BURNING A GREY PIPE
NZ Classic Driver’s founding editor checks out a Packard museum in Northland and wishes Formula Ford a happy birthday.
Allan Dick visits the Packard Museum in Maungatapere
Packard was almost the American equivalent of Rolls-Royce – a ‘gentleman’s car’ that had a real reputation among rich Americans, but was also liked and admired by the rich and famous in Europe. I can remember a quote from Peter Revson after he test drove the new Shadow F1 car in 1973 or 1974. Revson was ‘old money’ – a New Yorker and heir to the Revlon cosmetics fortune – so he was no stranger to the ways of the wealthy East Coasters with their chauffeur-driven limousines and huge private estates.
After testing the Shadow, Revson enthused, “It rides just like a Packard.”
It was an odd, out of period comment as Packard’s great days were the twenties and thirties, the marque having disappeared in less than a cloud of smoke and dust in 1957.
Packard emerged from WW2 facing a difficult future despite having turned the slightly less than perfect Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engine into a war-winning work of art. The Packard Merlins were superior in many ways to the ‘double R’ originals.
Anyway, Packard entered peacetime in poor shape. They had a small lineup of cars that were already unfashionable in 1940 and faced a changing, more egalitarian market. Packard struggled – greatly.
By the mid-fifties, not only were they struggling but they had lost their way, and the glory days of quiet sophistication and superb build quality were replaced by cheap gaudiness, ugly styling and huge brutal grilles – and if two-tone paints jobs were fashionable, why not go for three-tone? The cars were travesties of excess.
Then came a merger with equally struggling Studebaker. It appeared to everyone (including the Packard board) that Studebaker was in slightly better shape so it called the shots in this merger of (apparently) unequals.
But post-merger investigations showed Packard was in far better shape than Studebaker and should have been the team leader, so to speak.
The resulting Studebaker Packards were beyond awful, sold abysmally and the end was mercifully swift.
However, over 60 years later, the name still has a ton of cachet and most enthusiasts know that, say, a 1938 Packard was a beautifully engineered, expensive car to be admired.
COLLECTING PACKARDS
I confess I was only vaguely aware that there was a Packard Museum in New Zealand and that vagueness extended to its location. But in Northland recently on a trip for NZ Today magazine, someone suggested I visit the Packard Museum, which I traced to a place called Maungatapere on the most direct route to Dargaville from Whangarei.
This is not a new collection of gleaming Packards sitting in a carpeted, heated, purpose-built museum.
Yes, there are plenty of Packards, including some of the very last produced after the illfated Studebaker merger, but this place has plenty of other stuff as well. Plenty of it.
There is a hall devoted to mainly British cars, including obscure makes and models – some you had forgotten about. There is a first floor chocka with motorcycles, and there are virtually acres of tractors, bulldozers and other machinery, including a really old steam locomotive, plus stacks of memorabilia.
This is not a place of pristine displays – it is far more basic than that and it’s all housed in what was once a dairy factory.
The collection was started a long time ago by Graeme Craw of West Auckland who was an earth-moving contractor with a passion for studying the changes wrought on civilisation by the Industrial Revolution.
So, he started collecting machinery, and that included cars.
He decided to specialise in Packard because his first tractors were Allis Chalmers and they shared showroom space at Dominion Motors with the Auckland Packard dealer.
His first Packard – a 1924 Tourer – was bought off the side of the road in Auckland, and later sold then bought back again.
Initially, his collection was based at his farm at Anawhata, just north-west of Auckland, but it outgrew this location and Graeme then bought the old Montana vineyard and buildings and opened up as The Packard and Pioneers Museum. However, the Auckland Regional Council wanted both his farm and the Montana property, so he sold it and moved to Tarai Station, Nukutawhiti, in Northland and also bought the dairy factory in Maungatapere.
Graeme died in 2007 but he had wished the museum to continue to operate as it had
under his stewardship, so a manager was appointed under the directorship of his son, Fenton, and Fenton’s wife, Geraldine.
Fenton’s also a farmer and a contractor and has carried on as his father wished. Now there is a third generation in line as Fenton and Geraldine’s daughter has a keen interest in the place and the collection.
The museum’s open Wednesday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm; admission is $20 and it’s well worth the effort of finding it.
