HIN BE
D THE WHE
EL
SHANE BACKHOUSE’S
1937 PACKARD 115-C JUNIOR SPORTS COUPE
WORDS AND PHOTOS GREG PRICE
Why a Packard? Well, as the advertising blurb back then said “Ask the man who owns one!” so I did, but I had to wait nearly 57 years before I got the opportunity to actually do so, but it was worth the wait!” Back in 1964, which was a couple of years after the previous owner of this magnificent machine bought it, I had a crush on a young lady whose father had a couple of decrepit 1936 Packard sedans, resplendent with twin side-mounted spare wheels, parked down beside his house in the Auckland suburb of Mt Eden. They had been lying in state (yes, they were already in a real state, condition-wise) but I never plucked up the courage to actually knock on the door and ask if either was for sale. In any event I
24 Beaded Wheels
wouldn’t have had a clue as to how to get them going, but dreams are free, right? As luck would have it, the owner’s daughter became known to me through work, and I quickly established that the cars were NOT for sale. Damn! But over subsequent years I passed the house frequently and the cars remained there untouched for many years. I don’t know what happened to them. But there was just something about how they looked, even in their sad state, that acted like a magnet to my fascination with the marque – in part, attributable to my years at boarding school perusing old National Geographic and Saturday Evening Post magazines’ car advertisements in the school’s library. Which brings me to Shane’s coupe. It was previously owned by one Roger Hill and it also became disused and was laid up under Roger’s house in 1971, where it remained until 2003. In the interim 33 years it accumulated a significant coating of coal dust from Roger’s basement coal storage bunker, but at least it was
