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Given the opportunity to bring the family's 1930 734 Speedster to my home for the summer, I decided to do some things and experiment with different appearances it could acquire by removing a lot of accoutrements. I am not a big fan of stone guards, extra lights, mirrors, etc.

In addition, this car was re-restored in 1999. While it achieved top honors with the Classic Car Club at the time, it was only able to acquire its AACA First Junior award. The reason for that, I believe, is that the car was restored for touring as opposed to show, and many parts that were put on the car were incorrect. Since that time, the car has been driven more than 15,000 miles, and very little if any cleaning has been done to it since 1999, other than wiping it off and cleaning the tires. It was a MESS.

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The first thing my son David and I did was remove all the things I didn't like to see on the car. The wind wings were period correct, but not Packard items. Plus the glass was cut incorrectly. Looks cheap.

Also, the rear "tail guard" looks absolutely ridiculous. It was clearly not done when the car was new, but was at least built from proper bumper stock.

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I had seriously thought about setting up a flea market space to sell all of this stuff, but other members of my family wanted me to keep it.

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The sidemount mirrors were also incorrect for a car with metal tire covers. The optional chained mirrors were for cars without covers, or ones that had canvas covers. Off they went. I found on Ebay a correct interior mirror for the car.

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Way back in 1951 or so, when the previous owner (George Jepson) first restored it, he installed tube shocks on the front. Most 1930 Packards you see today have updated shocks, but the most popular replacement was a factory upgrade to 1931 shocks. The tube shocks looked ridiculous, although ingeniously installed. Since the re-restoration in 1999 was done to make it look better for touring rather than showing, they were left on.

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Fortunately, after finding a correct set of shocks and having them rebuilt, it was a relatively easy conversion to what was there originally. The only fly in the ointment was that one of the mounting holes on each side had been enlarged to accept a much larger bolt (perhaps for better strength??). A quick call to McMaster-Carr and the necessary bushings were obtained so that the original sized bolts could be used to assemble the original shocks.

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David had to do most of the work, since I fell from the top of our 9-foot trailer when the ladder fell out from under me. Also, good friend Adam Bishop helped us out when one of the threads proved to be messed up. It wasn't as simple as cleaning the threads with simple tools. Fortunately, Adam is a machinist and was able to rig up a jig in order to get the threads properly fixed.

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The correct shocks were one of the biggest improvements in the looks of the front of this car.

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At this point, running out of time in order to get it to our first appointment (show), very little was done physically other than removing several components. A quick cleaning of the paint was about it before we took it to The Elegance at Hershey. No chassis or engine compartment clean-up, which it sorely needed.

One of the things I wanted to try was installing the optional Bright Bumper, which was a Packard accessory from 1928-1931.

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It showed well at The Elegance at Hershey, but did not receive any top awards. I was not disappointed, as there was still a LOT of work left to do to bring the car back to show standards.

The best part without doubt, was watching my two boys drive the car through the "receiving line."

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