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PAC regent and museum curator Earl Rubenstein recently did a TV news segment on the Automotive Driving Museum in Southern California... and the appearance of one of their cars in Pasadena's fabulous Rose Parade on New Year's Day. Yes, again there was a Packard phaeton in the Rose Parade this year.

The link here is to a special KTLA News segment that was broadcast on SoCal television. In this segment you get a free tour of the Automotive Driving Museum. As a bonus, you get to see the Howard Huges/Jean Peters 1955 Caribbean which is virtually new-old-stock! This car was covered back in the 1970s in The Packard Cormorant magazine (issue?) and I personally drove it way back then. At that time it had about 1200 miles on the odometer. It now has about 1700 miles logged. So for those wondering what ever happened to the car... here it is!

Earl is also one of the founders of the Earle C. Anthony Packard Club region of The Packard Club! He owns several Packards and is a font of information.

Of course in the video you get to see many of the other treasures at the museum including a very rare fabric-bodied Stutz.

Take a look here and see it all!

KTLA News Packard

According to her bio, Jean Peters didn't marry Hughes until 1957 and was married to someone else is 1955. As well, HH was always having problems with the IRS and had a fleet of beat up Chevys to hide in. A more likely story would be that it was simply purchased, kept by one of his companies, and forgotten.

Ahhh. Where was all of this info to refute the story when it actually took place back in the 1970s? Nobody argued with it then... including the persons involved. No place like the internet for irrefutable expertise. Howard Hughes never went by anybody's rules...wife or no wife... married legally or not.

If you know anything about Hughes and the women in his life...and if you go by who is legally married to whom and get your "facts" by looking at dates and times in Hollywood, you'll have movie people doing belly laughs. Most of the time Hughes was involved with actress Billie Dove, she was married to someone else too! And there were a dozen more examples that were well known to anyone knowing about Howard Hughes. He was also known for being involved with numerous other women while he was either married or involved.

As for the Caribbean... the car was indeed purchased BY Hughes for Jean Peters... and the name on the California title was signed off "Elizabeth Jean Peters." AND if you knew anything about the story as it actually happened it was Peters' nephew who got the car out of the garage in Beverly Hills and got it running (he used to take it to the Sunset Ecology Car Wash on Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood...would it help if I said I saw it there? AND it was serviced at L.A. Packard dealer Frost & French at least once). It was not "kept by one of his companies." However, Hughes' people got control of the car back after it appeared in Motor Trend magazine... and it went to a Hughes warehouse THEN.

As for Hughes "hiding out in beat-up Chevys"(no apostrophe)... he wasn't "hiding out" in these cars (by the way, he had a 1949 and a 1952)... but he liked having midnight rendezvous biz meetings in them. He wasn't so much hiding as he was expressing paranoia. However, Hughes also had several other cars... among them the 1953 Buick and 1954 Chrysler he had outfitted with the special air filtration systems. And a fleet of others nobody ever heard of (some were in the Hughes warehouse where my friend went to buy the Caribbean back in the 1970s).

As for any troubles Hughes did or didn't have with IRS... Hughes certainly was not hiding from them and if they wanted him or his money, all they had to do was to show up at either Romaine street, one of his many houses in Beverly Hills or Bel Air...or in Culver City or Playa del Rey...he did after all have a few companies operating in numerous states and locales including SoCal-some of them with U.S. government contracts.

You should know that this history was not made up... regardless of what the internet and "bios" may have to say. After all... isn't the internet the same place where the story of 10 Packard Request concept cars still looms?

as Leeedy mentions, the ownership provenance of this car is VERY well covered

Well, it seems to me that my assumptions are indeed more accurate that the "Hollywood" video version. HH's company bought a trinket, gave it to someone where it sat unused in a garage. The notion of Howard going to a Packard dealer and buying a car is silly. By that time he was suffering the ills of his plane crashes.

I've seen that germ free thing as well and who's to say whether it was actually bought by some dowager suffering from smoking related emphysema? Some of this Howard Hughes stuff is as phony as his will. Again, maybe it was purchased by one of his companies and never used.

