The Packard, entered by Joseph and Margie Cassini of West
Orange, N.J., has been the subject of an intensive three-year effort to bring
it back to its former glory. It was nearly too far gone to save, Mr. Cassini, a
New Jersey Superior Court judge, said in an interview afterward.
“When it came back from Puerto Rico in 1968 it was almost
rusted through,” Mr. Cassini said. “It was rescued by a serviceman who brought
back it to the United States. From there it went to an owner in New Hampshire,
then to another owner in Ohio, from whom I bought it in 2010.
“Each owner wanted to restore it, but the task seemed too
daunting,” he said.
Mr. Cassini, who entered a 1938 Horch 853A Cabriolet that
won Pebble Beach’s Best of Show honors in 2004, said this victory was an
emotional one for him.
“My parents were alive when we won with the Horch, but
they’ve since passed,” he said. “I was thinking of them as I heard it announced
that we’d won today. This is the pinnacle of our world – our Olympics. When you
win here, you realize you have one of the finest cars in the world.”
Mr. Cassini says that he is the car’s fifth owner. “It was
purchased originally in New York by a Mr. Ricardo Lacosta, a lawyer from Puerto
Rico. He had it shipped there and it was in his ownership, and then his
family’s ownership, for many years. But it eventually was turned into a taxi.
It was painted red and orange, probably with a paint brush, and driven all over
Puerto Rico for many years.”
Somehow the car survived the abuse, the sun and the salt air
until the serviceman obtained it and shipped it home.
Mr. Cassini said he had been interested in purchasing the
car since the 1990s, “but I never thought it would be sold. The gentleman who
had it planned to restore it himself, because that is what business he is in,
but he never quite got around to it. Eventually he realized it was a project
that he wasn’t going to be able to undertake until it was too late to save the
car. It was ready to fall apart.”
Mr. Cassini turned to RM Restorations for help in returning
the car to showroom condition. “It took more than 10,000 man-hours,” Mr.
Cassini estimates. “But now it is perfect. Everything works. The radio, the
lights, the windshield wipers – it runs perfectly – and it easily completed the
whole Tour d’Élégance, probably 100 miles, on Thursday.”
His plans for the car going forward are unclear, he said.
“I think I’m going to put it on a trailer and give it a
rest. Yes, it can go back to being a trailer queen for awhile. It has earned
it.”
by Jerry Garrett
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