The History of
Morrison Motor Co
And the legacy of Jimmy Morrison (1949 - 2021)
Morrison's Timeline
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1980s
Three Generations
Three generations of the Morrison family are involved with selling Corvettes, late-model cars and trucks and collector cars at Morrison Motor Co., which has been selling exceptional cars since 1970, said Jimmy Morrison.
Customers from New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, as well as local customers, have visited the auto showroom to evaluate Morrison's 30 Corvettes, 15 collector cars and various late-model automobiles on display. The customers are particular, Morrison said, but "we try to get them what they want."
A completely restored national show winner 1955 Pontiac convertible is now on display in the Morrison showroom. The showroom is "kind of like a mini museum," Morrison said.
Morrison was exposed to auto sales by his father. "My dad bought and sold cars when I was younger. I bought my first Corvette in '67 and paid $600 for it. I still have it."
Morrison will special-order cars if customers don't find what they are looking for.
June 6, 1991 - Old Cars Weekly
Racetracks and Muscle Cars
A Perfect Combination
By Brad Bowling
Driving around Charlotte, N.C., the question presents itself: Which came first, the racetrack (Charlotte Motor Speedway) or the local enthusiasm for fast cars?
Jimmy Morrison, of Morrison Motor Co. in Concord, says that the people in the area were crazy about powerful cars long before the ground was marked off for CMS. Morrison was himself an early speed enthusiast, having gotten his first car at the impressionable age of 12. That first car was a '40 Ford, a model that his father (a car dealer) had quite an affection for - there were 13 examples of them in the Morrison driveway at one point.
Morrison's dad was buying "old cars" back in the days that right-thinking people never drove anything more than two model years old. In his day Father Morrison was considered to be a little eccentric because of his hobby - Jimmy and his brother Gary are now "savvy businessmen" in this day of car collecting mania. They buy and sell muscle cars, grabbing the occasional irresistible GTX or low-mileage big-block Corvette for their own collection.
When we visited the Morrison dealership, there were more than 200 cars on hand, ranging from a '55 Thunderbird with 28,000 miles to a '69 Camaro Z-28 that was originally purchased by Roy Orbison. Although the collection contains muscle from every manufacturer, it is heavy on Fords and Chevys.
A partial listing of the Fords on hand includes a '63 427 Galaxie XL, a '66 427 R-motor Galaxie, a '68 428 Cobra Jet Mustang GT, a '71 429 Super Cobra Jet Mustang Mach 1, a '68 390 Cougar XR-7 Dan Gurney model, a '63 406 tri-power XL convertible and a '66 Fairlane GT convertible. A '66 Fairlane GTA 390 has just returned to the fold after Morrison sold it 12 years ago - the car still has only 17,000 miles on it. Chevys were well-represented by a '62 Bel Air bubbletop with the 409-cid motor, a '62 SS with 409/425 powerplant, a red '60 convertible with tri-power 348 and four-speed, a '61 hardtop with the tri-power 348 plant and four '69 Z-28 Camaros.
Mopars were scattered throughout the group, including a '67 Satellite with Hemi motor, a '66 Hemi Coronet and a '70 440 Super Bee Six-Pack with only 17,000 miles.
Although most of Morrison's cars are for sale, there are a few he pointed out that would require "a lot of talking and a lot of money" to take home. One of those is an exceptionally clean '68 Hurst Olds, showing only 12,000 miles.
Morrison says that his cars are often found within a few hundred miles of his home by word of mouth and careful scanning of Old Cars' classifieds section.
1990s - Independent Tribune
Featured in International Magazine
By Penny Barkley
Driving around Charlotte, N.C., the question presents itself: Which came first, the racetrack (Charlotte Motor Speedway) or the local enthusiasm for fast cars?
Jimmy Morrison, of Morrison Motor Co. in Concord, says that the people in the area were crazy about powerful cars long before the ground was marked off for CMS. Morrison was himself an early speed enthusiast, having gotten his first car at the impressionable age of 12. That first car was a '40 Ford, a model that his father (a car dealer) had quite an affection for - there were 13 examples of them in the Morrison driveway at one point.