And he was having problems with the IRS and other agencies. He didn't want any address assigned to his whereabouts. At least that is what he told people was the reason he was living in the dark. Sure he was nuts, but not completely.

It works like this: So and so charges the cost and restoration of his Duesenbergs to his father's company where it is written down in the ledger as equipment and materials. The cars are now obtained on a tax free basis. It only takes a political enemy to start an audit. For example, remember the great American patriot Spiro Agnew? For years he had been filing fraudulent tax returns, then when it looked like he might become president the IRS delivered a subpoena for him to appear in tax court.

Internet forums are places where anything and everything can be argued into the ground. AND everybody has an "opinion." And everybody is an expert. And everybody can cite "references" to bolster whichever direction they choose to push the argument at hand. Such cynicism!

What is being argued here is pure opinion. The person who bought the Hughes car in the 1970s has the facts. Furthermore, I personally interviewed numerous Hughes people in the 1970s so this is not open to debate. You could have talked to these same people back in the 1970s... IF you were so interested. Perhaps you could have told them to their faces that they were wrong.

And I assure you... presumptions about whether Hughes could do this or that or buy a Packard in 1955 are pure assumptions. Calling the purchase "silly" IS silly. If you knew ANYTHING about Howard Hughes and his companies, you would know that they did not operate autonomously-at least not in that era. Between Hughes and his right-hand men Noah Dietrich and Robert Maheu, they knew what was going on. To suggest otherwise is pretty laughable. Either way, Hughes companies were not just going out and willy-nilly buying one of the most expensive and rare cars in 1955 just to lose it in a warehouse someplace.

Hughes bought the car... Hughes DROVE the car. Hughes even TINKERED with the car (notably with the fuel feed). And his multiple plane crashes (NOT just one) not withstanding, Hughes was certainly well able to get up and get around very well in 1955 and many years later, thank you... despite whatever assumptions and opinions someone might want to express in 2015 on an internet forum.

While one can sit here and throw up one opinionated argument after another on the internet, I can only suggest that you read some of the Howard Hughes histories (I have about 25 of them). I would also suggest that you seek out and talk to some of the people who were actually THERE instead of posing endless arguments based on opinion. Or not.

Either way, this ridiculous argument rave can continue here on this forum isolated from reality and time, but this will be my final response on this matter. CLOSED.

Jean Peters was married to somebody else in 1955. The video says she was married to Howard Hughes. She didn't marry him until 1957.

Personally, I don't really care. But I do find it amusing that somehow a car being owned by such and such is deemed to be so important. If anything such property represents ill gotten gains. Would I pay more for a car owned by such and such? No. I might consider it less desirable.

REPOST FROM PREVIOUS POST ABOVE:

If you know anything about Hughes and the women in his life...and if you go by who is legally married to whom and get your "facts" by looking at dates and times in Hollywood, you'll have movie people doing belly laughs. Most of the time Hughes was involved with actress Billie Dove, she was married to someone else too! And there were a dozen more examples that were well known to anyone knowing about Howard Hughes. He was also known for being involved with numerous other women while he was either married or involved.

What you are saying contradicts the video. The video says the car was used once and parked without interest. Now you are saying that HH was tinkering with it like a new toy. The video says he bought the car for his wife Jean Peters. That has already been discussed.

I saw a car for sale recently that I know intimately. The story printed in the ad was complete crap. Anytime I hear or read some of these stories I become suspicious.

To add even more spice to this mix, I read somewhere (source forgotten) that Hughes was displeased with the performance of the two four barrel carbs. Whether this was before or after Jean Peters said she did not like the color combination, I do not know. I also remember the article saying that the tinkering around those carbs took more than a short time, never ever pleasing Mr. Hughes. Who was doing that tinkering I do not know (dealer, trusted personal mechanic, etc) but wonder if he'd finally had enough with (wife/girlfriend/paramor, or those two carbs) that he just had the car banished to unseen portions of the stable where it could not stir unpleasant memories. We've probably all had times like that, but he could afford to do it for many years.

BTW, on a related subject elsewhere, is the fender portion under the turn signal trim painted the "middle" color of the stripe? Is that enough evidence to settle that debate?