Honest Charley

Honest Charley World Famous Speed Shop founded in 1948 in Chattanooga, TN. We specialize in vintage auto restoration, building wood wheels, wood graining, and paint & body.
(1370)

Storefront to The Coker Museum, we also race the cars we restore and/or custom build.

Wood Wheel Restoration here at Honest Charley! Our friend John Crist brought 4 of his 21" painted wheels/solid rubber ti...
04/06/2026

Wood Wheel Restoration here at Honest Charley! Our friend John Crist brought 4 of his 21" painted wheels/solid rubber tires to us. We replaced the wood wheels & changed the tires into pneumatic ones. His 1925 Milk Truck will be on display next weekend at the - check it out!!

03/23/2026

Progress continues on our 1922 Duesenberg 🛠

There's still a lot of work to do, but the Model A just moved under its own power for the first time since being taken apart.

Stay tuned as we get this machine ready for the race track!

New production Snake Bellys now available at Honest Charley!
03/16/2026

New production Snake Bellys now available at Honest Charley!

03/02/2026

Preparing the 1918 Mercer for its next race 🛠

02/18/2026

Test Driving a 1914 Stutz Bearcat 🐈

02/10/2026

They don’t make parts like this anymore…Ken Oliver aka Mr Wizard can!


Stay safe out there today! Due to the snow and ice we will be closed today, but come see us Tuesday at 10am!
01/24/2026

Stay safe out there today! Due to the snow and ice we will be closed today, but come see us Tuesday at 10am!

This one’s got attitude.Raw steel, loud pipes, and just enough polish to remind you it’s still built with purpose.This i...
01/20/2026

This one’s got attitude.

Raw steel, loud pipes, and just enough polish to remind you it’s still built with purpose.
This isn’t a “perfect paint” kind of hot rod…

It’s a drive it, thrash it, grin the whole time kind of hot rod.

Built the old school way, light, mean, and unapologetic.

If you’ve ever wanted to know what Honest Charley energy looks like…
this is it.

Most folks don’t realize the “wood” in a lot of vintage dashboards… isn’t wood at all.It’s woodgraining, a hand-done cra...
01/19/2026

Most folks don’t realize the “wood” in a lot of vintage dashboards… isn’t wood at all.

It’s woodgraining, a hand-done craft that brings those old interiors back to life the way they were meant to look.

Here at Honest Charley Speed Shop in Chattanooga, we still do it the right way:
strip it down, repair it smooth, hand-roll the grain, blend the color, and clear coat it for a finish that looks like it came straight from the factory.

Dash panels, trim pieces, full interiors, if you’ve got parts that need the real deal, ship ‘em to us and we’ll make them beautiful again.

01/14/2026

One of the rarest projects we’ve ever taken on is officially underway.

We’re rebuilding a 1911 Oldsmobile Limited, starting with a partial chassis and engine, then bringing it back the right way using original castings, patterns, and period-correct parts.

Only five of these cars are known to exist.

When this one is finished, it will be number six.

This isn’t a replica.
It’s a resurrection.

Stay tuned, this one’s going to be special.


01/12/2026

This one started as a race-car chassis… and turned into something else entirely.

This is a 1919 Locomobile, and if you know anything about them, you know they’re heavy-duty machines.
Four-speed transmission.

Leaf springs. Left-hand drive. Four-wheel brakes with finned aluminum drums. Built to take abuse and keep going.

I bought it years ago down in Texas strictly for the chassis, perfect bones for a race car. But once we scraped off decades of filler and blew the dust away, we realized something important…

The body was in excellent shape.

Too good to cut up. Too good not to preserve.

So now we’re thinking the right thing might be to let that body go to someone who already has a Locomobile chassis and needs the real deal to finish it properly.

If you know somebody…
have them give me a call.

Some history deserves to stay whole. ďżź



Address

1309 Chestnut Street
Chattanooga, TN
37402

Opening Hours

Tuesday 10am - 4pm
Wednesday 10am - 4pm
Thursday 10am - 4pm
Friday 10am - 4pm
Saturday 10am - 4pm

Telephone

+18887957077

Website

https://www.instagram.com/honestcharley, https://www.youtube.com/@HonestHisself, https://

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