Getting Corky Coker, an outgoing person with a broad smile almost as big as his white mustache, to open up is as easy as saying “hello” most days, but mention his love for automobiles – especially the vintage variety – or his love for Chattanooga, and he really starts talking. Put the two topics together, and just sit back and listen.
Perhaps that’s why organizers of the Chattanooga Motorcar Festival chose Coker as grand marshal for the 2021 event set to take place in downtown Chattanooga from Oct. 15-17. The inaugural event was held in 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the 2020 festival. Coker says the delay has only given organizers more time to “make it even better.”
“I’ve been fortunate enough to have been in the collector car industry for 45 years and attended about every event around the world that there is, and some are better than others,” he says. “Most have the Concours [d’Elegance] on golf courses, for instance, and they are nice, but, this is different. It’s downtown. It’s family-friendly. You can walk right out your hotel to most of the events, and we gave a lot of money to Dr. Tom Devlin and the [Erlanger Neuroscience Institute].”
The money for neuroscience research was donated by Fifty Plus Racing Foundation Inc., which has been raising funds since 2011 through a racing team called Highway to Help. The team was started by downtown Westin hotel co-owner and car enthusiast Byron DeFoor and Brian Johnson of rock band AC/DC. Both are longtime car enthusiasts and drivers, and Johnson was one of several celebrities to attend and drive in the Chattanooga Motorcar Festival in 2019.
In 2020, COVID-19 didn’t just cause the delay of the second Chattanooga Motorcar Festival – it also took its first president, Jim Pace, who died in November after contracting the virus. Coker calls his death “a huge loss.”