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I have scoured the internet and my collection of books on Woodies and have come up short on early Packard woodies. In one of my books there is mention of late twenties and early thirties Packards being outfitted with Cantrell and Mifflinburg depot hack and suburban woody bodies but none show pictures. These cars would not have been in any Packard catalog but would have been offered by the coach builders themselves. The earliest car I've seen with a wood body is a 1926 and it's on this website but the photo is literally a postage stamp size and not much information can be gleaned from it. The next car I've heard of is a '34 which was at once painted teal but is now in black. Both cars are mentioned in this old post:

packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=2684

I'd like to build a woody body on the back of my 1930 733 and I'd like to keep it as period looking as possible however with nothing but a few small photos of a '26 to guide me I'm having to guess at a lot of details. Have any of you got pictures of or information on early 30's wood bodied Packards that you could share?

Below is a Cantrell suburban bodied Franklin which is the closest thing I've found so far to what I'm looking for.

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Have you looked on the Packard Club website?packardclub.org

What about this book,ebay.com/itm/Packard-History-Motor-Car-a ... t=Motors_Manuals_Literature&vxp=mtr

I have checked both those sources without luck. I have a lot of books on Packards, station wagons, shooting brakes and woodies but Packard books tend to mention only bodies available thru Packard dealers and most books about station wagons concentrate on the cars of the late 30's to the mid 50's. The lowly depot hacks, hucksters and suburbans don't get a lot of press. I have seen some late thirties Packard shooting brakes that are really cool but nothing as early as 1930.

The ex-Paul Lamb (now Ralph Marano) 34 1101 has been called by many the earliest Packard station wagon. I don't know if that's true or not, most early Packard "experts" think it was rebodied from an 1101-713 sedan by an early owner. The body is by Bridgeport. The 34 Packard shooting brake was definately not a factory offering. Curiously perhaps the oldest-known Pierce Arrow station wagon is also a 1934, that one by Cantrell and was shown a few years ago at Pebble with an accompanying Pierce-Arrow travel trailer.

Some years ago we had a local club member who had a 1930 Buick, might have been a Series 90, with an extended wheelbase and a station wago type body but with long bench seats on each side of the rear. It was supposedly built for one of the grand old hotels along the Hudson River to transport clients from the steamship pier to the hotel. I doubt I have a photograph anywhere but I'll look. It was really impressive but I don't recall if it was fully enclosed or used sidecurtains.

I wish I could help more. Have you looked thru the various early coachbuilders in www.coachbuilt.com? Anything in "The Coachbuilt Packard"? You might also consider given a phone call to Walt Gosden - he's been writing the column "Coachwork Lines" for CCCA and more recently for Hemmings for perhaps 25 years and is quite a historian of the early Classic-era cars.

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Hello Owen:

I don't know about Paul Lamb, but Ralph's 1934 woody was rescued by Bill Chorkey of Farmington Hills, MI and restored in a shop by "Jocko" in Livonia, MI. I remember seeing it in very early stages of restoration during a garage tour in ca. 1990.

Bill finished it off in a turquoise color with tan/gold pinstriping and claimed it was the color combination selected by the original owner. It is now finished in black.

Photo is attached.

And more here:flickr.com/photos/carphotosbyrichard/4403505331/in/photostream/

Thanks, --Roger--

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What are the differences between a shooting brake, depot hack and suburban woody bodies?

Are there other descriptions, are all considered "woodies"?

Hi Roger, same car. The Chorkey/Marano car was owned for many years by Paul Lamb of Englewood NJ, a very early member of the CCCA, most likely a founding member. I believe he purchased it in the 50s and it was in quite lovely condition when he passed. I don't know what happened to it between then and the Chorkey "rescue".

Hello Owen:

Yes, agreed it is the same car. At first I thought you implied that Marano purchased the car from Lamb. Now I see that Lamb was an earlier owned.

If the car was in lovely condition when Lamb passed, then the next owner let it go. When I saw the car (1990) the wood was mostly rotted away and what was there was bleached by the sun to a gray color. Frankly, it looked more like a pile of kindling wood than anything you would copy a pattern from.

Bill Chorkey showed the woody quite often and he sold it to Ralph Marano in about 2002-3. Ralph brought it to Detroit for the CCCA National Meeting in 2004 where he had it judged and it was painted black with the chrome disc covers.

I do remember seeing it at the Centennial in 1999 after the Chorkey restoration. Roger - were you at the Warren Centennial?

Hello Owen:

Yes, my wife and I made it to Warren in 1999, but we did not make it until Tuesday and then spent a good deal of time looking for another hotel as our original reservation was in a dump of a place.

Temps that week were in the triple digits all week long, but I saw so many Packards that I doublt if that number can be assembled in one place ever again.