1935Packard
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Posts posted by 1935Packard
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14 hours ago, mrcvs said:
I digress, but I see the single most detrimental thing to the future of this hobby is the lack of affordable and ample real estate allowing for the building of garages and other storage facilities.
It all depends where you live, but that is certainly true here in northern California. The cost of most cars is nothing compared to the cost of most garages. We have fantastic weather to go for a drive, but the need to garage an antique car makes it a very expensive hobby even once you have the car and the car is running well.
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I’ve long figured that, over time, differences in classic car values based on engine output/size/cylinders would diminish. No one is driving old cars today to be fast when you can get a new car that goes 0-60 in 3 seconds.
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Somewhat similar car -- albeit originally about 1/2 the price, and not a CCCA car — for comparison purposes. (Not my car, but I saw the advertisement in Packard Club publications.)
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10 hours ago, Matt Harwood said:
Do you love the car? Did you stay up in bed thinking about it instead of falling asleep? Have you been browsing Cadillac catalogs and websites and finding all the information about it that you can? I think that is a good indicator.
My advice is to always follow your heart. Nothing about this hobby makes financial or logical sense, so the only thing you can do is fall in love and run with it.
I try not to overpay when I buy a car, as I worry it will rankle me (and interfere with the joy) if I do. But this is golden advice.
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Horrible. Just glad no one was hurt, and I hope the insurance company makes the owner whole in the dollar sense (even if they can't in terms of emotional attachment).
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5 hours ago, Matt Harwood said:
It is probably worth noting that the Packard I posted above with invoices was going to Pebble Beach. The restoration was expressly commissioned with a Pebble BoS in mind. I looked at a few of the details on one of the invoices and it was something like, "wet sand and polish the back of the hood vent doors." So while the numbers are truly astronomical, they are also far beyond what is actually required to be considered a "restoration," even to a relatively high standard. There are plenty of 100-point CCCA Classics running around that would get laughed off the show field at Pebble. It's just not the same world.
And that wasn't even a monthly invoice. The $180,000 bill only covered 2 weeks!
I had the engine rebuilt for my 12 from that particular shop, around that same time, and just seeing that invoice format again gave me flashbacks. My 12 is a driver that has peeling 70s paint and 70s vinyl seats, and 90% of what they did for me was only the rebuild. But still, I was always super nervous opening that envelope. I think my highest monthly invoice was $20k, which for me was like, um, ohhhh boy. That shop does great work, and the engine on my 12 has been perfect since the rebuilt (including today, when I was out for a drive). But man, it's not cheap.
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The way costs are going, classic car restoration standards over time will look something like this for all but the very deepest pockets:
1970s, standards were low;
2010s, standards were high;
2050s, standards will be low (as no one will be able to afford it otherwise).
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1948 Packard accessories brochure is here:
https://packardinfo.com/xoops/html/downloads/48 Accessories.pdf
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4 hours ago, wayne sheldon said:
Back in the 1950s, as the hobby grew and expanded across the nation, within the San Francisco Bay Area three HCCA Regional Groups were formed. Two of them were based literally only a few miles apart. The San Francisco Regional Group was based in on the Northern peninsula, technically South San Francisco city. They sought to attract a wider membership and chose to be inclusive to not just pre 1916s, but also cars through most of the 1920s. Both the Santa Clara Valley Regional Group and the Bay Area Regional Group (which I have been a member for thirty years!) chose to be strict pre-'16 groups. Although both of those groups have relaxed their focus a bit, allowing elderly members to drive slightly newer cars, both are still around, and the Bay Area Horseless Carriage Club is very active, with numerous tours and other activities every year!
The San Francisco and Bay Area groups meeting sites were separated the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge and a few miles of surface streets on each side. About fifteen years ago, the San Francisco Horseless Carriage Club disbanded. The one that opened their membership to newer cars is gone, while the two pre'16 clubs are still going.
My feeling is that the HCCA should stay true to their calling. The earliest cars need a club to benefit the earlier cars. The HCCA chose to be that club, and I think they should stay that way.
This subject keeps coming up in the HCCA every then and again. And I keep saying my same thing again. Personally, I would rather have a smaller club, with a simple newsletter (if that was what we had to go to?), devoted to the earlier cars, than have a fancy magazine and a bunch of members that have no understanding of what driving an early non-Ford is like. The early cars and people that love them need the HCCA.
As for the "buy in"? 1914 and 1915 model Ts in acceptable condition and nearly ready to tour, can be had for not a whole lot of money. Model Ts are very forgiving, and cheap to maintain by any collector car standards! If one cannot afford one of those, they won't be able to manage even much of a cheap 1950s collector car.
Agreed. I'd add that the Bay Area Horseless Carriage Club is doing it right: They're active, drive their cars, have events, and are really supportive. I joined a few years ago and I don't have an HCCA-era car, but it's a great group of people. And I figure I'll get one of those cars eventually....
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Maybe she was referring to steam cars and electrics with no transmission? Ok, ok, seems unlikely.
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3 hours ago, West Peterson said:
It's a shame about the baby-shit brown color they added. It looked soooo much better as a one-color car.
It was added by the time of the 2018 auction, although since made a one-color car (as it was in the latest auction). Agree with you, though, it looks better in one color.
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My dad was a remarkable man who led a pretty remarkable ilfe, but he was not in any way a car guy. My grandfather did have an influence on my interest in cars, and I have his '35 Packard (which i drove just yesterday). But even he wasn't so much a car guy as he was someone who lived in an age when some amazing cars were around and were dirt cheap; he bought his 1935 Packard Twelve for $500.
