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The teal and blonde wood combination may have been the original color choice on that '34 but it makes my skin crawl. I had breakfast with Jocko about a month ago and he remembers working on that car with his father back in the 90's.

Thanks to everybody for enlightening me on the fate of that car. When I saw the pictures of the blue thing and then the black thing I didn't know if it was same car. I could only assume that people must be crazy enough to take things apart and put them back together for no reason. Somehow I think it was doing better when Paul had it.

Anyway, if my memory was better I could tell you more, but as I remember the car was a darkish/rusty red when Paul had it. It was in his garage and everybody wanted it but he wouldn't sell. The car was almost destroyed in a fire and was pushed outside with flames just about licking the wood.
After that it just sat in Paul's garage. The wood looked good, but woodies never capitivated me so I didn't pay much attention to it. It was just sitting there. Paul was a fun guy to talk to and the cars were more of a backdrop.

Tim, thanks for filling in story about the fire and damage to the car at Paul Lamb's - I was unaware of that incident. Paul also had another car I'm sure you remember, his 34 1104 Dietrich convertible victoria. That was the car used for the cover of the Automobile Quarterly issued to celebrate Packard's history in 1962. If anyone here doesn't have that issue of AQ and can find one, I'm sure it will be worth the cost. C. P. Hornung's little "Ode to Packard" almost brought tears to my eyes when I read it, I guess I can quote it here:

Like muffled drums bestilled, the purr of
once proud pistons, silent as the stygian night,
no longer do you conquer time and space nor
serve a thousand whims to ride upon the wind.
Your passage bright, prestitious and with promise
of immortal fame, your laurel coronet held high,
its diadem of glory undimmed, untarnished,
yet feeds the flicker of a smouldering flame.

Quote:


Woody or woodie is a term used by most people to describe any car with a body made of wood however there are many different styles of woody and they were used for different purposes.

A depot hack was a car used to ferry guests from the train depot to their destination. These were built in an age before air transport and highways when people used the train as their main mode of transportation. They typically had two or three rows of bench seats arranged parallel to each other as well as some storage space in back. They didn't have any windows but they did have a roof. The name depot hack is the same as station wagon as train stations were known as depots and wagons were referred to as hacks. As roads and vehicles improved over time people became more and more likely to drive themselves to their destinations and the term depot hack was mostly dropped. Nobody wanted a depot hack, they wanted windows and maybe even a heater and the newer cars were being sold as station wagons and suburbans and if you had a lot of money you wanted an estate wagon. The estate wagon was the same as a station wagon but typically built on a larger luxury chassis, these were used by the wealthy to ferry their friends around. If you had a lot of money and you lived in England then you would call this car a shooting brake. Shooting brakes got there name from the cars use as transportation during hunts. The term is still in use today and it usually refers to exotic make sports cars that have been converted in to station wagons.

Here is an excerpt that goes in to a bit more depth on depot hacks from a book I own:
woodyguy.net/evolution.html

And here are some modern shooting brakes:

jalopnik.com/the-callaway-c21-aerowagon-is-the-corvette-stingray-sho-453832292

jalopnik.com/5946625/porsche-panamera-sp ... smo-concept-yes-its-a-porsche-wagon

And my personal favorite modern wagon: the FF

jalopnik.com/5739585/ferrari-ff-four-whe ... e-four-seats-one-fantastic-rear-end

It seams that the first year that Packard offered a woody was 1937 so the '34 would have been a one off. I found these while searching the net:

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the first year that Packard offered a woody was 1937 so the '34 would have been a one off

Perhaps I failed to mention it before, but the 34 1101 was almost certainly an owner-commissioned contract to Bridgeport.

Did you have any success at coachbuilt.com? I guess there must be hundreds of body builders to look thru, but there is a ton of info and photos there.

I also found these pictures through coacbuilt.com. The first being a prototype built by Mifflinburg Body co. and the second a prototype built by the Baker Rauland Corp.

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I'm still digging through the Coachbuilt website and I've also ordered as much of their reference material as I could find on Amazon and eBay concerning early Packard woodies built by Cantrell and Mifflinburg but I'm expanding my search to other builders as well.

Here is another '37, this one a panel delivery....

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Thank you for replying to my question, and I like the photos.

The only woody I know that someone made was Jim Hollingworth when he made a 180 wagon.