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Then I guess the one I was looking at was a fake. Right down to the bent ride controller.

That is a weird green. Packard liked those weird greens so I guess it could be original. If it is I can't blame them for changing the hubcaps. I've seen original medallions blacked out, but never saw them with letters in anything other than red. I don't like the top. It makes that thing look like an AMG HMMV M1035 military reconnaissance car.

There are just four real phaetons: Nethercutt's (red metallic), General Lyons' (greyish), Yeaggy (red), and Bahre (black).
I think there are only four real boattails as well.

Sure, Rabble Beach, as Dr. Cole aptly sums it, is exciting. I like many of the cars displayed, and some of them were so far gone they needed, deserved to be restored.

That said, i have to agree with Mr. Bumble (posts #5 & 18 above),
Jim L (post #11),
and Tim Cole (post #19).

Since when did Pebble Beach become the be all and end all of vintage/Classic cardom? I don't care how many press releases the Pebble-cites send to the unimaginative editors of most car mags,
nor how many mall developers, silver spoon daddy's boys or
Ralph Laurens show up.

The Pebble Beach mentality killed the joie de vivre of the
old car hobby, opposite lock from Bill Harrah's more thoughtful approach. Yes, Harrah did a few restorations to Pebble "standards," and twice his cars won there. But this was n o t his focus, not by a long shot.

I refer anyone who enjoys vintage, Classic cars of
any make to Tim Howley's considered overview "Restoration vs.Preservation, To destroy or preserve the original. Ahh, that is the question" in Special Interest Autos, Issue 166, July/August, 1998. Some of you may have saved SIAs. Believe you can still order back issues for a song from Hemmings at 1 (800) 227-4373.

According to Tim Howley (and others), "....Pebble....may have been the first meet for which cars were torn down and rebuilt. Competition at Pebble was intense by the mid fifties. In came the money, and the moneyed collectors instantly tried to outdo each other. The complete restoration to perfection beyond the original was born."

Tim goes on to explain how this was at loggerheads to
Bill Harrah's usual work, which was an appreciative goal for most rational gents regardless how deep their pockets:

"(Bill Harrah) made an enormous contribution to the old car hobby. He gave it respectability. He recognized the later model cars as being collectible (like the late, great SIA magazine). He raised the standards of restorations....insisted upon authenticity. His vast showrooms were opened to the public at little or no
charge. Bill Harrah loved old cars and old car enthusiasts.
His vast Reno Swap Meet and Show, held until his death in
1978, proved that."

"In recent years we have seen perfectly fine original cars destroyed in the quest for trophies. It is a shame, because as Phil Hill has pointed out, every time we do this we destroy an original. You can never recapture originality in a car once you destroy it by complete restoration."

In this article, Howley captions the photo of a then
90-year-old "fabulously original" 1908 Pierce Great Arrow "as its own best argument for preservation. You could never duplicate the patina that 90 years have bestowed on this car."

Elsewhere in his feature, Howley captions a photo
of a gleaming original '53 Cad Eldorado in LA's Peterson Automotive Museum (hey, it could be a Caribbean, or anything): "It would be utterly demented to try and restore this car to win more prizes."

You'd like to think a quixotic bunch of "independents" like us would be immune to "best of" hype and breathless press releases. There'll always be a
Pebble, a Miss America pageant, a Westminster Kennel Club
dog show, an Academy Awards. That's human nature. You really think the most beautiful (and bright) woman, hound,
movie are present and acclaimed at the preceding?

Having been around these cars on both coasts, some of us remember Ed Jurist's wonderful Vintage Car Store, up the lazy river from NYC in bucolic Nyack. His Locomobile, Chadwick, Lozier "speed cars," Cricklewood Bentleys and the
like that we saw in the late '60s were very much done in
the Bill Harrah spirit. Restoration meant an amalgam of
preservation and rebuilt/rejuvenated as needed. Many of the
fellows involved back then had, adjusted for inflation,
more money than the look-at-mes at Pebble today.

But they exuded the essence of Tim Howley's fine article, which i heartily recommend.

