Tph479

1932 Packard 900 coupe sedan in the painting on the wall, and a model of a 900 coupe on the stand. Pretty cool office. These are my kinda guys.

How is it eating breakfast at a $18,000,000 dollar property?

Dogs playing poker does not get the respect that it deserves from the Art Connoisseur's. It would be quite the story if the person who bought the Ferrari GTO was worth $51 million and spent his entire net worth on the Ferrari as one last gift to himself.

I think I would have a lot more fun staring at and driving the Gto than staring at the wall. Buying the Ferrari would also be easily justified to the misses. “But look how much money I saved by buying you that Ferrari rather than the Card Players picture that you wanted, it’s also in your favorite color red”. With the money I saved we can go to Arby’s and buy that big beef that you have been talking about wanting to try.

#1 Correction on number 1. You live everyday, you only die once. #2 You are correct on the hobby being a diversion for every day life. #3 yeah sh*t happens. Luckily most of the time something goes wrong it can be repaired or really is not a huge problem in life in the grand scheme of things. Who doesn’t remember having like 95% of your net worth tied up in your ride during your teenage years or early twenties. Life was good then, not a worry in the world!

It’s nice to see that you are driving it around. We still have some decent weather forecast for another week here in Taxistan so you may get another successful drive in.

Under some of that shiny paint that was done in the 1970’s and 80’s on high end classic cars were cars held together with drywall screws and bondo that was so thick that it had to be chopped out with chisels and two pound sledge hammers. Some real butchery, Joe Doakes type of work back in the day. When the cars were loaded up with all of the chromed accessories, the term we used was that they had “parasitic appendages” on them. There is nothing finer than a well preserved original car or a quality restoration where people take pride in their work.

I went to high school directly across the street from Roxas’ restoration shop and there was always cool stuff outside being loaded and unloaded. Since I went to an all male high school, which would probably today have to be called an “AMAB” - assigned male at birth high school, there was really nothing cool to look at besides the cars across the street. Later on in life, I would stop by Roxas’ shop at his new building. I would usually stop by when a car was just finishing up and getting prepared for Pebble. It was always neat to see the Duesenberg’s, Packard’s and other classics when they were fresh out of the box. The quality that they did is top notch. What really was eye opening to me was seeing the condition or lack of quality of the previous restoration work on some of these cars that they were re-restoring. Some of these cars really lived hard, battered life’s. The guys did an excellent job of getting the evil spirits out of these cars and putting them back together again and put back to their formal glory. I remember checking out the divine car about 15 years ago. The throne car barley fit through the door since it was so wide. Pictures don’t do that car justice, it is a bus seeing it in person. Even if you threw a wig on that car and drank a bottle of scotch it wouldn’t look any better. I can at least say that the most recent restoration of that car was as usual phenomenal. The joke was how many angles could Devine fit in that car at one time.

I think that 3 were made and all exist. It is a pretty racy body style and these cars do check all of the boxes. In regards to the crank down top, where you put the handle into the side of the car and turn it, is there any truth to some kind of lawsuit between the patent holder and GM during the 1960’s on the top mechanism design?

No pictures of the Father Devine car yet with his angles?

J534 is a pretty cool car. It has the crank down convertible top. Car was right out of the restoration shop on a ride.

I have stayed at the old Auburn Hotel, in Auburn, Indiana before during the fall ACD meet. Cool hotel, but I will blame any previous or future medical ailments that I have on my stays there.

No idea. The car bounced around after it left the area and I haven't seen it since in person. It would be a shame if it was converted to sidemounts. The rear spare gave it a distinctive look from the other duesys. Seeing the car without the rear spares would be like seeing Tom Selleck without a mustache.

Back in my youth, there was a local collector that had the Murphy disappearing top Convertible coupe with the two rear spare tires. I always thought that car was stunning. The joke is that it went into Roxas’ shop for a brake job and a couple of hundred grand later came out a show dog and won a bunch of awards . It is black on black with blackwall tires. Most cars done at that time still had the circus wagon motif and this car looked sinister in black.

The Packard that Bob restored is a very, very nice car. Did he ever give the award back? All the old car guys in the area knew the story and thought it was funny. Too bad the car is gone from the area. It did look nice sitting in the lobby of the hotel at the auction last year.

What about stacking them up on top of the toilet tank? Newest on top.

My buddy Jim owned the tapertail for a while back in the 1960’s. He purchased it off a local estate for $20,000. He put down $4,000 and the estate held paper and financed the balance. He told me he had a lot of sleepless nights owing that much money on a car since the car cost a lot more than his brand new house did a few years earlier. The 20k was a huge sum of money back in the day for a collector car. Jim said a bunch of people were lined up waiting to buy that car from the estate and they couldn’t believe a young punk could come with that kind of scratch to buy it, not knowing the deal that he worked out with the estate. Luckily as time went on he found some sucker to buy the car for $40,000 in cash, was able to pay off the estate and go back to having good night sleeps…. “ I thought I won the lottery selling that car!” Also a cool Delage in the background.

Werner Gubitz really knocked it out of the ballpark when he designed the Light Eight. In his earlier years Gubitz worked under the tutelage of Ray Dietrich and other fine designers. In my opinion there is not a bad line on that car. Jessie Vincent and his guys also worked some magic on the engineering of these fine machines. Over half the Packard’s built in 1932 were of the light eight model, and Packard lost money on everyone of them. In period literature, the only car in the 1932 Packard lineup that the above 900 coupe roadster did not outperform was the Twin Six coupe roadster. These shovelnose cars are muscle cars for the vintage and are fine overall performers. The above car appear gets the Fonz treatment. 2 thumbs up.

I briefly met the owner of the green Loco last year tagging along on a tour in Wisconsin. Very friendly, enthusiastic and knowledgeable younger collector. Glad to hear that no one was injured.

Here is a picture of the Model T meet from this summers Baraboo, Wisconsin tour. There was a fair share of young people and younger families on the tour. The cars at a model t meet run the spectrum from cars with needs to exquisite show cars. Most people do not know that when new Model T’s were built with a lot of precision engineering and were of high quality especially for the price. There is a reason that a lot of guys with bigger brass cars also have a T. Fine point judging in the T world ranks up there with the corvette and duesenberg circles and there are alot of nice cars out there. Model T’s are inexpensive way to get into the hobby with alot of club and part support. There is a reason they made 15 million of them and they are simple to learn how to operate. fyi- For those who think a T are underpowered, my friend built a dual overhead cam rajo model t engine that is fuel injected and dyno’d I think at 350hp. Yes you can have alot of fun with a T!

Coil, condenser, loose wire or maybe something got caught in the carb jet. Neat car. Happy that you are driving and enjoying it.

Talbot-Lago Teardrop coupe.

Here are 2 more pictures to add to this car’s provenance. Jim just got done installing the exhaust manifolds that he had porcelainized in blue, to contrast against the engine. We should all send thanks to Al Gore for inventing the internet so we can share these pictures from across the world!

On Jim's black car the belt line dives down on the upper portion of the rear fender, and on the red car the belt line seems to drop down in front of the rear fender. What are the odds of two Hisso's with similar body styles being in the Chicago area around the same time? Jim used to talk about shows at the old O'Hare stadium and how everyone drove their classics to them.