Here’s a look at the Vault Trip to Detroit – a visit to the outstanding concours at St. Johns, and a view of the Packard Plant.
This is the famous Packard concept car, the Balboa – freshly restored, and making it’s debut at the St. John’s Concours.
And here’s where the Packard Balboa was built, the famous, and now crumbling Packard Factory on East Grand Boulevard. One photo can’t really capture this whole thing, which is spectacular in it’s own way, sort of like looking at Roman Ruins and contemplating what went before.
Here’s a trip inside, done by people who are more adventurous than me, the videographers from “Stoned Planet”. Hmm. Thanks you guys for this tour of the inside, hope you found your way out!
There’s another very interesting video, here at the Detroit News:
http://www.detroitnews.com/videonetwork/856573550001/
Well that’s enough contemplation of doom and ruin! let’s get back to the car pictures!
St. Johns had a great class of station wagons this year. This is a ’59 Cadillac Broadmoor skyview, built by Superior Coach for the Broadmoor hotel in Colorado. This car also made it’s debut at St. John’s.
1937 Lincoln “K” V-12 with touring body by Willoughby
1940 Packard Darrin Sedan!
1930 Franklin 147 Pirate Touring by Walker. Note the doors flare out to cover up the runningboards.
1926 Wills St. Claire T-6 Roadster
1915 Packard Twin Six, first series, with body by Brewster. Note the fixed hardtop design, with removable side windows.
1924 Marmon model 24 Sport Roadster
1920 Pierce-Arrow Model 51 Roadster
1922 Duesenberg Model A 2-4 Rumbleseat coupe by Fleetwood – back when Fleetwood still made bodies for customers other than General Motors!
1911 Chalmers “M” Pony Tonneau. Ok, where are the ponies? 
1936 Terraplane Express Cab truck.
1937 Studebaker Coupe
1937 Delage D8S Coupe Roadster by deVillars
1947 Delahaye 135 MS – a spectacular design by Langenthal, a Swiss coachbuilder.
1927 Minerva AFS roadster by d’Ieteren Freres
Here’s a Vauxhall, – note the unusual grille and hood scallop
1934 Duesenberg J Sedan by Derham. They had a big selection of Duesenbergs, 6 of ’em on the field.
1935 Duesenberg SJN Convertible Coupe by Rollston.
1929 Duesenberg J Beverly sedan by Murphy
1931 Cord L-29 Brougham
1932 Auburn Model 8-100 Speedster
1940 Graham Hollywood 2 passenger convertible coupe – one of only 3 built, and shown here in preservation status.
Graham Hollywood Phaeton – they had a very nice display of Graham Hollywoods and Hupp Skylarks, which used the Cord body tooling after the demise of the Cord Corporation.
Here’s a beautiful 1938 Cord 810 Westchester sedan
Here’s a ’37 Cord 812 SC 2 passenger convertible coupe – also referred to as a “Sportsman”.
1938 Chrysler Imperial town limousine by LeBaron. Built for Ambassador Kennedy’s use while he was the US ambassador to Britain.
1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III Mulliner Park Ward Coupe
1950 Ford Convertible – a German Ford.
1956 Aston Martin DB2/4 Ghia supersonic
1966 Bizzarini 5300 Spyder
1964 Jensen CV8 Mk II Coupe – one of the early ones, with Chrysler 383 V-8 power.
1953 Hotchkiss Gregoire coupe
1930 Pierce-Arrow series B phaeton
1931 Henney Roadster. Note some of the Duesenberg styling cues. It was built on an Auburn Chassis.
Ok, how about a Russian Tupolev boat, with a radial aircraft engine and twin propellers? Wow.
1957 Oldsmobile Super 88 Fiesta Wagon
Here’s the only Camaro Z-28 Convertible ever built, this one built for Pete Estes, a GM executive. That’s Dana Mecum, the auction house guy driving it.
Here’s a Camaro turned into a slot car track.
1965 Huffaker Genie Mk 10 Can-Am car. To wrap this up, the St. John’s concours was a beautiful event with extremely high caliber cars on the field.
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