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Brian, I agree and also see it as a HUGE job, probably so huge it's chances of getting done are pretty slim. Since dealers came and went, to make it useful you'd want to give dates for when a dealership was in business - that means you'd want lists from every year, or at worst every few years, and then check each one for each individual dealership to try to establish time frames.

I repeat my offer, if anyone wants information from my 1939 list, all they need to do is to post or PM me. Best I'm prepared to do at this point in time.

Not knocking the project, but just curious what benefits or what one is expecting or could derive from the info after the work. Aside from curiosity of seeing if buildings still there or what business the address is currently, is there anything else that could be found out?

Another thing that would be nice to go with this is, after 1958 what makes of cars the dealerships that were still in business switched to, ie, "In 1958 XXXX Packard started selling Chryslers", etc. It would be good info to know, as well as how long they were in business.

As for research, people who live in the city involved can do the research to find out where and when the local Packard dealership was going. I'll even step up to the plate and see what I can find out for Wichita, and see if I can find out where they were, and take present day pics of the dealership(s). This all should be available at the local library and City Hall's of each city/town/village.

Howard -

As far as technical merit for keeping the cars on the road, there's probably no benefit. I suspect that any dealership buildings left standing have long been picked clean of parts, literature, and relevant artifacts.

I suppose on could ask the same question about production records.

Yet, I think a database of Packard dealerships may be of interest if people are curious about any listings in their area, look to see what became of the dealership and owner, and report back. For some it may be nothing more than sightseeing. Pix of dealership buildings, past and present, seem to be of interest to some Packard folk, but may have value for architectural appreciation. The color postcard of the Noll Auto Co. showroom, full of '56s, seemed to attract a lot of interest.

Mind you, I'm just putting out food for thought - already have too much on my own plate to work with (but haven't forgotten about the package you sent me, Howard).

Yet, there must be other reasons of interest as it seems there are others who have collected this info over the years. If so, I'd like to hear about them.

Perhaps those who are interested in the results can step up to the plate and take on the "transcription" work. If none, then so be it. I'll let the users decide.

Eric -

Thanks for your offer of help. I think of that kind of research and what we already have on a handful of dealers could be a good supplement to the basic contact info that is available from any factory list. Yet, I think it best to work on those details after we've gotten all the basic info "imported" from Dave's list, with user-accessible fields to receive that additional info.

Of course, there are probably plenty of dealers out there who don't appear on a 1939 list - especially after the 1954 merger, when many (though not all) Studebaker dealers signed on to sell Packard product.

Knowing what these dealers went on to do after Packard might provide an interesting, if only historical, retrospective view. Heck, the dealer that delivered my Caribbean Hardtop, new, is still doing business as a car dealer. (You'd think things like that would have been a warning to GM and Chrysler before they cut so may loose.)

Is there some way to scan or otherwise load a printed document to a read only file without someone turning into a key punch girl?????

Each LINE or row of the printed document becomeing a single record in the file.

If this is possible then terrific year-to-year X-ref info from Packard Parts catalougs could be compared to see what part numbers span various years. The parts catalougs are formatted rather well for that operation. THE QUESTION is how to get the PRINTED info to disk or tape without manual keypunch.

My $.02 on this:

I would think the first task on this is to get as many dealer names as possible with as much or little detail that accompanies them.

I think the most basic information as a place holder in the database would be:

Dealer Name, City, State.

Once we have that as a place holder then the other information could be back filled at a later date. Things like actual address is also important from a building historical perspective, but keep in mind that a dealer may have moved during their time as Packard Dealer. So a 1934 address my be relevant to someone with a 34 Packard purchased from them, but not someone with a '56 if they were shown to have moved.

So what I purpose is the following:

Construct a basic key table of Dealers that contains nothing more than Dealer Name, City, and State.

From that we add historical entry information to it as information is discovered. Things like known address in '34. Moved to new address in '41, etc, changed ownership in '51. Became a Packard dealer in '30, added Studebaker in '54, Dealer closed in '56. Obviously these are just quick things I jotted down and the actual Historic entries would be more detailed and could include pictures. Basically all this extra information is added into the historical table. So when a Dealer is queried, all the relevant historic entries that go with it are also displayed.

Also once we have a the basic bare-bones dealer table created with as many dealers as possible in it (Dealer Name, City, State), then we can hook that up to the Owner Registry. So if someone knows that a car was bought at a specific dealer, then that could be auto-linked back and forth. So for example when you are viewing someone's Registry entry, you could see what dealer they bought it from. Also if you were looking at a specific Dealer entry, perhaps we can list all of the cars in the registry that were tagged as being from that dealer.

With all of these projects, it's better to start with the basic common information that will be present for every dealer, and then layer on the extended detail over time. Otherwise it becomes a HUGE project that never gets done. Think about how long it has been since Packard shut it's doors, and no one in all those years has put together even that basic list yet. It's because folks get to stuck in the details, and give up. KISS (Keep in Simple Stupid) should be applied here.

Kev's the guy to answer this best I think. Of course they are "word recognition" programs that you can scan a document and convert it text like MS Word, but the original copy is such that I think you'd have to proof and correct every word, and the formatting would drive you nuts if the software is still the way mine is. You could then perhaps cut and paste into a spreadsheet but that might be more work than just entering all the data from scratch.

What about it Kev, want to take a try with the sample sheet I posted?

If you check this same original query over on the PAC forum, posted by the same person as here, you'll see that PAC has roster keeper for dealerships, so if you guys are curious you might want to query him about what exists. The same post also notes that, as I suspected, list(s) are available at the Dayton museum.

The states (texas, New Joysy, etc) would be good to tag. There is only 48 such states to load into a match table????

Then extract the next line which would contain the dealer name.