Knoxville, Tennessee
Article and photos by Larry Crain
Additional photos provided by Alloway’s Hot Rod Shop
When you look at a car, two things about it are the most prominent. Your eyes will tell you really quick whether the car is a winner or not just on those two items. These two items should complement each other on many levels to make the vehicle stand out from the rest of the crowd. These two points of interest that I am talking about are paint and interior, which can turn an ordinary vehicle into a show winner.
Pro Auto Custom Interiors of Knoxville, Tennessee creates beautiful and original interiors and helps turn a great car into a show winner. Steve Holcomb, owner of Pro Auto Custom Interiors, and his staff of six employees work out of two buildings and turn out top custom interiors that are beyond compare. This business is known for taking cars and trucks that are finished except for the interiors and then working with the customer to create an interior that is totally unique and ready to stand out from all others.
To give you a little background on Steve Holcomb and how he has gotten to where he is now in the custom interior business, we need to look back to when he was 18 years old. Steve started out working with a mom & pop upholstery and trim shop that gave him the basic knowledge of the craft. From there Steve slowly worked his way up to owning his own small business that served customers that needed work on their everyday cars and cruisers. During these years Steve was honing his talents and gaining more insight into what it took to make a custom interior stand out from all of the other shops. Pro Auto Custom Interiors was Steve’s answer to those customers that were looking for a quality custom interior that they could not find anywhere else in the area.
Pro Auto Custom Interiors has been in its current location for the past 16 years and has grown from one building to its current count of two. The main building is where current projects are being worked on, and a second building that has a four post lift and plenty of room for storage of vehicles that are in line to have their interiors done.
Pro Auto Custom Interiors has quite a history for building high-end custom interiors and is unequaled in their installation of custom convertible tops. Since 1999 this shop has been turning out the interior work for the Shades of The Past give-away cars built by Alloway’s Hot Rod Shop. This early work with Bobby Alloway eventually led the shop to an almost exclusive interior contact with work turned out of Alloway’s Hot Rod Shop.
Steve and Veronica Holcomb have seen their business grow and evolve to the point where it has now gained national recognition with five vehicles that Pro Auto Custom Interiors has created interiors for that have won Great 8 Awards at Detroit’s AutoRama. In 2015, a Pro Auto Custom Interior was in Bobby Alloway’s 1933 Ford roadster that won the title of America’s Most Beautful Roadster at the 66th Grand National Roadster Show in Pomona, California. Pro Auto Custom Interior’s most recent custom interior to garner attention is in Larry Griffey’s 2017 Great 8 Award winning 1954 Corvette.
The attention his shop has gained over the years also led him to do a project in the fall of 2016 that involved the 1958 Chevrolet Impala used in the movie American Graffiti. This project, thanks to Bobby Alloway, was brought to him by legendary NASCAR personality Ray Evernham, who owns the car and was restoring it for a debut at the 2016 SEMA Show. Steve and the crew totally disassembled the interior then using almost all of the original parts started cleaning and repairing the interior. When the project was finished, the interior looked just like it did when the car was filmed in 1973.
With all of this attention on the high-end custom interiors that Pro Auto Custom Interiors has done you would think they don’t work on the everyday cruisers, but they have not lost track of where they came from. They still do factory style interiors and tops for your favorite muscle car or hot rod, and they put just as much attention to detail in it as they do any other job.
Steve and Veronica really appreciate having a crew like Tim Amanns, Richard Ardner, Viic Rodriquez, Nick Fraker and Tim Johnson giving 100% effort on every job they do. The future does see Steve’s son Garrett Holcomb one day running the business of Pro Auto Custom Interior’s.
For more information on Pro Auto Custom Interiors and their work visit www.proautointeriors.com, their Facebook page or call them at 865-925-3214.
