060523 Lane Motor Museum, Nashville, TN

On June 5th, 2023 m’lady and I woke up in a field in southern Tennessee.  We’d spent the last four days seeing King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard at The Caverns and the time had come for us to pack up our tent and head to Nashville.  

When I unzipped the flap and poked my head outside I noticed that our tenting neighbours were already gone.  As a matter of fact, most of the sites in the small campground were similarly empty.  We weren’t in such a hurry.  As we puttered around the breakfast burrito guy walked by yelling “Just two burritos left!”  We grabbed them both for just $10 (he had been selling them all weekend for $12 each).  I mentioned that I wish he had brought coffees with him and whattya know, a short time later he came back around armed with two cups of steaming java, which he gave to us for free!

We got everything squared away and drove ninety minutes to Nashville, where we went straight to the subject of today’s missive, the Lane Motor Museum.  Now, if you’ve read these ticket stories with any regularity you probably already know that despite being a mechanical ignoramus I rarely miss an opportunity to visit a car museum.  I come from a car family so the love of chrome and spinning tires is just simply in my blood.  I can’t shake it and I don’t want to.

And though the Lane Motor Museum wasn’t the largest or most impressive automotive collection I’ve had the pleasure of poring through, it was very unique and very good.  Especially unique.

They didn’t have many American cars on the floor; instead the collection focussed mostly on smaller cars – lots of Fiat’s, Mini’s, three-wheelers, and even a two-wheeled car outfitted with a self-balancing gyroscope – and especially hand-made one-off models.  My favourite thing in the room was a beautifully oblong Futura Waimea station wagon/van hybrid monstrosity with a clunky, chunky late-’50’s stying that somehow looked simultaneously modern and antique.  So, so awesome.

We just happened to be there when one of the employees decided to demonstrate a couple of the more curious vehicles.  First he garnered attention by driving a tiny one-seat electric three-wheeled personal vehicle around and around the museum’s spacious showroom floor.  Once he had gathered a sizeable crowd he drew our attention to a 1932 one-of-a-kind propeller-driven Helicron that had sat in a barn in France for over sixty years before being discovered twenty years ago and immaculately restored.  The wooden-bodied sportster had been outfitted with a Citroën engine and it sported a very conspicuous four-foot propeller protruding from the front, which was connected directly to the crankshaft.  And man, when he started it up that car was so unbelievably loud it was almost absurd, and it sure was windy!  I mean it was earth-shattering, much like standing next to an old bi-plane, I’d imagine.  There was certainly no way one could enjoy a nice relaxing drive through the countryside in the thing.

What a crazy thing to see.

After the museum we went to the wrong Comfort Inn before being redirected to the correct location, which was much more ghetto and one that we had stayed in several times before.  As soon as we checked in I had a long hot shower and it felt good.  Eventually we went to dinner at a fancy restaurant m’lady had scoped online called HUSK.  The food was really good – I had chicken and beans while she opted for the beef medallions – and we shared a delicious five-vegetable plate laden with crispy carrots, shiitake biscuits in blue sauce, yams, grits, and something else that I’m forgetting.  

After dinner we were both so stuffed it was all we could do to drag ourselves up and down Music City’s famous strip a couple fo times before finally popping into Layla’s for a beer and a few songs, mostly because we felt obliged to.  The band we happened upon was fine but not at all showy; I guess it was still too early for the serious crackerjack players to be out.  Regardless, we wore both too full of good food and too tired from good times to do it up proper so after a couple of Buds we walked back to our hotel and fell into bed by 11pm.