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Owen: I would say that the coachwork was done Murray. Having said that you know much more than most in these matters. Would you care to venture a guess as to the coach builder.

I must say that with the pontoon fenders that is one sharp looking car.

The Convertible Victoria pictured below is 1101 5 passenger model. this design was done by Alex de Sakhnoffsky. The original design of the Convertible Victoria and general ideas came from Van den Plas of Belgium.


John F. Shireman

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I would say that the coachwork was done Murray

Right you are, John, if it's a Dietrich body as by that time Dietrich was just a nameplate owned by Murray. But my point was with regard to the statement that the fenders were made by Packard. The car was clearly sold as a chassis, this is indicated by the vehicle number. Now typically when a chassis was sold it included the bodywork from the cowl forward, in which case the fenders (front) would have been stock. So I think with almost with absolute certainty that the front fenders were not made by Packard, though they appear similar if not the same as the ones on the LeBaron 1108 phaetons.

EDIT - of course it's possible, perhaps probable, that Murray could have purchased or swapped Packard or LeBaron for front fenders. A curious car to say the least, and one that seems to be cloaked in mystery, perhaps even something sinister.

The car does have Dietrich body tags (and the V windscreen), so it is a Dietrich.

Ed Blend mentions it on page 75 of his book. We now know the first (or at least a very early) owner of the car was Ricardo LaCosta Jr., of Puerto Rico. Apparently the son of the governor there. He's the guy sitting in the car in the first photo I posted. It also explains why the car wound up in PR.

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All very interesting, fascinating actually. But just how much of a thoroughbred (or mongrel) it is awaits more information about its origin which hopefully will be forthcoming some day. All I could do at this point was to check the thief-proof number <I84705> which is clearly in but towards the end of the 1934 range.

Hi Jeremy, Here is a silver dollar idea I had today:

In 1939, E.T. Gregorie (chief of styling for the Ford Company) held up a pencil tracing of the profile of a long hooded convertible victoria to a visiting Edsel Ford. "What do you think of this Mr. Ford?" "Oh boy!, That's fantastic!, Don't change a thing on it." I'm not sure, but I vaguely recall that E.T. had just returned from vacationing in Puerto Rico. When the full scale model was rolled into the studio at Ford the result was so different from E.T.'s usual work that everybody thought he had gone crazy. But all present soon agreed that the new Lincoln Continental was a very beautifully proportioned design. It's certainly within the realm of possibility (given the pencil tracing rather than a sketch) that E.T. Gregorie had brought back a photograph of the Packard he saw in Puerto Rico.

Given also, that to this day, the school of Art and Design regards the Continental as one of the five most beautiful automotive designs of all time, it's easy to conjecture what happened to any studio photographs of the car on file at Packard. They were flushed. When the new Lincoln started cutting into Packard sales somebody in styling must have realized that management would go absolutely ape if they found out it was a Packard design.

Stranger things have happened. Tracing (no pun intended) this car's history may pay some handsome dividends if successful.

I wonder if that photograph is the first one I posted on this thread? It was found in the Detroit library, I believe... interesting thought.

Where did you hear of this story?

I'm also now thinking it may have also been in 1935 shows, given the late production date referenced by Owen via its cowl number.

Hi Jeremy:

That meeting between Edsel Ford and E.T. Gregorie is documented in the Society of Automotive Engineers Sanctioned Biography of E.T. Gregorie.

Gregorie had super-imposed a pencil trace over a Lincoln Zephyr profile. Edsel flipped.

The next variable is why was the car shown in Pittsburgh?
Well, Pittsburgh was a stop on the Pennsylvania Railroad. If the car was being shipped to New York for transit to Puerto Rico then they may have borrowed it for the show. Perhaps by mistake.

Gregorie was Ford Society and would have been around some rather exclusive venues in Puerto Rico. So would the Packard.

I don't doubt that Packard would fill an order like this, especially for export where it would be less controversial. I remember Dough Heimuller had a 1934 V-12 with a factory built oversized trunk. Paul Lamb had a 34 sedan with leather front door panels. And El Baldrige had a formal sedan with leather rear door panels. They had an entire body division starving for orders in 1934.

If that car was going straight to Puerto Rico via the Export Dept. I don't doubt for a minute that is was factory.
If the customer was domestic then I might expect the order to be picked up by say Derham or Rollston who did lots of super specials like Chryslers with Lincoln Continental Bodies on them, and Packards with Cadillac doors and windows.

Good luck finding pictures. You might try contacting the Frick Museum in Pittsburgh.

LaCosta was a prominent lawyer in PR, and his father was Governor in years past - so he came from a powerful family...

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Tim
I think you've got your facts mixed up a bit. I find no reference to Gregory (or Ford, for that matter) vacationing in Puerto Rico. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying I can't find what you're talking about and would like to know where you're getting this information. To what page in the SAE book are you referring?