Packard 1108 Twelve wins Pebble Beach concours

The 1934 Packard 1108 Twelve that won the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in a perfect coat of dark green paint was once a lowly taxi cab prowling the streets of Puerto Rico in roughly applied red and orange livery.

"A gentleman named Ricardo Ricasta bought it in New York in 1934 and the car returned to Ricasta's original home in Puerto Rico for a while," owner Joseph Cassini said. "When he passed away and the family had no interest in the car, it became a taxi cab for a while."

Imagine hailing a cab in downtown San Juan and this magnificent Packard rolls up. Even in red and orange it still probably looked pretty stately. By the time Cassini bought it in 2010 it had been through five owners and who knows how many paint jobs. RM restored it to its stately glory and can get a load of credit for the win, which is Cassini's second Best of Show at Pebble. His first came in 2004 with a Horch.

"I was fortunate to win in 2004, but it's even more exciting the second time," Cassini said.

How would he describe the car now?

"It's sexy," he said as announcer Ed Herrmann interviewed him on the PA. "And it's got a great ass!"

We have to agree.

The restoration was meticulous all the way back to new.

“The way the car sits is exactly the way it was born,” Cassini said. “Its pedigree was traced back to the beginning... Ray Dietrich designed the car with pontoon fenders and a rear-mounted spare.”

The Concours program gives a little history of the car:

“The Packard Twelve was built from 1933 to 1939 with more than 35,000 examples produced … Most received factory bodies. Only a handful received custom coachwork by such greats as LeBaron and Deitrich. This unique example has semi-custom features including the distinctive Raymond Deitrich-styled teardrop fenders. Deitrich used a Custom Victoria body as a starting point for the design, which was built by Packard as an in-house special.”

All that didn't seem to matter to several subsequent owners. The car was brought back from Puerto Rico by a U.S. serviceman, Cassini said, then sat neglected for a while. The buyer before him decided not to go through with a planned restoration and the car became available, so Cassini bought it. RM then went to work on it, finishing up a little over a week before the show.

He doesn't plan to drive it, at least not right away.

“It'll be a trailer queen for a while,” Cassini said.

In recent years the Concours has also announced runners up, which is nice. This year's runners up for Best in Show were:

- A 1934 Hispano Suiza J12 Vanvooren

- 1914 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost Van den Plas

- 1932 Lincoln KB 12-cylinder roadster with body by Murphy

We spoke to the owners of the runners up and they all seemed happy and honored to have made it that far.

The field this year was its usual wonderful self, with excellent cars in all categories. Some cool classes included: BMW 507s, Indianapolis Roadsters, two classes of Porsche 911s and one class of really cool French motorcycles.

It would have been hard to pick a winner but even harder to answer the post-concours bar question, “Which one would you want to drive away?” We'd like any of them or all of them. Please.

By Mark Vaughn