CHAPTER TWO 1924 PACKARD TOWN CAR
Story and photos by Angelo Van Bogart
FROM PARTS
TO PACKARD
Dedicated hobbyist revives Fleetwood-bodied
1924 Packard town car
Although this 1924 Packard Fleetwood-bodied town car probably
has just 4,500 miles, it’s led an eventful life. It went from a ritzy cabriolet to
being cut up for use as a truck to a show beauty.
Don Hanson is among the old car hobby’s bravest souls. When he found his 1924 Packard, a First Series Single Eight Fleetwood town car, it was more Packard than Fleetwood. The project was basically a combination between an incomplete 10,001-piece puzzle and a scavenger hunt. However, Hanson wasn’t deterred one iota by the car’s incomplete and rusty condition when he bought it in 1978.
Above: The Packard as owner Don
Hanson found it. The car was
missing its body from the
back doors rearward.
Right: The first step to resurrecting
the body was installing new wood.
“I wasn’t disappointed, because I didn’t know any better,” Hanson said. “I had always wanted an early Packard, and for what [restored cars] were selling for, even then, it was more than I felt I could afford. So I was delighted with it.”
Hanson was lucky to find the car. When he responded to the ad listing the Packard, he was told it had already been sold. Regardless, he left his phone number with the seller in case the deal fell through. Soon thereafter, Hanson’s phone rang and he took off from his Minnesota home to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to retrieve his prize in the middle of winter.
“Basically, the chassis was complete but the back half of the body had been cut off to make a truck out of it,” Hanson said. “Like I learned too many times to count, that was done and people never followed through with it.”
When Hanson came upon the car, it was in a state little more than Packard had delivered its chassis to Fleetwood for coachwork. The chassis was complete and the car still carried the radiator, hood, front fenders and instrument panel. Fleetwood’s aluminum cowl, front doors and partition between the chauffeur’s compartment and rear cabin were also present. However, the rear doors, roof and back portion of the body were lost when a former owner started to make a truck in the 1950s.
“The guy I bought it from lived in Stambaugh, Michigan, and he bought it from the caretaker of the man who originally owned it,” Hanson said. “[The seller] just decided it was too ambitious of a project and he threw in the towel.
“Really, it was almost a one-owner car. The original owner, Mr. Richey, was from Chicago,” continued Hanson, adding Richey was a president and board chairman of the Chicago Northwestern Railway. “He had a cabin in northern Wisconsin and he took it up there and it was up there its entire life. He died early in the 1950s and he gave it to his caretaker, Otto Leino, and his name was painted on the door when I got it.
The 1924 Packard Fleetwood-bodied rides on the First
Series, Single Eight chassis and has Fleetwood Style No.
2645 coachwork.
Right: Owner Don Hanson.
“I was told it was probably in good shape up until the 1950s, when Otto got it and tore the body off [before he returned to his native Norway] and it sat outside.”
The instrument panel continues two-tone green paint inside. Gauges include fuel level, oil
pressure, amperes, clock and a speedometer.
A jump seat allows for additional passengers in the plush rear compartment.
Though the car was missing part of its body, many of its unique features remained intact. In a nod to his railroad history, the original owner had a red lamp placed on the driver’s side running board splash shield and a green lamp on the passenger side. Hanson could also tell the car had originally been painted the same dark green color on the fenders as the body, an atypical feature since most Packards of this year had black fenders. The car also has sidemounts, which are very uncommon on 1924 Packards, and the original wheels are optional 20-inch units, rather than the standard 21-inch wheels. As a result, Hanson believes the car was a special-order, and he’s certain it’s the last Fleetwood town car of its kind.
“It’s the only one I know of,” he said. “I did find a 1928-’29 [Fleetwood], but I didn’t find any earlier ones. It would have been helpful if I could have located other 1924-’25 Fleetwood-bodied Packards to rebuild this car, but I never found any.”
The Fleetwood Metal Body Co. was one of many coachbuilders that added to Packard’s own already-extensive line of body styles in 1924. The Pennsylvania coachbuilder also supplied bodies to other makes of cars, but Packard was one of Fleetwood’s largest customers at the time. Fleetwood had been founded in 1909 in a town of the same name where it built body styles of every configuration, from coupe to sedan to touring to limousine to cabriolet (town car), among others. As was the case with other coachbuilders, Fleetwood bodies were built in runs or to an individual and unrepeated design, and could be trimmed to fit a customer’s wishes or the company’s own whims.
In 1925, Fleetwood Metal Body Co.’s shareholders sold out to Fisher Body Co., of which General Motors had a controlling stock share since 1919. In 1926, GM took complete control of Fisher in a stock exchange that gave it 100 percent of Fisher’s shares. With that trade, Fleetwood Metal Body Co. was completely enveloped into GM, yet Fleetwood continued to produce bodies for other makes of chassis. Soon, General Motors built a satellite plant to Fleetwood in Detroit, then in 1930, all coachwork under the Fleetwood name was completed in Detroit while the Fleetwood, Pa., plant closed.
Despite the number of bodies Fleetwood built, Fleetwood-bodied Packard survivors appear to be rare. With his car’s rear section missing, and another Packard project car in the works, Hanson let the 1924 town car project languish. But he didn’t stop thinking about the project. He placed advertisements looking for a rear section to the body so he could determine how to correctly re-assemble the coachwork. Those ads were never answered, but he never considered parting with the daunting project.