Morrison's dad was buying "old cars" back in the days that right-thinking people never drove anything more than two model years old. In his day Father Morrison was considered to be a little eccentric because of his hobby - Jimmy and his brother Gary are now "savvy businessmen" in this day of car collecting mania. They buy and sell muscle cars, grabbing the occasional irresistible GTX or low-mileage big-block Corvette for their own collection.
When we visited the Morrison dealership, there were more than 200 cars on hand, ranging from a '55 Thunderbird with 28,000 miles to a '69 Camaro Z-28 that was originally purchased by Roy Orbison. Although the collection contains muscle from every manufacturer, it is heavy on Fords and Chevys.
A partial listing of the Fords on hand includes a '63 427 Galaxie XL, a '66 427 R-motor Galaxie, a '68 428 Cobra Jet Mustang GT, a '71 429 Super Cobra Jet Mustang Mach 1, a '68 390 Cougar XR-7 Dan Gurney model, a '63 406 tri-power XL convertible and a '66 Fairlane GT convertible. A '66 Fairlane GTA 390 has just returned to the fold after Morrison sold it 12 years ago - the car still has only 17,000 miles on it. Chevys were well-represented by a '62 Bel Air bubbletop with the 409-cid motor, a '62 SS with 409/425 powerplant, a red '60 convertible with tri-power 348 and four-speed, a '61 hardtop with the tri-power 348 plant and four '69 Z-28 Camaros.
Mopars were scattered throughout the group, including a '67 Satellite with Hemi motor, a '66 Hemi Coronet and a '70 440 Super Bee Six-Pack with only 17,000 miles. Although most of Morrison's cars are for sale, there are a few he pointed out that would require "a lot of talking and a lot of money" to take home. One of those is an exceptionally clean '68 Hurst Olds, showing only 12,000 miles.
Morrison says that his cars are often found within a few hundred miles of his home by word of mouth and careful scanning of Old Cars' classifieds section.
1999 - Independent Tribune
How do You Separate the Men from the Boys... By the Price of Their Toys!
By Marshall Smith
There is an old maxim that little boys don't grow up - their toys just get more expensive. And rare is the boy who doesn't dream of someday owning an exotic sports car.
Jimmy Morrison of Concord is living every boy's dream. At the same time, he is helping many others fulfill their dream of exotic car ownership.
He is the owner of Morrison Motor Company, which makes him the owner of about 35 Corvettes, 13 Mustangs, nine Camaros, a Pantera and a Shelby Cobra. In addition to the sports cars, he has rare and classic models including a '99 Plymouth Prowler, a '57 Thunderbird, a '67 Corvette convertible and a '66 Corvette coupe, a '60 Cadillac Coupe deVille and a '98 Corvette convertible Indy Pace Car. He once owned an Indy race car that had run in the 1949 Indy 500.
He learned the value of hard work as a young boy living on a farm near Hartsell school. "Growing up, when we wanted anything extra, we had to work for it," he said. "For a while, I carried newspapers. I still have a savings bond that I won in a Concord Tribune contest. I never cashed it because I was so proud of it."
While he was in high school he went to work for a body shop. "My dad had cars around when I was a kid," he said. "I grew up around cars." His father worked at the mill and bought and sold cars as a sideline. "I bought my first Corvette in 1967," he said, "and I still have it."
His budding career was interrupted by military duty in Vietnam. When he returned home, he just continued buying and selling cars," he said.
"At first it was just a small-time operation. Around 1970 it wasn't much," he said. But he moved from the back yard to a major sales operation about 1980 and bought the property his business now occupies. He built his present building and showroom in 1990.
Anyone who confuses Morrison with a typical used car salesman is drastically mistaken. His soft voice is a contrast to the hood-thumping, loud-shouting TV salesmen.
What's the secret to his success? "You've got to have something out of the ordinary," he said. Most of his Corvettes are mid-'80s to mid-'90s models. He gets them from a variety of sources, including dealers who take them as trade-ins. He's sold about 50 new body style Corvettes in the past year, he said.