It is far more than Packards – although they are fascinating enough – the ‘mainly’ British Hall is filled with curiosities and some of the bigger machinery has an interesting past. But you probably need Fenton to explain it all!
This is not Southwards in terms of presentation, but it is definitely worth a long and detailed visit.
BEING HONEST
I had nothing at all to do with Packards during my formative years while falling in love with cars. I can barely remember seeing any around Dunedin. A heavily be-whiskered gent who drove the Dunedin Library bus had a magnificent 1929 or 1930 sedan about the size of a town hall and, when I was at Brighton, one of the Baxter family (James K and noted ‘conscie’ Archie) had a black circa 1937 sedan. With its tall, vertical V-shaped radiator grille I thought it was a rather severe-looking car and it was one of the few 1930s American cars I never fancied.
In the late fifties, Dunedin car dealer Stewart Clayton – who ended up with most of the late model American cars we saw in the city– had a 1954 Packard Patrician at one stage. But I thought it was a riot of ugliness and gaudiness.
The last hurrah for the brand was the truly awful Packard Hawk based on the Studebaker Hawk, the latter being a far more attractive proposition. In creating the Packard version, they grafted a front on which looked like they had used a groper fish for inspiration – a great, wide grille opening that was later mimicked by the Daimler SP250.
I had really only ever seen photographs, and wished I hadn’t even seen those!
There is one – or was it two – at Maungatapere and in the flesh (or metal) after looking at it for five minutes and studying it from every angle I had to admit that there was something weirdly curious about the style.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY FORMULA FORD
We have just celebrated the 40th birthday of Formula Ford in New Zealand with a massive festival at Ruapuna. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend, but I hear it was sensational. [Check out our report in our news pages.]
A couple of years ago you’d have thought the category had no future – fields were so thin you could see through them and even the powers that be appeared to have walked away.
Thanks mainly to the South Island enthusiasts, the category has bounced back.
I remember the introduction of the category well – and it was instantly hugely competitive. I can remember Graham Baker returning home to Christchurch after one of the first meetings and he was well and truly fired up – “there was passing and re-passing, guys were spinning, cars were hanging through the safety fences – it was all on. Everyone wanted to win.”
In those days there were new ‘factory’ cars, there were home-made cars and there were converted cars like Lotus 20s and even Brabham twin-cams.
Initially the category was heavily supported by Ford, as you would expect – but that didn’t last forever. There were attempts to rename it, though without success. Whether Ford actively poured some money in or not, it has always been Formula Ford.
Over the years it is a category that has sharpened the skills of dozens of drivers, many of whom have gone on to bigger things.
In many ways, it replaced Formula Junior (late fifties into the early sixties) as an affordable single-seat formula, the ‘stepping stone’ to greater things.
At first it was really affordable and that resulted in huge fields. While it has always
provided close and exciting racing, it would be fair to say it didn’t always translate into a major spectator category – the cars were small, they had skinny wheels and no wings, the technology was ancient, and the cars sounded like a fly in a bottle. But not all racing has to be about spectator appeal.
Those spectators who do care about the quality of racing rather than just spectacle got their money’s worth from the racing.
But you could easily say the same about Mini Seven and Formula Vee/First – all provide close racing on a budget that doesn’t always have the average spectator shouting with excitement.
I got to drive one in anger once – in a media race at Ruapuna. The late John Osborne was the promoter and he thought a media race at each meeting in a variety of cars would be an attraction. I was at Radio Avon in those days so I was ‘media’, and our first outing was in Mini Sevens, next was in OSCA cars and third in Formula Fords. I was given Lynn Johnson’s Johnson FF to drive.
I practised well and was all set to have a win. But as the field headed down into the hairpin, with me in the lead, a car suddenly rushed up on the outside, about two millimetres away, did some demon late braking and scared the pants off me.
I was mindful of the potential for tangling wheels and this driver was showing no fear at all, so I backed off in a big way, let him go, lost my nerve and spun.
I got it back together and finished third or so but wondered who the maniac was that came charging through in that way, apparently unaware of the risks of racing single-seaters.
It wasn’t until we finished that I learned it was Andy McElrea, back from racing overseas, who had been offered a last minute drive. But at least I led the first 200 metres! Happy birthday Formula Ford.