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The car looks much better in black & plum

Hi

The Runabout belongs to Robert Valpey. He also has a wonderful '29 645 Town Car by Murphy and a '31 840 Convertible Coupe.

Here's the view a good many drivers saw back in the day.

Steve

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Correct, the Valpey car is #452-7, Fred Kanter's is 452-6. As far as I know they are the only two remaining 734 runabouts (non-boattail roadsters) left. How many were made we don't know, at least 7 and probably more. Various sources say both 140 and 150 as estimates of the total 734 production, distributed across these styles; highest known (to me) motor number is xxx120. One of the sedans in on display at the Gilmore, I believe Nethercutt has another though I don't have numbers from either handy. The number in parenthesis is the production sequence number of the highest numbered known survivor.

442 - roadster, boattail (31)
443 - sedan (?)
445 - phaeton (26)
447 - coupe Victoria (6)
452 - roadster (7)

The other speedster sedan is in Florida. It's been owned by the same guy for decades. It has sidemounts which look better than the CCCA car. I'm sure I have a picture of it if nobody else does.

There was a mint original phaeton that showed up at a New Jersey yard sale in the late 40's for the outrageous price of $375. I guess it hasn't survived. It was two toned green.

Below is a color slide. The original leather in the Jepson Phaeton was the olive color on the left. The rest of the car was painted over so that I don't recall ever seeing the original colors although the late Robert Crane had it and the original colors may been reported on somewhere. I've heard of a number of Packards in this weird green color scheme.

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The Nethercutt car is a coupe victoria. There is only one known to exist, although there are rumors of a body in Australia or New Zealand.

Also, there are actually 3 roadsters known, however, one of them is highly modified. It was owned by C.A. Leslie, and I don't know if his widow still owns it or not. I've never been informed of its sale, so I suspect so.

There were two Victorias. I knew the guy who had them. One fell victim to the convertible craze. I read the story about the body going overseas once, but didn't bother to retain the details because they were so vague.

I believe Ed Blend had one of the victoria coupes at one time. I don't know if that's the car that Nethercutt currently has or not. I think both cars ended up at Harrahs, and as Tim mentioned, the body for the second is rumored to have left the country. I heard Down Under, but never received confirmation.

Harrah had three Speedsters at one time. I believe the two victoria coupes, and a third chassis. From the three, he built up the famous coral and brown boattail runabout. A second boattail runabout was also created, which I think is the car that Tom Kerr is currently selling. The third is the victoria coupe that is now in the Nethercutt collection.

The car from the Kerr collection is the Stuyvesant/Jepson phaeton. It was very sad because George had some surgery that didn't work out and became very depressed. I think he hung onto the car too long because people were talking to him only because of the car. I was at Kavenagh's place and he told me that George lamented at how he had more money than he knew what to do with but that it wasn't worth anything to him because of his health. Later I was talking to Bea about a situation where I could sell my soul for the money or run. We had a lot in common because she worked for the Equitable and I was an actuary. She agreed that tossing the money was better than not having sanity.

The Harrah's story is consistent with what I heard about the Victorias. Doctor Hoeshbacher had them. He was a terrific person. I guess Harrah made him an outrageous offer. The good one was really too nice to be restored.