On the other hand, there's a picture of me in a little toy car when I was about 5 yers old and I am smiling ear to ear. I asked my mom about that picture and she said, "you always were happy around cars."
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6 hours ago, alsancle said:
A few things:
1. The high price was justified by the over the top restoration. Restorations tend to mellow with time.
2. The first two results were stupid high for a standard eight.
3. Auctions give you a price for a particular car at that location in that moment. Different time and place, different bidders, different results.
Aj,
I agree as to (1) and (3). Although having followed the 1101 market pretty closely for a few years, I disagree as to (2). Those were pretty typical numbers for a nice open Eight.
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Bob Woolfit's very nice 1934 Packard Eight Coupe Roadster, three auction results over 9 years. I don't know if the car has been not well taken care of, or maybe these numbers are quirky, but the results seemed worth noting.
2015: $195,000
2018: $173,600
2024: $134,400
https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/mi24/miami/lots/r0036-1934-packard-eight-coupe-roadster/1433627
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3 hours ago, alsancle said:
I wasn’t as much of an avid picture, taker, as I usually am. But here are a few. I wanted this C28 Voisin so badly I could taste it. Motor partially disassembled, some pieces missing, but insanely spectacular car. It more or less sold for peanuts relative to what they have sold for in the past.
A lot of really unique car for the dollar, for those wondering:
https://bid.goodingco.com/lots/view/1-8MNOGQ/1935-avions-voisin-type-c28-clairire-berline
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The sales brochure for the 1939 Plymouth offered this explanation of why Plymouth had switched to a column shift.
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If you're trying to research the originality of a LaSalle, get the build sheet. It has all the original numbers and options as it left the factory.
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I've always understood the "I can only pay $, I have to pay for shipping" as just an excuse to offer less —as if an excuse were needed, which it isn't. I mean, if I'm buying a car and I think a seller will accept less, I would be inclined to offer less no matter if the excuse is good or bad.
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Two more Delahayes at BAT. This '38 coupe by Chapron outside Paris was up last week but didn't sell. And the blue '46 Guillore coupe that sold for $98K at Monterey in 2022 is now up at BAT. I wouldn't think BAT is a good place to sell these cars. But maybe it's easy enough to try that sellers figure it's worth a shot, even if only to advertise the car?
UPDATE: The '46 Guillore has sold on BAT for $92K, plus I assume the 5% buyer's premium, so that's a total of $96.6, almost exactly what it sold for two years ago.
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6 hours ago, TAKerry said:
Its refreshing to see that new car depreciation is nothing new!
It used to be a heck of a lot worse. In those days, a car was worth around 10 cents on the original dollar by the time it was 6 or 7 years old.
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For reasons I won't bore you with (at least yet), I have been looking through archives of the New York Times at the automobile classified ads that appeared in 1942. The Times used to run a car classified ads feature every day called "Automobile Exchange." It was always in the sports section, usually on the last page of the sports section, perhaps on the thinking that it was men reading the sports pages and men who made the decisions of whether to buy a car.
Here's what the Automobile Exchange typically looked like, taking March 31 as a pretty typical one:
As you might guess, there were some ads for some pretty fantastic cars. A few that stood out to me, like this from George C. Rand, Bugatti's New York agent and a noted race car driver:
And I'll take pretty much any of these, thank you:
In 1942, with the war on, it was very hard to get good tires. So a lot of the advertisements emphasized that the cars came with good tires. It's a little funny today, though: Packard 12 Phaeton, with 6 good tires, and here are the sizes of the tires!
"Hodich," at 1116 1st Avenue, the name in the Duesenberg advertisement, refers to Louis Hodich, described here as a "well-known New York dealer in used Duesenbergs."
A few dealers were repeat advertisers, especially J.S. Inskip, Rolls-Royce's dealer in the U.S. who offered a lot of European high-end cars. Probably not too easy selling German cars in 1942, though.
Anyway, some pretty cool stuff, I thought.
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6 hours ago, 3macboys said:
While not a prefect explanation by any means I've always looked at the Pre-War, Post-War thing as being running boards, no running boards. There was a clear change and even thinning of the herd of manufactures in pre and post war production and design.
Lots of big changes. For example, as you know, automatic transmission came at the end of pre-war, but it was rare; it was quickly the norm post-war.
Especially if you focus on the new designs and technology that arrived around 1948 and 1949, it was a really big change from pre-war. My '49 Cadillac has an OHV engine, an automatic transmission, power windows and seats, and a power top. It feels vastly more modern than my '35 Packard, which has sidemounts, a rumble seat, wood framing, etc.
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The real reason to change the "antique" definition is that cars stay on the road much longer than they used to. Decades ago, cars, didn't last long; a car was used up after a few years. So a 25-year-old car was several generations old, the kind of thing you rarely saw on the road anymore. Today is different: The average car on the road today is 13 years old. And 10% of cars on the road are 25 years old or older. So a 25-year-old car today is just a somewhat older car, the kind of thing you see all the time, not some sort of ancient means of transportation.
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Thanks, all. To be clear, I don't care if it leaks in the garage. My 1930s cars do that, it's fine. My concern is leaking oil while driving, on the driveway and on the road. Anyway, thanks for the replies!
A Pre War Car - Funny noise - But no one is laughing! 1936 Packard
in General Discussion
Posted
Now *that's* an unexpected turn in the road.