Owner’s Love of Nostalgia Drives Antique Tire Firm : Cars: Corky Coker’s company is believed to be the largest seller of vintage wheels. Most of his customers are auto collectors.

Corky Coker appears to be all business as he sits behind his desk in a dark pin-striped suit, but his surroundings give him away.

An elegant Victrola, a large model airplane and a rash of colorful toy cars, trucks and steam shovels straight from the 1950s clutter the bookcase behind his padded leather chair.

A few feet away, a perfectly restored boy’s Western Flyer bike, complete with handlebar tassels, stands in the lobby.

Coker’s love for nostalgia carries through to his business. The company he runs, Coker Tire Co., is believed to be the world’s largest seller of antique tires.

“I enjoy what I do and I want everyone who’s involved with me to enjoy it,” Coker said. “It makes it a fun place to be.”

Need tires for a 1913 Model T Ford? A 1939 Rolls-Royce? How about a ’64 Pontiac GTO? You’d be surprised at the number of people who do, Coker says, and most of them come to him.

Coker Tire sells more than 100,000 vintage tires a year, many of them through distributorships in 27 countries.

Coker won’t disclose his sales figures except to say they increased 30% from 1989 to 1990. But with prices ranging from $44 to over $600 per tire, sales undoubtedly reach into the seven figures.

Most of Coker Tire’s customers are antique car collectors, people who like to restore vintage automobiles, be it a classic ’57 Chevy hardtop or something more exotic such as a 1917 Locomobile.

“In our normal daily activities, driving from home to work and the grocery store, we don’t see antique cars,” Coker said. “But they’re in the garages. They’re out there. And the car collector who’s restoring those cars has to put them on rubber.”

Coker understands the allure. His father, Harold Coker, began restoring Model Ts in the 1950s. The family now owns nearly 50 vintage autos, ranging from a 1912 Nyberg--the only car manufactured in Chattanooga--to a 1971 Buick muscle car.

“You get a favorite car and get it restored, and it becomes one of the family. You can’t turn it loose,” Coker said. “It’s a very fun hobby. It’s nostalgic. Everybody remembers something of their past related to a car.”

After Harold Coker opened a tire store in 1958, his reputation as a collector prompted fellow antique car buffs to come to him, and he’d scavenge for old tires on business trips. Eventually, the sideline turned into a full-fledged business; now it’s the company’s specialty.

The 36-year-old Corky Coker, who took over the vintage tire division in 1974, is vice president of Coker Tire. His father remains president, although he is semi-retired.

Coker Tire produces its own line of antique tires, but the heart of its business is licensing agreements with B.F. Goodrich, Firestone, Goodyear, Michelin and other companies to reproduce their discontinued tires. Most of these are manufactured in their original molds in plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania, then shipped to Chattanooga.

Since 1983, Coker Tire’s antique tire division has operated from a restored five-story brick building that was built in 1912 as the southern plant for the Chicago-based Nyberg Automobile Works and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

“The nostalgia aura here is kind of interesting,” Coker said.

Although automobile tires make up most of Coker Tire’s inventory--from spindly turn-of-the-century 28-inch tires to the big Firestone Wide Ovals of the 1960s--the company also produces tires for vintage bicycles, motor scooters and airplanes.

“I’ve got tires on airplanes in the Air Force Museum; I have them in the Smithsonian,” Coker said.

He’s also got them on screen. Coker Tire has provided authentic tires for dozens of period motion pictures, ranging from “All the Way Home” in 1963 to more recent films such as “Rainman,” “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Miller’s Crossing.”

Other customers have included former baseball slugger Reggie Jackson, country singers Hank Williams Jr. and Charlie Daniels, and Randy Owen of the country group Alabama.

“I supplied a set of Model T tires to Cassius Clay before he became Muhammad Ali. And that’s fun,” Coker said. “I enjoy saying down at the corner bar, drinking a beer, ‘I got a call from ZZ Top today, and we sold ZZ Top a set of tires for their Cadzilla.’

“It makes our business interesting. It gives it glamour. We’re not just old Joe the tire banger down at the corner who’ll change your recaps out and balance your tires.”