Packard Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Ken Eberts 1943-2024: His Art Made Us Say: “I Was There”

30 January 2025

In the world of automotive artists, Ken Eberts ranked with the best. His amazing eye for detail focused on artfully researched, nostalgic scenes, placing vintage motorcars in their original settings. William Jeanes wrote: “His work has a deja vu quality that may make you say to yourself, ‘I’ve been there before.’ The places are real, the cars are real, and the details of his settings are painstakingly accurate. Yet the moments never actually happened. Or did they?”

Read More Read More

Why Studebaker Failed: In the End, It is Always Management

30 April 2020

Why did Studebaker go out of business? I have your book Studebaker 1946-1966, originally published as Studebaker: The Postwar Years. I worked for the old company at the end in Hamilton, Ontario. Your book brought back memories of many old Studebaker hands. Stylists Bob Doehler and Bob Andrews were good friends about my age.

I am looking forward to the last chapter discussing how Studebaker went wrong, especially since I also have theories. It would fun to compare notes. I often quote from your book: “For many years, Raymond Loewy Associates would be the only thing standing between Studebaker and dull mediocrity.”…

Read More Read More

The Packard Adventures of Howard A. “Dutch” Darrin, Part 2

29 May 2017

A chance meting with Darryl Zanuck brought Darrin back to America—at exactly the right time. The custom coachbuilding business was waning, semi-customs were in, and Packard needed a new body style. Continued from Part 1…

Part 2

Excerpt: For full text and illustrations and a roster of Packard Darrins, see The Automobile, May 2017.

Darrin frequently hobnobbed with the Good and the Great. One day in 1934, at the Paris Polo Club, a club director approached: “There’s an American out on the playground with a horse and polo mallet; please see if you can help him.” Dutch went out and met film producer Darryl Zanuck—who invited him to Hollywood.…

Read More Read More

All the Luck: Howard A. “Dutch” Darrin, Part 1

27 May 2017

Dutch Darrin was supremely lucky—and one of the most charming things about him was that he never ceased saying so.

Part 1

Excerpt only. For full text and illustrations and a roster of Packard Darrins, see The Automobile, May 2017.

Looking back on the previous century, the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. reflected that individuals do make a difference: “In December 1931 Churchill, crossing Fifth Avenue in New York City, looked in the wrong direction and was knocked down by an automobile. Fourteen months later Franklin Roosevelt was fired on by an assassin….Would the next two decades have been the same had the car killed Churchill in 1931 and the bullet killed Roosevelt in 1933?”…

Read More Read More

Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep, Part 1

22 September 2011

In 2011, Joseph Washington Frazer (1892-1971) was inducted, belatedly, into the Automotive Hall of Fame, with his erstwhile partner, Henry J. Kaiser, co-founders of the world’s fourth-largest auto manufacturer during 1946-48. This article is updated from the remembrance I wrote of JWF, creator of the Jeep. For more on Frazer, see my book, Kaiser-Frazer: Last Onslaught on Detroit.

✷✷✷✷✷

On August 7th, 1971, the auto industry lost a cherished son. Joe Frazer—mechanic, instructor, financier, salesman, president and board chairman in a half dozen companies, one of the few remaining giants of the classic era of American car-building, passed away from cancer at his home, “High Tide,” in Newport, Rhode Island, aged 79.…

Read More Read More