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Not a Packard subject, but one some here may find interesting.

A few days ago I was watching some car show on TV (might have been Peter Klute's show, "Legendary Motor Cars"). Anyway, in a scene where a race was being shown, a comment was made about making a side glance at the competing car.

This reminded me that "Side Glances" was the title of a 20-year series of articles Egan wrote for Road & Track magazine. Sometimes "Side Glances" was the best part of an R&T issue. I remembered that he had published these articles and went looking for them. I found them on Amazon and ordered all three issues.

I am looking forward to rediscovering Peter Egan with some holiday reading. Maybe you will too.

(o{}o)

Boy do I agree with you about Peter Egan being the best part of several decade's worth of Road and Track. I have been a fan of his writing, observations, experiences, etc ever since he showed up in R/T. He was a former mechanic who appreciated all sorts of cars and wrote beautifully about them. I understand that he's having some health issues and thought it was time to experience some other aspects to life before it proves too late. I wish him well, and with each new Road and Track, I wish that he was back. I have been a loyal subscriber since 1959 and it has only been since Egan retired have I started to carefully re-examine my periodic updates to my subscriptions.

Every time he'd buy another old Buick, Cadillac or Lotus, he'd write beautifully about not only the car and its history but about the emotion that came with the stewardship involved. I just wish he could have enjoyed owning and writing about a Packard. Maybe it is not too late.

I remember reading Egan's first submission to R&T "The Great TC Trek" over 30 years ago. And all the letters from readers over the following month or two raving about it.

He had never had a car with A/C before moving to LA to work for R&T full time, and penned a hysterical article about his theory, while growing up in Wisconsin, that you had to store up BTUs in the summer to make it through the winter. Having A/C he feared, would inhibit BTU absorption. His dead body would be found one morning on the bedroom floor, one sock on, one sock off. The corner would say "he just ran out of BTUs".

I dropped the R&T subscription in the late 80s as, to my taste, they had gotten too elitist and their reporting was no longer relevant to the type of cars that interest me, but I would look in on their web site and read Egan's columns. Saw his last column where he said he was retiring, and was shocked when he said he had a couple "moderately serious" health problems, as he's only a couple years older than me.

I see Amazon also has "At Large", a compilation of his articles, including "The Great TC Trek", for an exorbitant price. I might give it a look, after I finish my studies of the independent automakers during the 50s... Almost finished the Foster AMC book, "Studebaker The Life and Death of an American Corporation" is on it's way to me.