Re: Are 57 and 58 Packards really Packards

Posted by BH On 2009/9/8 13:15:45

Back in the 1992, I made a trip to the Studebaker Museum in South Bend to do a little research in their Archives. I had learned, from a previous tour in 1991, that the museum had received what was left of the Studebaker corporate record, and since Packard had merged with Studebaker in 1954, I though there might be some good technical info there for my V8s that hadn't been available to the public. Specifically, I was hoping to obtain copies of Packard Service Technical Bulletins (STBs) to fill in the gaps in my collection, looking to see what bulletins Studebaker might have published (if any) in the years that followed, and browsing for anything else on the mysterious engine oiling issues. They literally had tons material (paper, in large quantities, is surprisingly dense) - not including countless cabinets full of engineering drawings that were off limits (that is, until the terms of that separate donation were complete).

Visits for research were by appointment only, but you're not allowed to simply pour through the shelves unattended. Instead, a curator would bring file boxes, one or two at a time, to large table for me to sift through. I found a complete set of STBs for 1955-56, including the seldom-seen Zone-only issues. I also found a binder that had belonged to T. W. Nertney, Packard's Service Technical Manager back then, which contained master texts for inner-company correspondence with interesting insights on a few service issues. My time and funds were already running short when I found a binder of Studebaker Service Bulletins (SSBs), and I only managed to copy a handful of articles pertaining to some immediate issues with my three V8s.

Yet, near the end of my journey to discovery, I happened across a report regarding the disappearance of a rendering and scale model of the Predictor. Naturally, that rang a bell, given my visit, just a few years earlier, to the Henry Ford museum - where I saw those two very artifacts on display. However, I clearly remember reading on cards accompanying the display that each of those items had been donated by Wm. Schmidt.

As I read on through the report, it seems that an outside agency (Pinkerton, IIRC) had been employed to investigate the disappearance and report their findings. Apparently, these two artifacts came up missing as Detroit operations were being shutdown and assets relocated to South Bend. The agency interviewed scores of employees, but while it was clear that they were targeting Schmidt, they could not come up with the artifacts. In the end, they concluded there was insufficient evidence to proceed with any criminal filings.

I didn't make a copy of that report, but wish now that I had. At the time, all I could do was sit back and grin - thinking of all the stories about how much had been scrapped or incinerated. What might have been considered an act of theft, then, would come to be revered as an act of salvation by countless generations of Packard enthusiasts and historians.

So, as Paul Harvey used to say, "and now you know...the rest of...the story - Good Day!"