Every once in a while we venture out of our respective cities to soak up some of the custom car culture around the country. Nashville, although a smaller city has a rich car culture – especially if you know the right people.
We started at Maple Motors in Hendersonville where the Fite family has been buying and selling old school rides for 28 years.
They seem to always have a nice mix of custom and stock restoration old schools on the lot. This Buick GS convertible was particularly appealing.
This 1978 Z28 was a black beauty and priced just right.
Up the road from Maple Motors is Red Rum Customs where we went to check out Troy Miller’s new ‘Choppa’ he built (more on that another day) and stumbled upon his random old schools scattered about the property – some closer to the grave than others.
Although only a few miles up the road, Hendersonville gets very rural, very quick. This is particularly interesting to us city dwellers that are used to houses and buildings stacked upon each other.
Two old Chevrolets chillin’ on the side of the house, it was assumed they were parts cars because they looked to be beyond salvation.
In his garage, Troy had an all-original Bel Air that had been sitting there for who knows how many years. It definitely had potential!
Back to the ‘burbs where although unplanned, it ended up looking like a mini-car show in itself. This seems to happen when everyone you know has their hands in the custom car world.
As you can see, trucks are king in Tennessee; whether its on 26″ Asantis like the white Denali owned by Brian of Brian’s Motorsports or the lifted Silverado on 20s and off-road tires. Also pictured is a Sierra that was still a work in progress at the time (but is now complete).
In the garage was a gorgeous ’74 Caprice convertible owned by ‘Sandman’. You could literally eat off the motor if you wanted. He has another project in the works now, which we will post build pics of in the coming months.
Next stop was House of Bass in downtown Nashville, the leading car audio outfit in the city.
Owner, Haki, shows off his 1000 HP Chevy dually on American Force 24s that was getting four 15″ subwoofers installed in the bed among other things.
A customer’s Pontiac Grandville convertible on 26″ DUB Spinners. House of Bass works on a wide range of vehicles from VIP-spec tuners to old schools GMs.
The last stop on the Nashville tour was “TJ’s” , located right outside of downtown Nashville. Although the area wasn’t the greatest, sometimes that’s where the best paint shops are hidden.
This was a one-of-a-kind chameleon paint job, rarely do you see paint flip so many colors.
The 26″ Forgiato wheels waiting to be mounted on the Caprice. Notice the hint of purple pearl in the paint? Pretty dope.
Outside was a custom Monte Carlo on the old school DUB Trump spinners. It looks like this car was the shit in its time and now it sits in a back lot waiting on a new lease on life.
Check more of the pics in the gallery below..