“I really didn’t consider selling it, but often times I would contemplate finding another body when I didn’t get a response to my ads,” Hanson said. “The front section was all complete and otherwise, I probably would have never attempted it. I thought all I had to do was find the rear tub section and doors, and it was a much tougher job than I imagined.”
It did help that the Packard’s chassis was so complete.
“It was explained to me that it only had 4,500 miles, which was on the odometer, but the glass [on the gauge] was broken and rusty because it had been sitting outside,” he said. “While I wanted to believe that was true, I have no idea of knowing that. The frame and chassis were all intact and it looked very good. It looked complete and not messed with. But it was so rusty, the restoration work was considerable.”
“Basically, the chassis was complete but the
back half of the body had been cut off to make
a truck out of it,” Hanson said. “Like I learned
too many times to count, that was done and
people never followed through with it.”
Despite its rust, the chassis was a good foundation with which to work. However, Hanson was still missing the rear section, so he began researching how the body should appear. He visited the Detroit Public Library and viewed historic images of similar vehicles, but his big break came in 1988 when he visited Phelps, Wis., the former home of Otto Leino and the vacation home of the Packard’s original purchaser.
“I went to back where Otto lived, but first, I had to find out exactly where he lived, so I went to the postmaster in that town,” Hanson said. “I asked where Otto Leino lived and found the property was pretty much abandoned. I had driven that far, so I kicked the bushes and looked around and found the rear section [buried in the dirt]. I only found the bottom half, but I was ecstatic because now I knew the configuration.”
Shortly after, another piece fell into place. “Within one month of getting that rear section, this attorney called me and said he had a bunch of rear parts and sections that I could have,” Hanson said. “I didn’t take a trailer because I didn’t expect to get anything, and in the basement of his law office, he had a 1929 or ’30 Packard and he had all kinds of parts. There were these two top sections and he gave them both to me. I didn’t know which one I wanted to use or which was the best, so I pigeon-holed them in the trunk of my car and took them back home and I had my back half.”
A parts sedan was purchased in 1992, which provided the rear doors and other parts. Hanson then delivered the town car’s body parts to Gene Irvine of New Madison, Ohio, to have its wood repaired or reconstructed. In 1997, the body and its new wood frame work were returned to Hanson for the fitting of the body panels — a task that proved challenging.
Hanson had a “Daphne at the well” radiator cap from a later Packard fashioned for the car.
By 2009, the Packard was show-ready inside and out.
Over that winter, Hanson mounted the town car body on the donor car’s frame so he could work on the original chassis and the body at the same time. The chassis was cleaned and he prepared to start the engine in the spring.
“Using a beer case for a seat, I towed the car for initial start up,” he said. “It fired almost immediately, and within minutes it was running quite well. I drove the chassis, with the beer case seat, around the neighborhood for several trips. The engine ran smoothly — no leaks, no noise from within and no smoke. The engine is also equipped with an air compressor that runs off the transmission. Gotta pump up the tires you know! It also worked perfectly when engaged.
“I still haven’t rebuilt the engine and it runs extremely well.”
Hanson took the cleaned chassis to Odyssey Restorations in Spring Lake Park, Minn., to be fully restored. The craftsmen at Odyssey Restorations completed mechanical work and dealt with the chassis’ rust. In the meantime, Hanson continued fitting the body metal, and when it was completed in 2003, he took the body to Wayne Kempfert of Minneapolis for paint. Hanson chose a light green in place of the original dark green, and its lighter hue has become an attention grabber.
“I was after elegance, and I was after something more bright and cheerful,” he said. “I considered gray, but I really wanted to do the green. On this car, I thought it was right and I spent a lot of time sorting out dozens of samples of paint to figure out what it should be. I think it’s the color and open front that really grabs people.”
By the summer of 2004, the body and sorted-out chassis had been reunited and the Packard was ready to be trimmed. Hanson selected Rick Tillman of R&R Upholstery in White Bear Lake, Minn., to install the roof over the rear compartment. Admittedly, Hanson was particular on how the top should look to remain authentic. He was pleased with the results, so he employed Tillman to upholster the inside.
Left with little clue how the interior originally looked on his Fleetwood-bodied Packard, Hanson and Tillman relied on period photos uncovered in the Detroit Public Library’s collection to upholster the car.
Meanwhile, the 85-hp, 357.8-cid straight-eight registered low oil pressure and had water jackets that leaked, so with the prodding of a fellow Packard enthusiast, Hanson continued to tweak the engine. He now knows his car’s engine front to back and how to properly tune it.
“I should have put zippers on the oil pan and front cover, I had them off and on so many times,” he said.
By 2009, the car was ready to be shown, and it made appearances at concours such as the Milwaukee Masterpiece and Salisbury Concours d’Elegance, plus two Classic Car Club of America meets, where its received its Primary and Senior Awards, which confirm its authenticity. Hanson also hopes to enter the car in Antique Automobile Club of America events in the future.
“I would really like to take it to Hershey in October and that’s a big commitment,” he said. “When I took it to the Masterpiece, I got the Most Elegant Award, and I usually get some kind of an award. It’s nice to get an award, but I enjoy the show for the show.”
Through the years, Hanson has sold cars in order to start new projects, but this Packard might just be a keeper. “I would like to think I won’t sell it, but we’re all just caretakers. It’s the journey — not the destination — that drives us,” he said.
Maybe there is another Packard puzzle waiting around the corner. And if there is, Hanson is just the man to put it back together.