That 34 Eight picture looks like some studio job. It doesn't even look like a running car. For one, the radiator is missing and in its place some painted wooden board.

I have a couple of those movie studio pictures where they air brushed the top of the radiator shell due to some glare problem and left the bottom plated.

I'm fast losing interest in this stuff as someone I know of cracked up some old piece of junk, got his teeth knocked out and impaled on the steering column. Meanwhile his daughter flew forward into the glove box door and ended up in two pieces. So as far as I'm concerned this collector car stuff is stupid. It's like paying sky high prices for cigarettes with high tar and nicotine.

Take off the cutout cover and disconnect the wire to the generator. Using an ohm meter connected between the armature lug and ground, manually close the points. If nothing changes on the meter you have an open circuit.

Could be a dirty commutator, brushes, open fields, a loose wire etc.. I fixed a V-12 once by gluing a loose brush wire back into the brush. I got a kick out of the stupid advertisement verbiage as it kicked around the old car auction circus. Then somewhere along the way it got all screwed up. I haven't seen it since.

There's a starting point.

Hmm, this picture indicates the same layout as the base Eight. I see chrome pushbuttons and chrome glove box handle. I also see uneven brake and clutch pedals. But who knows what all they were doing. There are lots of documented variations in those taxi models. That is one area where the photographic records hold up.

Of course this is a prototype. Perhaps even a clay model. Note the lack of a rear door.

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I remember those days when you could buy those V-12 limos cheap. People didn't want them.

As for the comment that excess money floating around is good for the economy, if there is no value added there is no economic gain. Where does money come from? I have some qualifications to address that matter. Bank assets are in the form of loans collateralized by hard assets. In the old days National Banks would issue their own currencies backed by such collateralized loans. These were called National Bank Notes. If they issued loans backed by junk assets like WorldCom stock their notes would quickly fall in value and depositors would run on the bank and shut it down. This restrained the Federal government's ability to spend because they had to rely on foreigners and the private sector to purchase government bonds. They also didn't like the instability of periodic panics where banks would have to pay for being sloppy. Who wants to see crooked bankers going to jail? Without a new source of funding the USA also could not get involved in stupid overseas affairs like World War I, so they created their own bank called the Federal Reserve which is a printing press. Now the government would sell bonds to the Federal Reserve which would then issue Federal Reserve Notes collateralized by US Government debt. Lately the Fed has started proping up the bond market by issuing notes to buy bonds that are falling in value in response to free market forces. What? Since when is price manipulation of financial assets good for the economy? If the crooks on Wall Street got caught doing that they would go to jail. If the price of old cars starts falling will the Fed start buying those as well to bail out the rich spending money on antiques that don't create jobs? The fact of the matter is that US monetary policy is Marxist. And that is hurting the poor the same way it did in the USSR, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Romania, East Germany, and so on.

Sorry for all the hot air, but I have been watching this situation my entire life.

I think the switches were plated as was the glove box handle. They obviously were groping for any sort of trim stratification given the cars were so generic. It probably cost more to paint the parts, but those things happen. However, for a taxi who would even care? I know some of them had painted grilles, but I wouldn't be surprised if they threw whatever they had at the dashboard.

At Chrysler the low line tire pressure monitoring system cost more than the deluxe system. And they were proud of it. They thought having all those systems for government mandated crap was something to be proud of.

I'm sure if you were buying from the Packard dealer you would get them. Even if you were getting them with after market parts there is no guarantee they are to correct specifications. I had some of those washers be completely different from the originals so I ended up matching the witness marks on the originals.

When you have such parts and they leak after being torqued to spec, that is not good when the originals don't leak.

The account I read had the radiator shot out while leaving the scene. How fast can they be going with people standing on the running boards?

Meyer Lanksy's gang used a stolen 27-28 Eight and outran the police in New York City at 80-85 miles per hour. It's a wonder they didn't broadside somebody and get killed.

As I mentioned somewhere else, the police did a great job of wiping those bums out. They also saved a lot of money in court costs, appeals, and incarceration. Today we have the Manson family and various serial torture killers getting free medical care. Why should the Unabomber get any medical care?

Maybe an individual custom body on an ordered chassis, but not on a production car. If the guy wants to change the color someday he will have to say just that. I don't know what level of paint job he is planning, but saying you are doing something to save money on Packards sounds ridiculous. Just the gas bill alone is going to be more than the cost of painting the firewall.

I thought the original Caribbeans I saw had body color on the firewall. Maybe Mitchell-Bentley might do something like that if a color change was made in the middle of the order. I knew backyard guys who painted that stuff black to avoid the hassle of doing the job as built. On second thought one of them was owned by Beardslee and probably was repainted, another was owned by a Mobil oil guy and probably was repainted by a body shop, a third was light blue but so dirty who knows, finally a fourth was a White and black 54 that was wrapped around a telephone pole and I think it was black wash on the firewall. I should have taken more pictures. I never saw one of those cars that was well taken care of. So until a well kept, low mileage, original shows up I will go with cheap black wash on the 53-54 Caribbean firewall. Along with newspaper packed under the fender trim that accelerated deterioration. Oh, and another one that had overspray on it, but I think was black as well.

34 still had the separate firewall panel and every original one I ever saw was standard black. I suppose someone could tell the dealer to change it, but without the original invoice I'm inclined to the convenient history conclusion. It can be yanked off and repainted, but why would someone want that? Certainly not in a chauffeur driven car and who living in Old Westbury would tell the groundskeeper that he was going to do the oil changes himself?

The Caddy 16 was a nice preservation case, it ran enough for local use, but the wood was pretty rough. Not what you would see in a Packard, but that Caddy was impressive. And complete. I don't know how much cash he got, but I heard he made quite a draw out of the buyer. I don't what happened to the car. The Rolls was very nice and it ran for years without any trouble. I knew somebody else who had PII Sedanca DeVille by H.J. Mulliner that really showed why the Rolls-Royce was very much a kept car. It would roll along at an indicated 65 mph without any complaint. Unfortunately it was turned over to a guy named Lars Longrin - a one time Hibernia employee I think - who dismantled the car behind the owner's back to point of complete disaster. When I saw it it looked hopeless. All of that fine Rolls-Royce build quality was thrown into the back seat and god knows how many parts were missing. Even if it somehow came back together it would never be what it was.

I know metal fabricators that could crank that out with dispatch. Given the car has only two fuses - one for the lighter, and one for everything else - what are all of those buttons for? Better yet, ship it to Rabble Beach and have the Keno Brothers call it legit.