Besides his specialty cars, Morrison sells motorcycles. In the three years he has been in the two-wheeled business, he has sold about 850 motorcycles. He also sells his cars and motorcycles overseas, including one motorcycle to an Australian buyer. He said he sold about 50 cars to people in South Africa, England, Germany and other countries. "Most people don't realize we sell regular cars, too," he said. "Cars for transportation, dependable cars for maybe $3,000 - say, a Honda Civic."
The company does almost no body work or mechanical work on the cars they buy. They try to get cars in near-perfect condition or as nice as possible, he said. He bought a '96 Viper with only 400 miles on the odometer and never met the seller - he just bought it over the phone, he said. "A guy in Florida had a buyer in New Jersey who bought it from me."
Morrison has made a specialty of locating rare cars for customers. He has developed his own unique market. He knows his buyers and sellers well, he said.
He once found a car for Rick Hendrick, who wanted it for his father. It was a '41 Ford convertible. Hendrick had never seen one before Morrison tracked it down in Virginia.
"It's a network," he said. "People know about us and our business is based on our reputation. You learn to meet people and they remember you."
His Plymouth Prowler is unusual partly because most auto companies don't make such limited production vehicles. The GoodGuys GoodTimes Yearbook calls it "perhaps the most stunning vehicle hatched by Detroit since the '32 Ford." The yellow machine has a 3.5-liter 24-valve V-6 engine and an aluminum frame. It is a high-tech street rod, Morrison said. It is not the first Prowler he has owned.
"Kenny Wallace bought our first one," he said. "We sold another one to a guy who had just sold a computer company."
Morrison admitted that he doesn't always make money on a car. The market can be very tricky, he said. He doesn't know from day to day exactly what the Prowler might be worth. It could vary from $50,000 to $100,000 to nothing.
He once bought a 1994 Z28 for more than $25,000. After it sat for what seemed like forever, he said, "losing money by the day," he sold it for less than $20,000.
Sometimes he makes a profit in days. One customer sold Morrison both a 1995 Corvette ZR1 and a 1996 Corvette. Three days later, he bought back the ZR1 at a modest profit to Morrison.
At 49, Morrison is enjoying himself and shares his business pleasure with his sons. Jay, 23, and Michael, 21, work in the business selling cars.
Others in the community like and respect Morrison, according to Gene Verbal.
"I watched him grow up," Verbal said. "He is smart as a whip and a hard worker. He's a nice man. He tries to do things the way they are supposed to be done."
April 20, 2001 - Independent Tribune
Concord Car Collector Finds Himself in the Museum Business
By Brad Bowling
When Jimmy Morrison began searching for property to expand his successful collector car dealership, he had no idea he would wind up in the museum business, but that's exactly what happened when Morrison Motor Co. took ownership of the Backing Up Classics Motor Car Museum earlier this week.
The museum, which sits on eight acres of land just north of Lowe's Motor Speedway on Hwy. 29 in Concord, has enjoyed a steady stream of visiting race fans since opening its doors in 1990. In its first decade of operation displays have run the gamut from vintage race cars to '57 Chevys; from '50s hot rods to early motorcycles. Backing Up Classics was built, stocked and maintained by retired real estate developer Allan Miles, who came up with the idea after realizing that he needed a place to keep his ever-growing collection of four-wheeled toys.
Morrison and Miles were talking about their common love of cars a few months ago when Miles mentioned he intended to take a second retirement and tour the country with his wife Wanda. Morrison, whose own business on Old Charlotte Road was packed bumper-to-bumper with Corvettes, Mustangs, SUVs, trucks, Harley-Davidson motorcycles and dozens of antique vehicles, realized that owning an 18,000-square-foot museum would be the perfect complement to the car dealership he and his father started in 1970.
"The main thing we want to do over there," Morrison said of the new purchase, "is build on what Allan has created. It's already a very successful business, with a large souvenir shop full of NASCAR and nostalgic paraphernalia. I'm keeping an open mind about where we'll go with it, because it's a totally new experience for me."
