In 1954 I exhibited my 1932 Plymouth 4-door sedan at the first Hershey Fall Meet, and was inspired by the sight of an open Rolls-Royce on the field, to try to obtain a classic open car for myself. No way I could afford to purchase a restored one, so I began searching the ads for a cheaper one needing work.

In 1956, I found a 1928 Packard Model 526 convertible coupe for sale for $200, rough and rusty but complete . Originally with rear-mounted spare tire, it came with a pair of wheel-well front fenders (for side-mounted spares) in its rumble seat. It also had one spark-plug wire disconnected, so that it would run on only five cylinders, and the seller gave me a facile excuse for that defect, but I didn’t care because I was filled with youthful idealism, and really wanted the car. While I was looking it over, another potential buyer showed up, and found the Packard much too rough for his taste. He was a gentleman named Jack Mayl, who had arrived in a rare Alvis drophead coupe. As I was admiring his car, I asked if the top was vinyl (it obviously wasn’t canvas), and he snootily replied "It’s top-grain leather" and soon departed, so I got the Packard by default. I asked the seller if he had its owner’s manual, and he said he had it, but he’d have to look for it. Believing him, (Boy, was I gullible!) I drove back a week later and he tried to avoid answering his door, because a) he was so relieved to have unloaded that piece of junk on me, and b) he was afraid that I had discovered all that was wrong with the car and wanted my money back. In any case, he didn’t have the manual, and probably never had.

As I was living in an apartment at the time, and parked my ’32 Plymouth out on the street, I had to rent a garage somewhere, so that I could restore the Packard. Returning to my childhood neighborhood, where nearly every house had a back-alley garage, I found one and rented it for $5 a month from a retired school teacher, after first offering to clear a lot of junk out.

The first photos show the car before I began its restoration, although I had already removed its canvas top and rotten top bows. It was black with red striping, but the classic Rolls Royce I’d admired at Hershey was white with a polished aluminum hood, so I already knew that I would have my Packard repainted in white, and since it had a green leather interior, I decided on green striping.

So the work began. The succeeding photos show the various restoration steps. I have never had the facilities to hoist a body off the frame (as is common nowadays), but I removed as many of its body parts as I thought necessary.

Its chrome (or nickel) was rusty, but I couldn’t yet afford re-chroming, so I put that off into the future. But I could attack the body rust with a wire brush, and as I did so, I repainted those parts with a product called Derusto as a bottom coat, and then sprayed it with light gray primer from aerosol cans.

The "missing" cylinder turned out to be a broken cam-follower, which was a roller valve lifter which operated off of the cam. Fortunately, my mentor, Fred Long, knew of a Packard graveyard in D.C. where funeral homes left their junked Packard hearses, etc. It was a fenced-off block near 14^th and R streets, N.W., and its gatekeeper loaned me the key to the lot, and permitted me to take anything I needed from the cars there. He was also the proprietor of an auto upholstery shop nearby, where I was able to obtain new "battleship linoleum" for recovering the floor and the running boards, as well as kick-panel-board. A nice guy.

I wrote to the "Packard Motor Car Company", and asked it they could supply an owner’s manual. Even though, by then, they had become "Studebaker-Packard", and my car was nearly thirty years old, they very generously mailed me a copy of the original manual! For a company nearing its demise after decades of primacy as a luxury car builder, they were gentlemen to the end, and deserve all of the appreciation that today’s owners of Packards can give them.

From the aforementioned lot I was able to remove not only the needed valve lifter, plus a couple spares, from one of the junkers, but also the two side-mount-spare stanchions I needed to convert my car to that configuration (Note that in the first photos, the rear-mounted spare is shown, while in the "restored" photo to come, it has twin, front-fender-mounted spares). Also I got the extra wheel I needed for that conversion.

I believe (memory faileth) that I found the pair of side-mount-spare strap-on mirrors in a junkyard for a dollar or so apiece. Imagine what they would cost today!

The photos of the restoration also show that I had, by then, laboriously scraped and wire-brushed the accumulation of mud and grease from the chassis and leaf springs, i.e. the underside of the car, as well as the engine compartment.

I should mention that, because it was a luxury car, it had the Bijur lubricating system. A pull-out handle under the dashboard sent oil out to all of the "grease points" on the chassis, a feature well ahead of its time. Wouldn’t "service stations" today hate it if motorists could do their own lubes that easily?

After two years of tireless work, the car, in primer, was reassembled, and ready to be re-painted white. I drove to a nearby auto paint shop and talked the painter into doing it on his own time, after hours for $25.00 and he agreed. (I supplied the paint.)

That done, I went to an auto upholsterer, who agreed to make a new white canvas top, and do the interior in green naugahyde (no way I could afford leather). I had already done the conversion from rear-mounted spare to dual side-mounts, and had replaced the worn-out floor and running boards with new battleship linoleum, and of course, had replaced the broken valve lifter, such that the car ran on all six cylinders. I was ready to drive and exhibit it at meets , so I and then-wife and very young daughter went off to several shows in 1958, including the Winchester Apple Blossom Parade, the annual Williams Grove Park meet, the Shore Run to Ocean City, NJ, and finally; to the first annual Historic Fredericksburg AACA meet, where a gentleman named Earl Broyles offered to buy the car for more money than I had in it, so I sold it to him.

Note that I had removed the aftermarket radio antenna, the two rectangular rear-view mirrors, and the swan hood ornament, replaced with a Boyce Motometer.

It had truly been an adventure for me, and a real hands-on learning experience, to have found a rusty junker and turned it into a show car. It still awaited re-chroming, but as I have written before, it was okay then to exhibit unfinished restorations as one went along. In any case, it looked nice enough that it sold, again providing this young father with much-needed income.

This story, of my ’28 Packard, is just one of many. Since then (1956-58), I’ve restored other old cars, and I have enjoyed being able to get into a filthy engine compartment and make it like new again.

Most people will never learn that joy, because their modern cars won’t allow it. But my readers, who are in our great hobby, know well what I am saying. Your cars are an extension of yourself, and a tribute to your own work and dedication.