1965 Matra Djet, one of about 1,500 or so built. The styling of this car is pretty typical of other small French sports cars of the period; I initially mistook it for an Alpine. This was also tucked out of display in the basement.

The massive lumps on the front of this Citroen Traction Avant were the result of wartime desperation in German-occupied France. With gasoline in high demand, conversions to run the car on coal were developed. The containers on the fenders were to be loaded with coal, which generated methane gas when burned. Far from a perfect solution, as there was only enough capacity to run the car for about thirty miles, but it was better than nothing.

While we’re on the topic of strange Citroens, check out this Frankenstein’s monster-esque Citroen 2CV. The standard 2CV was France’s people’s car to mobilize the countryside, occupying the same niche as the VW Beetle. An incident by a French fire department resulting in one of their cars getting trapped on a narrow mountain road resulted in this development. They were unable to turn the car around, which led to the idea of a 2CV you could control and steer in either direction.

A number of bizarre early streamliners is in the collection as well, including this replica of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion from 1933. One of the three cars originally built survives to this day, and is also on display in a museum. Ford’s 221 flathead V-8 provides the power for this spacious and futuristic people hauler.

This wood-bodied classic may be the craziest car in the entire collection. It’s a 1932 Helicron, the only one ever built. Despite the massive open prop which provides forward motion, this thing actually is registered for road use. With prop power and rear-wheel steering, it must take a lot of getting used to as a driver. It was stored in a barn in France for over 60 years, and was almost lost. Luckily somebody pulled it out of its resting place in 2000, and brought it back to like-new condition.

So even after years of going to 15 or so shows a season, there is more than enough of the unknown out there to keep me really, really busy. If you ever want to be as confused as I was, head down to Nashville and check it out for yourself! The museum staff were very friendly and knowledgeable, and it’s a great town for a weekend away.

For more of my adventures, check out fromcruise-instoconcours.tumblr.com for daily updates. And of course, stay tuned to Car Show Safari, and get out to some shows!

Photos courtesy of Chris Barner