Smoky Mountain Mustang Club hosts downtown Clinton car show

From Galaxies to Cobras, these cars shine

September 24, 2025 by G. Chambers Williams III

Although Saturday’s car show in the Commerce Street parking lot in downtown Clinton was sponsored by the Smoky Mountain Mustang Club, there was a variety of vehicles on display.

Many of them were not Fords and not even of the Mustang era, which began in 1964.

“It’s an all-makes show,” said club President Jim Maddox of Farragut, who underscored that policy by bringing his 1963 sport-roof Ford Galaxie 500 XL to the show, instead of a Mustang.

“I’ve owned it since 1981,” he said of the Galaxie. “It has been taken down to the bare frame and completely rebuilt, and it has a 1967 Shelby 428 engine in it.”

Maddox said the club’s regular meeting place is the Apple Blossom Café in downtown Clinton, and that the club has a spring show each year on the lot at Ray Varner Ford.

On Saturday, there were at least 35 cars already on display by late morning, with more expected before the show was set to end in late afternoon, he said.

There also was a steady stream of visitors of all ages walking though the parking lot to check out the cars on display.

Also not a Mustang was the 1967 Ford Shelby Cobra G.T. 500 that Janice Frost of Clinton brought to the show.

“I got it in 1994, and it was in a gazillion pieces after my brother took it apart,” Frost said. “He passed away, so I put it all back together myself.”

Other notable vehicles in the show included a Ford T-Bucket roadster owned by Glenn Daniels of Harriman, and a 1956 Hudson Metropolitan, which predated the similar Nash Metropolitan.

And yes, there even were a few classic Chevrolets.