Morrison plans to keep the museum's inventory fresh, with displays being changed regularly and a complete turnover every 12 months. He's already added 15 cars from his personal collection to the 30 he gained as part of the museum purchase, including a 30,000-mile '59 Cadillac, an extremely rare '68 Hurst Oldsmobile and a '70 Shelby Mustang.
With his family-owned dealership already a seven-day-a-week job, Morrison admits he was only looking for some expansion room in Concord when the museum offer came along. It's not the kind of business he ever would have built from scratch.
"Buying a collector car museum was a great idea," Morrison said, "but I never would have set out to create one. It's too expensive and difficult to build something like that, so I'm glad Allan did it first."
May/June 2002 - Cabarrus Magazine
Jimmy Morrison
By Jennifer L Williams / Photos By Jean-Henri White
If you ever have the opportunity to meet Morrison, either at Backing Up Classics Motor Car Museum, which he purchased last May, or at Morrison Motor Company, located on Old Charlotte Road, you might think he has motor oil, not blood, running through his veins.
Morrison, 52, and his younger brother, Gary, were born and raised in a Cabarrus County mill village, and have lived here all their lives - and, for the most part, were never not around cars. "When I was a kid, my daddy, J.P., always had cars. As a matter of fact, he had 13 '40 Fords,"Morrison said. "We never had a lot of money, but he always bought cars, and he always sold them. "My brother Gary actually worked at a car dealership after he got out of college, and he's been the pushing force. We work real good together. He's more outgoing, and I'm the more conservative guy."
The Morrison brothers founded Morrison Motor Company in 1970, and specialize in exotic, hard-to-find vehicles; motorcycles, including Harley-Davidsons; and in pre-owned vehicles. He reflected on just how valuable some of these cars have become over the years.
"Back then, we just kind of eased into the car business, and we started off with Corvette convertibles," he said. "I have this picture with my oldest son - he's about 28 now - but he has a baby in that picture, so it was about 1975. The Corvettes were $3,500 apiece then - that's about 25 years ago - and now the same Corvette is worth $35,000. Are those Corvettes gonna be worth $350,000 25 years from now when I'm 77 years old? Probably.
"We grew up in it. The cars are something that we just bought and restored and fixed up and sold when we couldn't do any better. Now we try to buy real good cars. Used to be, we sold mainly Corvettes, but now we also do Vipers, Mustangs. We sell about 50 to 80 cars a month. Our parking lot gets so covered up with people on Saturdays, we can't wait on everyone. We're thankful for repeat referral business, since we're not on the main highway. Without it, we wouldn't have a business.
"A lot of people are just there looking. It's a business, and it's also a little bit of a tourist attraction." But more so is Backing Up Classics Motor Car Museum, which he purchased from founder Allan Miles, who owned the place for 14 years. The museum, located just north of Lowe's Motor Speedway on Highway 29, draws sightseers from around the country - and the world. Morrison and his predecessor have maintained a wall and a guest book for visitors to sign after making their way through the museum.
"It's surprising, the traffic is up since we bought the place, since we've been publicizing a lot more. We get a lot of people from out of state, and it's continuous," Morrison said. "In fact, we might have 80-some people a day come in here. They'll write comments on the wall, that every time they come through here, they'll see something they've never seen before, something they hadn't paid any attention to the time before."
Morrison is in the process of selling some of the cars to make way for others. When he and his brother bought the museum, about 25 antique cars were included in the deal, along with plenty of automotive memorabilia. In the museum's back shop, waiting to make its debut, is a red 1913 Ford Speedster. "It's the oldest car we have, and it was in here when we bought it," he said. "I've driven it. I've gotten intrigued by it, so we got it out the other week and decided to play with it a little bit. I've had the opportunity to sell it, but I got second thoughts about it."
He's also fond of a green '69 Z28 Camaro that has a fiberglass hood and a rear disc brake option. He owns three more Camaros from that same model year, one of which Roy Orbison bought new. "An option like that - the fiberglass hood, two four-barrel carburetors and a crossram intake fuel system - is probably worth about $15,000, and a rear disc brake option is probably worth $6,000 or $7,000. These things make the car worth more and more interesting to people who collect them. You've got to be a real connoisseur to appreciate it all," he said.
