Nashville - Car museum and Bass Pro Shop

Nashville, like all of the south is full of bugs. This one rode on the outside of the truck for awhile. Then he flew away. Thursday we went to the Lane Car museum. It's pretty cool, they have an extensive collection of cars we had never seen before.

This is an Army LARC. It's amphibious, it will carry and off load a lot of stuff.


Using Jim as a yardstick we can see that it is huge.


There is a mini-Cooper exhibit, covering 50 years of the mini. They are so cute. This is a 2/3 model than some one has made from an old mini. It has an engine and would be driveable if the person who did the work had finished it.

1928 Martin Aerodynamic car. This was a prototype, which was given to General Billy Mitchell. He's the person who pioneered stratgic bombing from airplanes. The car was really ahead of its time.

1950 Martin Stationette. This was designed to be inexpensive transportation for the masses. Unfortunately, like the rest of his cars, he was unable to find anyone who wanted to build and sell them.


This is a teeny tiny home built boat, on a home built trailer,

being towed by a teeny tiny home built kit car. It's a 1963 King Midget. About 5,000 of these were sold.

1959 Fram Fulda. This was an extremely successful car in many countries, especially those who taxed by the number of wheels on the car.

The Subaru Peanut. Mort Smith liked Subarus. After he retired, he converted a Greyhound bus into an RV. He did not want to tow a car so he welded the back of a Subaru pickup onto the front of a 360. The windshield folds down and it will go into a Greyhound storage compartment.

1938 Citroen with Gasogene Conversion. During the German occupation of France, gasoline was unobtainable. The car was converted to run on coal.

1953 Rovin D4. After WWII cars, gas and steel were in short supply in France. This is one of the many mini-cars that were designed and sold to provide cheap fuel efficient transportation. This is the best looking of the lot.

The interior was somewhat spartan.

1945 Mochet Velocar. This is pretty ingenious. There are two sets of pedals and a small helper engine in the back.


1957 Messerschmitt. This was very popular with motorcyclists looking for a little more coverage.


More old interesting cars. It's amazing how many 3 wheel cars were made.


What was interesting to me was the level of inventiveness in Europe. People would take a Fiat drive train and build what ever they needed, small trucks, sports cars, kid haulers, whatever. Much of the inventiveness was driven by necessity as WWII had sucked up all the resources. There was an early desire for small fuel efficient cars, unfortunately we didn't stay that course.

Then we were off to the cultural icon that is Bass Pro Shops. If you are in an area that has a free standing super store, you owe it to yourself to go there. If they don't have it, you don't need it.


Where else can one obtain a camo crockpot so the deer don't know that they are for dinner?


This is part of the fishing area, about a fifth of it. There's an entire room dedicated to fly tying and pre-tied flies. Yards of reels, mass quantities of stuff.


Today I think we are off for something historical. We have yet to visit a Civil War site and I am feeling somewhat remiss.