Re: Russell & Bazil’s 1939 One-Twenty Club Coupe

Posted by packardsix1939 On 2022/9/24 17:44:03

Russell: Amazing job on the steering wheel! About 20 years ago, I owned a 1948 Super 8 Convertible Victoria with a badly cracked plastic wheel, and I decided to have it professionally recast. It cost me over $500, and I had to wait six months to get it back. Yours looks about as good for much less money! It would probably cost over a grand today for the same job.

Glad you liked the photos of my old 1938 Six Opera Coupe. It was indeed quite a car. The trip I made from Connecticut to the 1986 PAC meet in Pittsburgh required no special preparation. My friend Jim and I just hopped it the car and off we went. We drove nonstop for over 11 hours, most of the time on interstate highways, before finally reaching our destination. Then, we drove it around Pittsburgh that week for the various meet events, some of which were miles away. The car performed flawlessly throughout. But I had already purchased another Packard, a 1932 Light 8 Sport Coupe, and had the '38 for sale at the meet. In fact, that was one of the main reasons why I wanted to drive to the National that year. It was there that the late Ole Book spotted my car and sent the information to a friend of his from Helsinki, Finland named Peter Ginman. After I got home from the meet, Peter contacted me, and we eventually ended up making a deal for him to purchase the car.

The story of how my '38 then journeyed from Connecticut to Finland is pretty unbelievable. A few weeks after we closed the deal, Peter and his wife flew to the US from Finland to pick up the car in person. They got a hotel in Mid-town Manhattan and then took a Greyhound bus to my hometown in Connecticut. I picked them up at the bus depot in the Packard, and attracted quite a bit of attention, especially as I made sure to greet Peter and his wife wearing my favorite fedora! It was then that I learned that Peter intended to drive the car back to Manhattan himself instead of having it trailered. I did not think that this was a good idea. It was late in the afternoon when he arrived, and it would be getting dark soon. NYC was at least a two-hour ride from my home over very busy roads, and Mid-town Manhattan traffic is about the worst you can imagine. Even today, I would not attempt it in a modern car in broad daylight, let alone at night in a vintage 1930's car with its original six-volt electrical system. Also, Peter admitted that he had never been in the USA before and was not all that familiar with the roads. I had to help him map out a route, and this was in the days before GPS or cell phones. No Mapquest back then, you used a real paper map from Rand McNally. But off he went. I was actually pretty scared for him, but later that evening. he called me from his hotel to let me know that the car had run fine all the way down and handled NYC traffic as well as any modern car. The next morning, he drove it from Manhattan to Elizabeth, NJ, where it was loaded onto a Soviet freighter for the transatlantic trip to Finland. I wonder if any of the crewman remembered how much Stalin admired Packards. One of the photos I posted shows Peter and his wife just before they left for their return trip to Manhattan. This is the last photo I ever took of my car. Peter still owns my '38 and from what I have heard, it has participated in numerous European Packard tours and events over the years. While I do sometimes still miss my old '38 Coupe, I'm happy that it did go to a good home with an owner who loves and appreciates it as much as I did.