Coker Vintage Tire Insight - CHP Insider

There's good reason why his friends call him the Indiana Jones of the tire business. That's because until Corky Coker came along, collector car enthusiasts were in a real pickle.There's good reason why his friends call him the Indiana Jones of the tire business. That's because until Corky Coker came along, collector car enthusiasts were in a real pickle. With big-name tire manufacturers having long abandoned the vintage car market, enthusiasts had nowhere to go to get tires for their restoration projects. Corky recognized this void, and began expanding his company's antique tire division in 1974. After convincing large tire companies, such as Firestone and Michelin, that reproducing vintage tires was a good idea, Corky obtained the licensing rights necessary to start manufacturing them. Due to the global nature of the tire business, Corky literally traveled the world hunting down antique tire molds. The hard work paid off, and today Coker Tire has over 1,000 different part numbers, and has grown from a 500-square-foot shop into a 100,000-square-foot empire in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Interestingly, although Coker's reproduction tires resemble their old-school counterparts, they feature the latest in modern tire innovations. To find out more about what goes into designing everything from whitewalls for street rods to bias-plies for muscle cars, Corky was kind enough to let us pick his brain. During our talk, we even covered some of the most basic yet commonly misunderstood aspects of tire design as well.inline_mediumwraptextright26920669/tech/chassis/wheels_tires/1001chp_coker_vintage_tire_insight1001chp_02_z+cok er_vintage_tire_insight+tire_store.jpgTrue



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