Re: Packard wins Best of Show at Pebble Beach

Posted by su8overdrive On 2013/8/20 2:35:40

Sure, Rabble Beach, as Dr. Cole aptly sums it, is exciting. I like many of the cars displayed, and some of them were so far gone they needed, deserved to be restored.

That said, i have to agree with Mr. Bumble (posts #5 & 18 above),
Jim L (post #11),
and Tim Cole (post #19).

Since when did Pebble Beach become the be all and end all of vintage/Classic cardom? I don't care how many press releases the Pebble-cites send to the unimaginative editors of most car mags,
nor how many mall developers, silver spoon daddy's boys or
Ralph Laurens show up.

The Pebble Beach mentality killed the joie de vivre of the
old car hobby, opposite lock from Bill Harrah's more thoughtful approach. Yes, Harrah did a few restorations to Pebble "standards," and twice his cars won there. But this was n o t his focus, not by a long shot.

I refer anyone who enjoys vintage, Classic cars of
any make to Tim Howley's considered overview "Restoration vs.Preservation, To destroy or preserve the original. Ahh, that is the question" in Special Interest Autos, Issue 166, July/August, 1998. Some of you may have saved SIAs. Believe you can still order back issues for a song from Hemmings at 1 (800) 227-4373.

According to Tim Howley (and others), "....Pebble....may have been the first meet for which cars were torn down and rebuilt. Competition at Pebble was intense by the mid fifties. In came the money, and the moneyed collectors instantly tried to outdo each other. The complete restoration to perfection beyond the original was born."

Tim goes on to explain how this was at loggerheads to
Bill Harrah's usual work, which was an appreciative goal for most rational gents regardless how deep their pockets:

"(Bill Harrah) made an enormous contribution to the old car hobby. He gave it respectability. He recognized the later model cars as being collectible (like the late, great SIA magazine). He raised the standards of restorations....insisted upon authenticity. His vast showrooms were opened to the public at little or no
charge. Bill Harrah loved old cars and old car enthusiasts.
His vast Reno Swap Meet and Show, held until his death in
1978, proved that."

"In recent years we have seen perfectly fine original cars destroyed in the quest for trophies. It is a shame, because as Phil Hill has pointed out, every time we do this we destroy an original. You can never recapture originality in a car once you destroy it by complete restoration."

In this article, Howley captions the photo of a then
90-year-old "fabulously original" 1908 Pierce Great Arrow "as its own best argument for preservation. You could never duplicate the patina that 90 years have bestowed on this car."

Elsewhere in his feature, Howley captions a photo
of a gleaming original '53 Cad Eldorado in LA's Peterson Automotive Museum (hey, it could be a Caribbean, or anything): "It would be utterly demented to try and restore this car to win more prizes."

You'd like to think a quixotic bunch of "independents" like us would be immune to "best of" hype and breathless press releases. There'll always be a
Pebble, a Miss America pageant, a Westminster Kennel Club
dog show, an Academy Awards. That's human nature. You really think the most beautiful (and bright) woman, hound,
movie are present and acclaimed at the preceding?

Having been around these cars on both coasts, some of us remember Ed Jurist's wonderful Vintage Car Store, up the lazy river from NYC in bucolic Nyack. His Locomobile, Chadwick, Lozier "speed cars," Cricklewood Bentleys and the
like that we saw in the late '60s were very much done in
the Bill Harrah spirit. Restoration meant an amalgam of
preservation and rebuilt/rejuvenated as needed. Many of the
fellows involved back then had, adjusted for inflation,
more money than the look-at-mes at Pebble today.

But they exuded the essence of Tim Howley's fine article, which i heartily recommend.

Please pardon this epistle's unwieldy length, but
some of us have had sufficient Pebble mentality, thank you.
BTW, a late friend took Best in Show at Pebble, i being one
of the first people he phoned when he finally tracked down
his candidate in a Belgian barn.

Another friend, who runs a shop catering to Packards,
told me how in the 1990s, he was instructed to run a die grinder over the entire engine block and cylinder head of a Graber-bodied '34 Packard 1101 convertible sedan. That sort of nonsense resulted in the car then taking Best in Class at
that year's Pebble.

It's sad, very, to hear people gushing over Pebble here of all places, when there are so many real cars on PI.

Yeah, this year's winner is an impressive Packard, especially if you like parodies.

But Tim Cole's previous comments sum it. I know of a Duesenberg that's been campaigned thrice at Pebble by three
different owners over the decades, each time painted a different color.

If it's simply stripped to bare metal craftsmanship
that turns you on, my late Pebble Best in Show-winning
friend said the Oakland Roadster Show was the ultimate.