"We don't restore the cars; it costs too much. When Allan first built the place, he restored a few cars for people, but it's too time-consuming and it costs too much. It's easier to buy and sell and change around and do minor things to them than it is to restore them. We try to buy them not needing anything, if possible. Most of them are more valuable with their original parts on them."
Morrison developed his eye for cars not only from his father, but also from longtime Cabarrus County entrepreneur G. Raiford Troutman. The Troutman "dynasty" is probably best known for its barbecue restaurants and car dealerships located throughout the county. Morrison worked for Troutman in his shop in 1969 before serving in Vietnam for "a year less than a day."
Since then, the Morrisons have formed their own business dynasty. Both Morrison's sons, Jay and Michael, work at Morrison Motor Company. His wife, Linda, and his daughter, Lindsay, both work part time at the museum, along with about eight other employees at each location. He emphasizes the value his father and mother, Louise, placed on hard work, and said he gained his first business "sense" working as a newspaper carrier for four years.
"I learned about people, how things worked with people," he said. "I learned about life." For all his expertise, Jimmy Morrison still considers himself a student of the automotive trade.
"I'm a little bit of a learner. I know a lot about a lot of different cars, but I don't zero in on one specific car," he said. "I used to work on them and redo them, so I'm pretty familiar with different things. I kind of grew up with cars, I guess."
August 2005 - NASCAR Illustrated
Cars, More Cars, and Racing Stuff
By Steve Waid / Photos By David Griffin
Driving around Charlotte, N.C., the question presents itself: Which came first, the racetrack (Charlotte Motor Speedway) or the local enthusiasm for fast cars?
Jimmy Morrison, of Morrison Motor Co. in Concord, says that the people in the area were crazy about powerful cars long before the ground was marked off for CMS. Morrison was himself an early speed enthusiast, having gotten his first car at the impressionable age of 12. That first car was a '40 Ford, a model that his father (a car dealer) had quite an affection for - there were 13 examples of them in the Morrison driveway at one point.
Morrison's dad was buying "old cars" back in the days that right-thinking people never drove anything more than two model years old. In his day Father Morrison was considered to be a little eccentric because of his hobby - Jimmy and his brother Gary are now "savvy businessmen" in this day of car collecting mania. They buy and sell muscle cars, grabbing the occasional irresistible GTX or low-mileage big-block Corvette for their own collection.
When we visited the Morrison dealership, there were more than 200 cars on hand, ranging from a '55 Thunderbird with 28,000 miles to a '69 Camaro Z-28 that was originally purchased by Roy Orbison. Although the collection contains muscle from every manufacturer, it is heavy on Fords and Chevys.
A partial listing of the Fords on hand includes a '63 427 Galaxie XL, a '66 427 R-motor Galaxie, a '68 428 Cobra Jet Mustang GT, a '71 429 Super Cobra Jet Mustang Mach 1, a '68 390 Cougar XR-7 Dan Gurney model, a '63 406 tri-power XL convertible and a '66 Fairlane GT convertible. A '66 Fairlane GTA 390 has just returned to the fold after Morrison sold it 12 years ago - the car still has only 17,000 miles on it. Chevys were well-represented by a '62 Bel Air bubbletop with the 409-cid motor, a '62 SS with 409/425 powerplant, a red '60 convertible with tri-power 348 and four-speed, a '61 hardtop with the tri-power 348 plant and four '69 Z-28 Camaros.
Mopars were scattered throughout the group, including a '67 Satellite with Hemi motor, a '66 Hemi Coronet and a '70 440 Super Bee Six-Pack with only 17,000 miles.
Although most of Morrison's cars are for sale, there are a few he pointed out that would require "a lot of talking and a lot of money" to take home. One of those is an exceptionally clean '68 Hurst Olds, showing only 12,000 miles.
Morrison says that his cars are often found within a few hundred miles of his home by word of mouth and careful scanning of Old Cars' classifieds section.
