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By Destinee A. Hughes
Photography by Rafael Balcazar
“The museum was designed and created to look like a 1920s showroom,” says museum coordinator Rose Cooley. “So it’s almost like going back in time. Where else do you have that?”
Only 600 of the 1909 Packards were ever made, and only three exist today. The Antique Car Museum has one of the three. The car is so rare because it is made mostly with brass, and the steering wheel is on the left side of the car.
Arthur and Shirley Stone collected Packards for more than 65 years. Even though Arthur passed away in 2010, Shirley, 96, still visits the museum every day.
Packards were created in the late 1890s by brothers James Ward Packard and William Doud Packard and partner George Lewis Weiss. The cars quickly gained a reputation for being a superior horseless carriage over other models of the day. By the 1920s, Packards were considered the most prestigious cars made in America.
"Museumgoers both young and old, and from as far away as Dubai have visited the car museum. Museum coordinator Rose Cooley loves seeing kids’ reactions to the antique cars. “It gives them a bit of our own American history,” she says.
When Arthur Stone opened the museum in 2000, he owned 16 Packards. Today, the museum has more than doubled that number and includes hundreds of automobile memorabilia and even a gallery devoted to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stone’s favorite president.
The Antique Car Museum, located at 1527 Packard Avenue, features an ongoing exhibit of 39 Packards with model years ranging from 1909 to 1958.
Originally appeared in the Summer 2015 issue.