Please pardon this epistle's unwieldy length, but
some of us have had sufficient Pebble mentality, thank you.
BTW, a late friend took Best in Show at Pebble, i being one
of the first people he phoned when he finally tracked down
his candidate in a Belgian barn.

Another friend, who runs a shop catering to Packards,
told me how in the 1990s, he was instructed to run a die grinder over the entire engine block and cylinder head of a Graber-bodied '34 Packard 1101 convertible sedan. That sort of nonsense resulted in the car then taking Best in Class at
that year's Pebble.

It's sad, very, to hear people gushing over Pebble here of all places, when there are so many real cars on PI.

Yeah, this year's winner is an impressive Packard, especially if you like parodies.

But Tim Cole's previous comments sum it. I know of a Duesenberg that's been campaigned thrice at Pebble by three
different owners over the decades, each time painted a different color.

If it's simply stripped to bare metal craftsmanship
that turns you on, my late Pebble Best in Show-winning
friend said the Oakland Roadster Show was the ultimate.

The fake LeBaron I was looking at was red, but not the Nethercutt car.

What puzzles me about Rabble Beach is they lust after all that dough and then spend it in such stupid ways. I knew one CCCA old timer whose spent his money at the animal shelter. And none of today's millionaires give any money to the Hollywood rest home for indigent actors - so it closed.

No class.

However, the crazy money is what makes these resurrections possible. And if you're not crazy you're probably not going to get it.

Quote:

You don't have to drive on the Tour to win at Pebble Beach. There is an advantage though; if there is a tie in judges' voting and one car was on the tour and the other was not, the tour car gets the nod, but may not necessarily be a winner. Many exhibitors like the Tour and driving and showing their cars on the road and in a lunch stop over in Carmel.

Here is a photo I took of the Nethercutt's '34.

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Amen, Monsignor Cole. Instead of having opted to idle along a quiet, semi-private driveway, "trouble trucks" and transporters at the ready, breaking a tie, perhaps a disclosure of how the contestant came by his money. Inheritance is number one on the Pebble hit parade. Arbitragers, sending US jobs overseas, mall developers.

One of the most fawned over Names at Pebble, owner of a vaunted collection of Classics in NorCal, produces auto upholstery for the new car industry entirely in a factory in Mexico.

Tim Cole and Tim Howley are right. "Class" oft notably absent.

Once upon a time, concours d' elegances, in Europe in the '20s and '30s, were not janitoral d' nonelegances. The cars were driven to the event the night before, perhaps through rain, parked on the field, usually with whatever road film or mud inside or even on the fenders remaining. The cars were then judged solely on grace of line, ambiance.

Pebble mentality has infected every suburban show and shine
across the nation for decades now. Money see, money do.

Amen to you too, Overdrive! The cars trailered in and out of Pebble Beach, et al., have very little in common with the original vehicle. If you ever haver the chance to take a really close look at a genuine original (i.e. unrestored) custom job like Dietrich, Murphy, or Rollson, what you will often find is a bit of a chop job. Basically these shops modified original bodies with crap like those ridiculous balloon fenders on the Best of Show Packard. Sometimes, especially in the case of Dutch Darrin, they added stuff made by other manufacturers. And even more frequently, the overall quality of the custom job does not stack up well against the original, factory produced car. If it takes a professional restorer about 10,000 hours to cobble together a concourse show car, somebody has more money than good sense when it comes to car collecting.

Most people who collect cars are not zillionaires, just normal folks who buy what they can afford and in most cases, probably have a lot more invested in terms of sweat equity, actual time on the road, and genuine affection for whatever normal car they possess than some super-rich investor looking to turn a profit when he dumps his show winner.

From Dale:

"We're proud to have been a primary part in the restoration of this wonderful car. I believe that this is the most important example of an American car with a factory production chassis."

From me:

I'm compiling an easy to use online photo gallery of select photos from our portion of the restoration, which we finished in early 2012 before passing it on to the owner of the car's chosen shop to do the finish work.