June 28, 2018 - Independent Tribune
Two War Veterans, a Used Chevy, and Shared Memories
By Larry Cothren
Driving 10 hours to Concord, all the way from a suburb west of Indianapolis, just to buy a used car may seem irrational in the mind of a casual observer, especially when the car could be found closer to home. For two men who bonded because of their time together as soldiers in Vietnam, well, a 2016 Chevrolet was just one more way to connect.
Such was the case recently with war veterans Jimmy Morrison of Concord and Indiana native Larry Phillips.
A year or so back, Phillips, a car enthusiast, discovered the website for Morrison’s business, Morrison Motor Company, and noticed the Vietnam photos and information connected to the site.
Phillips says he couldn’t remember a Jimmy Morrison during the Vietnam War, but he was fairly certain a photograph of a soldier he knew as “Pinky” was in fact Morrison.
Morrison—whose full name is Jimmy Pinkney Morrison—confirmed that Pinky was his wartime nickname, and a friendship was rekindled. The photograph Phillips had of Morrison was from their time together in LZ Mary Ann near the Que Son Valley of North Vietnam.
Before the story of their friendship goes further, it’s important to place perspective on Morrison and his connection with Vietnam veterans and with the families of fallen soldiers who never returned home. Although the outgoing Morrison is reluctant to place too much emphasis on his role of unofficial ambassador to veterans and families of veterans, the 69-year-old businessman has perhaps found a true calling. It’s one that matches his Christian faith as a deacon at Kerr Memorial Baptist Church in Concord.
Military records typically list only mundane details about a wartime casualty. Often all that family members get, for example, is that a particular soldier died from fragmentation wounds, or died quickly.
Morrison, who insists he’s not computer savvy, can easily navigate various websites dedicated to those killed in combat, such as virtualwall.org. Whenever he sees the names of soldiers he knew, Morrison sees it as his duty to reach out to family members who lost loved ones.
“I try to let them know that they were among friends, that they did not die alone in some rice paddy, and that we were close,” says Morrison. “These people need to know that.” It’s a small miracle that Phillips and Morrison each survived a particularly brutal day of fighting at LZ West in the Que Son Valley. On June 9, 1970, their company was nearly destroyed, reduced from 100 soldiers to 37 in a matter of 15 to 20 minutes, according to Morrison. Phillips received the first of two wartime wounds that day, taking shrapnel from a mortar round. “They cleaned it up, removed the shrapnel, field dressed it and sent me back out,” recalls Phillips. “In those situations, everything happens so fast, you just try to get everybody out and see that they’re ok and that you’re ok.”
Two months later, on August 8, he was carrying a radio behind a lieutenant who was killed in yet another hectic battle. “I was right behind him,” he recalls. Phillips again received shrapnel, this time in the back, and the unit suffered heavy casualties. He realizes that he and Morrison
were among the fortunate ones--soldiers able to return home and build productive lives. Nonetheless, those types of experiences tend to impact individuals and create connections that endure for decades.
Phillips says he could have found “a million cars around Indianapolis” like the Chevrolet he bought from Morrison, but his wife Sandy knew exactly the type of car she wanted, down to the precise interior and exact accessories. He relayed the information to Morrison, and his grandson Michael found what they wanted.
So Larry and Sandy drove to Concord in early June, completed the purchase of the car, shipped it back to Danville, Indiana, and drove home. “The deal is when you’re in a combat situation you have a bond that nobody else has,” says Morrison.
“Here’s a guy who spent 10 hours driving here and 10 hours driving back. A guy with that much confidence in you, you don’t want a lot to go wrong. We were in Vietnam together and he trusted me enough to drive that far to buy a car from me.” Morrison and Phillips each say they returned from the war and went about their respective lives, tucking away their wartime memories for decades. Phillips worked 37 years as a maintenance manager, while Morrison built a successful automotive business. Only in the last four or five years did they begin to peel back the memories and revisit old photos.
“Mine laid dormant for years,” says Morrison, “and now it’s kind of an obsession.” Many, like Larry Phillips, have benefitted from Morrison’s passion for the Vietnam War and his dedication to those who experienced the worst of it.
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