owner’s view
I
grew up in an era of a lot of fun times for automobiles. I tore
this car apart in ’67 to restore and it sat partially fi xed until- I had bought four or fi ve cars while I was in high school.
I started restoring cars at age 16 or 17—I did a ’30 Auburn
Convertible Coupe for a friend in 1958. I’ve owned over a hundred
Packards over the years—after I opened my junkyard in 1967. But
this one was different. It was way more money than I’d ever spent
up to that time and it was the fi rst car that I’d bought on my own.
It was pretty important to me.
By the time he was informed of the car’s presence in town,
the dealer was getting desperate. This desperation matched well
with Amos’ situation as an out-of-state college student with
appropriately limited fi nancial resources. What he managed to
scrape together was the $400 his parents had given him for room
and board that semester. “I had four $100 bills. I set the money
on the desk and the guy said ‘That ain’t very much,’ but he took
the money and I took the car.”
Luckily for Amos, his landlord, an Army Reserve sergeant,
was the tolerant type who didn’t mind a disabled Packard up
on blocks in the adjoining parking lot—or a transmission in the
house. To feed himself and pay rent to his oh-so-forgiving land-
lord, Amos worked two on-campus jobs—something he says was
no big deal to a young man straight off the farm in Vermont.
Amos’ transmission rebuild was a success and he was soon
driving the car, much to the surprise of his father, who had never
been informed of
the impending pur-
chaseuntilAmossent home for license plates. The combination of the high-output
engine and heavy car did eventually cause a second transmission
failure, but on under taking that rebuild, Amos updated the vulner-
able internals of the 1955 transmission with the more-robust parts
of the 1956 design.
In 1967, Amos took the Four Hundred apart to restore. Al-
though the Packard was still quite young, the decision made sense
to Amos, given his emotional and fi nancial investment in the car.
A good thing, as the restoration would take another 48 years.
Amos started Packard of Vermont and began disassembling unsav-
able Packards and redistributing the parts among the enthusiast
community. Many Packards and other unusual and desirable
antique cars have passed through his hands since, but the Four
Hundred has been a constant.
Today, Amos says the car looks “Exactly the way I bought it,”
right down to that rare batwing air cleaner and the correctly num-
bered carburetors. A large number of NOS parts were gathered
over the years, giving the car an aura of authenticity.
So,ifyoumust Ask the Man Who Owns One just why he
has held onto this particular car, the answer is fairly
straightforward. “I’ve always sought out the weird-
est stuff you’ve never seen.” With only 7,206 Four
Hundreds built for 1955 and most of those lacking
features like factory air, wire wheels, and the dual-
quad Caribbean engine, it’s fairly unlikely you’ll ever
see this car’s twin.The inset photo shows the Four
Hundred back in the 1960s,
when it was still Amos’ daily
driver. Today, the Four Hundred
looks “exactly the way I
bought it.” Maybe better.