Since many of you appear to have interest in what it takes to restore a car like this, I hope this gallery will give you an idea of the sheer amount of work that is required.

I'm updating the gallery as quickly as I can, and more photos will be going up as the week progresses (it's a time consuming process). The "download original" link below each picture will bring you to the full resolution version of the image so you can see up close details.

There will be 200-300 photos on there by the time I'm done, in all we took several thousand during the process, but that of course is way too much to show.

Here's a link to the gallery: http://www.bonecreeper.com/packard.html.

Oh, for Tim: The color of the top that the owner chose could actually be correct, or close to correct. Dale's old friend Bob Turnquist once showed him color samples from 1934 Packard convertible victorias. You are correct, they are all tan, but there were apparently 15 shades of tan. Typical Packard, eh? We had nothing to do with the upholstery or top, but the gallery does have some factory photos of what the original would have looked like.

MrBumble: You're correct on your assumptions about restorations. In most cases, restorations cost far more than the cars restored are worth.

A good number of the cars we restored fall into this category. The owners chose to restore them out of sheer love of the cars, guys like Tom Lester, Ken Wessel and Len Immke.

It's the rare car that comes along, namely custom Packard twelves like this, and Duesenbergs and the like, that is worth more than the restorations themselves. A full restoration on a car usually averages around 4000-6000 man hours. Some cars, such as the one this thread is about, take far more. This car was byfar the most difficult one Dale ever restored.

Restoration is an art of love for the cars.

However, the pontoon fenders on this car are the originals - from the factory, if you can believe it. It was a show car. You can see photos on the gallery I posted above.

One more thing from Dale: "If money is the only measure of our work, then we are complete failures."

Say it, Rev. Bumble. Can I have a witness? Hallelujah. I like Darrins as well as the next fellow, esp. the 1938-40s on the One-Twenty chassis, which are the ones Dutch preferred and was quite vocal about it in later years. Darrin owners admit the factory jobs are better automobiles.

Darrin early on used Terraplane door handles picked up at
junkyards merely as he liked them. 1936-37 Cords were marvels of getting by on a shoestring. Novel cars to be sure, but strictly front-drive Auburns, and Auburns, other than the woefully underrated V-12, certainly one of the best bargains in automotive history, were Hudson/Buick-class cars.

But Hudsons and Buicks can be fun and have their merits.

Dutch Darrin, Ralph Roberts (LeBaron), and Raymond Loewy
were all good at turning on fake French accents if it helped
seal a deal.

Duesenbergs are impressive, tho' they were obsolete within two years of their debut and it took eight years
to sell almost their target 500 a year production. For sextuple the price of a lovelier Chrysler Imperial or Packard, they should've been lavish. For that extra money you got four fewer main bearings, a lesser transmission than the Chrysler or Packard, twin overhead cams, a long timing chain that stretched at high engine speed upsetting valve timing, a front u-joint a little on the skimpy side, and a cuckoo clockwork box of gears that flashed periodic lights reminding you to change oil, check battery water, that the chassis was being lubed. In a Packard, you had to make the heroic effort of pulling daily the Bijur handle.

BTW, it was never lost on me that my late Pebble Best of Show-winning friend owned a janitorial supply business, and
wound up with a conga line of hoi polloi Gallic and US luxe
from the '30s by buying and trading up, it all starting in
1972 with a '57 T-Bird.

Of the dozens of exotics he owned; Packard Twelve, Marmon 16, Auburn 8 & 12 speedsters, Lagonda V-12, Delahayes, Delages, Hispano-Suiza K6 & J12, Talbot-Lago, Bugattis, the ONLY car he ever had an emotional attachment with, loved, was a '53 Nash-Healey, which he sold and bought back four (4) times.

Why any of us are even talking about the lame inevitability of Pebble when we've got genuine marvels like Packard Info mystifies me. I only want to defuse Pebble,
put it in perspective, so the rest of us can enjoy our wonderful cars without feeling like second-class citizens.

And Mr. Sarcux, every one of us here knows what it is
to restore a car. Impressing us with the number of billable
man hours doesn't wow us.