Kevin Unger’s 1934 Packard LeBaron all-weather cabriolet is a “huge beast of a car,” and it runs incredibly smooth.
That’s thanks to a 12-cylinder engine, the kind that powered many of the automaker’s famed machines, known for their innovations as well as their high-end appointments. The Packard name was once synonymous with luxury, with the vehicles built at a massive plant on Detroit’s east side.
“They are motors you could stand a nickel up on while it’s running. It almost sounds like an electric car. You can barely even hear it,” Unger said, describing the vehicle’s condition as nearly “bone stock original.”
Unger knows a fair amount about this rare Packard, but he’d like to know more, particularly who would buy this type of car during the Great Depression.
“It had to have been somebody of real wealth that originally ordered this car,” he said, noting that it was designed to be driven by a chauffeur whose compartment might or might not be covered by a canvas top.
“It has a fairly luxurious cabin that the passenger rides in, but it is truly not one of those cars that you jump in and drive to the grocery store,” Unger said.
The car’s got an unusual history, at least the portion that Unger, a 56-year-old health care executive who lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, is familiar with, notably that it appeared in several films in Mexico. The ownership, however, is traced back only to June 1953, which includes a handful of more recent owners before a noted car collector, the late Mark Smith, purchased it in 2007 and returned it to the United States.
Unger bought the car at auction in 2023 from Smith’s estate for $123,200.
Unger, whose own collection includes another Packard, a 1933 Phaeton, would like to uncover the early history of his car, but it has been a challenge.
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A plaque behind the engine shows the vehicle’s delivery date to New York from Detroit as April 11, 1934. The history from then until 1953 is a mystery.
That’s not a surprise to Robert Signom III, executive director of America’s Packard Museum in Dayton, Ohio.
Many Packard records no longer exist, he said, because they were destroyed a couple of years after Packard merged with Studebaker in 1954, an act that prompts its own speculation about what was happening with the company.
The museum has its own challenges trying to research Packards.
“In some cases, we hit a brick wall,” Signom said, suggesting that some owners might not have wanted their stories known.
While many people today might be aware of the name, they might not fully appreciate what the Packard name represented at one time.
“Packard was the most luxurious automaker of its day. Many people said Packard was the Rolls-Royce of America,” Signom said,
But 1934 happened to be one of the company’s lowest production years since 1920, Signom said.
The cost of a car like Unger’s would have been notable. He put the price of that all-weather cabriolet at $6,435 new, which would have been more expensive than a typical house and certainly more than an average annual salary.
“It’s staggering how much these Packards cost when the economy in the country was in tough shape,” Signom said.
Eric D. Lawrence is the senior car culture reporter at the Detroit Free Press. If you’ve got a tip or suggestion, contact him at elawrence@freepress.com. Become a subscriber. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.

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