Louis
08-26-2006, 12:40 AM
for owning too many bikes, there's an article in the NYT here (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/automobiles/collectibles/27PACKARD.html?8dpc) about a guy who owns 33 Packards...
Part of the article:
Collecting
Like Packards? Ask the Man Who Owns 33 of Them
By GEORGE P. BLUMBERG
MODERN medicine embraces many forms of therapy, from acupuncture and herbal treatments to visiting-dog services and swimming with dolphins. But when a head-on crash in 1978 nearly ended his life, Ralph Marano found his own alternative for persevering through a lengthy recovery: a 1937 Packard.
Weeks before his accident, in which a speeding drunken driver smashed into his Dodge Challenger, Mr. Marano had placed a deposit on a Packard 120 coupe, a gleaming black beauty with a silver stripe down its side. “It had all the gingerbread — eight cylinders, extended rear trunk and rack, dual sidemounts and a ‘flying goddess’ hood ornament,” he said.
Despite the car’s charm, the deal was later called off, its $12,000 asking price judged to be too high. But the Packard returned to Mr. Marano’s thoughts while he lay on the operating table after the accident, fully conscious, as a battle-hardened surgeon who had served in Vietnam reconstructed his face. Unable to speak, Mr. Marano scribbled instructions to his father to go ahead and buy the Packard.
That Packard 120 would be the start of a collection that now includes 33 Packards, including treasures like design studies that the company had built for the auto show circuit and rare models with custom bodies by the coachbuilder Darrin.
But amassing a personal museum’s worth of classics was never Mr. Marano’s intent.
“I didn’t know Packards,” he said. “I was a hot rod guy, but I loved the look and feel.”
While recuperating, Mr. Marano would go to his garage and take a whole day to polish a hubcap or a fender. He learned every nut and bolt of the Packard, and came to understand the company’s old advertising slogan, “Ask the man who owns one.”
“The Packard rehabilitated me,” Mr. Marano, now 59, said.
After returning to work in the modest used car business he and his father, James, had run part time, Mr. Marano set out on his own in 1982. With $10,000 from his father, he started Marano & Sons Auto Sales in Garwood, N.J. Today the business has 150 cars in stock and his sons, Ralph Jr., 35, and Jimmy, 37, work with him.
Mr. Marano still has the 1937 coupe that first fired his passion. When his father, an admirer of the marque, died in 1998, the car led the funeral procession. A six-foot red granite gravestone, carved in the signature gothic shape of a Packard grille, marks the father’s burial place, and a likeness of the ’37 is reproduced on the stone.
Part of the article:
Collecting
Like Packards? Ask the Man Who Owns 33 of Them
By GEORGE P. BLUMBERG
MODERN medicine embraces many forms of therapy, from acupuncture and herbal treatments to visiting-dog services and swimming with dolphins. But when a head-on crash in 1978 nearly ended his life, Ralph Marano found his own alternative for persevering through a lengthy recovery: a 1937 Packard.
Weeks before his accident, in which a speeding drunken driver smashed into his Dodge Challenger, Mr. Marano had placed a deposit on a Packard 120 coupe, a gleaming black beauty with a silver stripe down its side. “It had all the gingerbread — eight cylinders, extended rear trunk and rack, dual sidemounts and a ‘flying goddess’ hood ornament,” he said.
Despite the car’s charm, the deal was later called off, its $12,000 asking price judged to be too high. But the Packard returned to Mr. Marano’s thoughts while he lay on the operating table after the accident, fully conscious, as a battle-hardened surgeon who had served in Vietnam reconstructed his face. Unable to speak, Mr. Marano scribbled instructions to his father to go ahead and buy the Packard.
That Packard 120 would be the start of a collection that now includes 33 Packards, including treasures like design studies that the company had built for the auto show circuit and rare models with custom bodies by the coachbuilder Darrin.
But amassing a personal museum’s worth of classics was never Mr. Marano’s intent.
“I didn’t know Packards,” he said. “I was a hot rod guy, but I loved the look and feel.”
While recuperating, Mr. Marano would go to his garage and take a whole day to polish a hubcap or a fender. He learned every nut and bolt of the Packard, and came to understand the company’s old advertising slogan, “Ask the man who owns one.”
“The Packard rehabilitated me,” Mr. Marano, now 59, said.
After returning to work in the modest used car business he and his father, James, had run part time, Mr. Marano set out on his own in 1982. With $10,000 from his father, he started Marano & Sons Auto Sales in Garwood, N.J. Today the business has 150 cars in stock and his sons, Ralph Jr., 35, and Jimmy, 37, work with him.
Mr. Marano still has the 1937 coupe that first fired his passion. When his father, an admirer of the marque, died in 1998, the car led the funeral procession. A six-foot red granite gravestone, carved in the signature gothic shape of a Packard grille, marks the father’s burial place, and a likeness of the ’37 is reproduced on the stone.