Re: 1934 Pittsburgh Auto Show?

Posted by Tim Cole On 2009/4/13 18:01:00

Hi Jeremy, Here is a silver dollar idea I had today:

In 1939, E.T. Gregorie (chief of styling for the Ford Company) held up a pencil tracing of the profile of a long hooded convertible victoria to a visiting Edsel Ford. "What do you think of this Mr. Ford?" "Oh boy!, That's fantastic!, Don't change a thing on it." I'm not sure, but I vaguely recall that E.T. had just returned from vacationing in Puerto Rico. When the full scale model was rolled into the studio at Ford the result was so different from E.T.'s usual work that everybody thought he had gone crazy. But all present soon agreed that the new Lincoln Continental was a very beautifully proportioned design. It's certainly within the realm of possibility (given the pencil tracing rather than a sketch) that E.T. Gregorie had brought back a photograph of the Packard he saw in Puerto Rico.

Given also, that to this day, the school of Art and Design regards the Continental as one of the five most beautiful automotive designs of all time, it's easy to conjecture what happened to any studio photographs of the car on file at Packard. They were flushed. When the new Lincoln started cutting into Packard sales somebody in styling must have realized that management would go absolutely ape if they found out it was a Packard design.

Stranger things have happened. Tracing (no pun intended) this car's history may pay some handsome dividends if successful.