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Lane Motor Museum in Nashville

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Story by Brandes Elitch
Photos courtesy Lane Museum

From the VeloceToday Archives, February 2018

Last October I had a chance to visit the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, which had been on my list of things to do for some time. With over 300 European cars displayed on two levels, it is likely the largest museum collection of European cars in the U.S. What I found compelling is that the Lane is full of the kinds of things I like: production cars or prototypes that are obscure, rare, technically advanced for their time, designs full of passion and creativity that fulfilled all the things a collector or historian would want, but not necessarily successful in the marketplace because of various eccentricities of design or presentation. At the top of that list for obscurity would be the Tatra, of course, and while the Lane lacks the Type 77, it has just about every other Tatra.

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Retromobile Tatra Exhibition

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Story and photos by Hugues Vanhoolandt

We begin with a wonderful story from the superb collection of Tatras at Retromobile.

In 1947, two young Czech adventurers, Jiri Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund, had a plan to see the world and report their findings to the world through films, radio, and books. They approached Tatra with the idea. Impressed by the plan and the opportunity to promote its vehicles, Tatra provided the team with the Tatra Type 87 seen above. They didn’t just hand over the keys however. Hanzelka and Zikmund had three months of experience with the car at the Tatra factory in Koprivnice before embarking upon a continuous three-and-a-half-year voyage through Africa and Latin America, covering 44 countries and 111,000 kilometers. Along the way, they made films, wrote articles, and they even had a broadcast on the Czech radios as they traveled by Tatra to see the world. Truly happy campers! But while they were away, the Communists, with the support of Stalin, took control of Czechoslovakia, beginning one of the bleakest eras of the country’s history. [Read more…] about Retromobile Tatra Exhibition

The Lane Motor Museum in Nashville

By

Story by Brandes Elitch
Photos courtesy Lane Museum

Last October I had a chance to visit the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, which had been on my list of things to do for some time. With over 300 European cars displayed on two levels, it is likely the largest museum collection of European cars in the U.S. What I found compelling is that the Lane is full of the kinds of things I like: production cars or prototypes that are obscure, rare, technically advanced for their time, designs full of passion and creativity that fulfilled all the things a collector or historian would want, but not necessarily successful in the marketplace because of various eccentricities of design or presentation. At the top of that list for obscurity would be the Tatra, of course, and while the Lane lacks the Type 77, it has just about every other Tatra. [Read more…] about The Lane Motor Museum in Nashville

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