Re: The Search For The Missing Packard Pan Americans (and a bit about prototype Caribbean #1)
Posted by Leeedy On 2018/12/10 21:50:05
Quote:
58L8134 wrote:
Hi Leon
Just received the new Cormorant, slowly reading what has to be the definitive work on the Pan Americans, kudos! Your sharing of never-before published photos taken during the building process are icing on the cake. Here's hoping the two missing cars turn up eventually.
Regarding the '53 Studebaker 'convertible' in the horse-jumping photo on page 26. Dealers who were instantly dismayed by the clueless management decision to not include a convertible in the model line took matters into their own hands, sort of. What they did was modified cars to have lift-off hardtops. Of course, given the flexible, light-weight '53 frames, bracing was applied but the results were uneven dependent upon the engineering capability of the custom shop. 'Turning Wheels', the SDC publication has run various features on these aftermarket conversions over the years.
Again, great article that will become the standard reference.
Steve
No one, no source, no publication had ever published many of the photos nor any of the serious factual information regarding the Packard Panthers prior to that time. In fact, NOBODY up until that time knew just how many Panthers had been made, how they got made and exactly who made them. I thought surely this was a high water mark and the piece would become a "standard reference." But I was so wrong. The article was so very right, but as a "standard reference"? Nah. It was trampled to death.
To this day, there are still people in books, magazines and the internet actually quoting from that article, yet they don't even know they are quoting it. Or me. And there are numerous instances where people are quoting my personal friends from Creative Industries as if-oh yeah-the folks doing the quoting actually talked to my friends (they never did, but they make it appear that way). Often times these quotes come out with people writing them who are obviously unaware that the people they appear to quote are actually long dead!
You see, two years later along came a big news stand magazine with access to all this same stuff that I had written and published and ...SHAZAMMMM! There were the same photos and the same info... only without MY name on them! All published as if I were a mere bystander and the TPC article was merely something that fell off the shelf and by magic blew in over the transom and appeared at the big magazine. I didn't like that... and I still don't...34 years later.
Oh, I was mentioned in the text of the article as if in passing, but the "standard reference" aspect of the TPC article? Ignored...obliterated... minimized... and otherwise rendered almost meaningless. From that point on, it was the big magazine and their clone article that got the credit for being a "standard reference"... after all my years of hard work... and info and photos no one had ever seen before. The auction companies... the internet web sites... and on and on didn't even know about the original TPC Packard Panther history. Nor do they know I wrote it. Nor do they know the fact that it set the history on paper for the first time and published photos no one had ever seen before. Even those photos were and still are pirated on the internet... with no credit for where they originated.
Every real writer has a desire to get credited for their work-just like any artist. So thank you for the praise. But in this hobby, "standard reference" status is not who gets there first with the most... but rather who gets there biggest with the most from the first.
Thanks again for the kind words.
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