A PASSION FOR PACKARDS IS EVIDENT IN THIS AMERICAN’S COLLECTION
FOR THE FIRST TIME, this year’s Concours of Elegance has a feature focused on an individual collector, in this case Jack Boyd Smith, who has shipped over six Packards from his JBS Collection in Elkhart, Indiana, USA. Until 2012, Jack Boyd Smith didn’t own a single classic car. He now has more than 50, housed in two large buildings of 24,000 and 48,000 square feet in size respectively.
Jack was already a collector of art and antiques, so the move into cars came naturally. The prompt was the chance to buy a Rolls-Royce Corniche and a Bentley Continental from the estate of a deceased friend and that got him thinking about more. “I was bitten by the bug – or maybe I bit the bug!” says Jack. “I found a dealer online with a stunning 1931 Cadillac Dual-Cowl
many more accolades at Pebble Beach and other concours d’elegance. Why Packards? “I like quality,” says Jack. “They’re a big car, they’re extremely well built, and in the early ’30s Fords sold for $350 and Packards sold for $5000 to $10,000, depending on the model and the year. It was really only somebody in Hollywood or royalty who could afford a Packard.” Of Jack’s nine Packards, the six due to appear at the Concours of Elegance are (from top to bottom in the pictures): 1933 Twelve 1005 Coupe; 1934 Twelve 1107 Coupe Roadster; 1934 Twelve 1107 Formal Sedan; 1936 Twelve 1007 Convertible Victoria; 1936 Twelve 1407 All-Weather Cabriolet; and 1938 1607 Twelve Convertible Coupe. More details on Jack’s cars can be found at www.thejbscollection.com.
G R A N T B E AC H Y P H OTO
THE COLLECTOR J AC K B OY D SMITH
Phaeton, so I went to see him and I bought the Cadillac and seven more cars in one day.” These included two other Cadillacs (1905 and 1906), a 1923 Studebaker and a 1932 Ford. Then, in 2013, Jack visited the Pebble Beach Concours for the first time, and the bug bit deeper. At the auctions he bought a 1933 Packard Twelve Coupe – one of five made, and one of two known still to exist – and commissioned LaVine Restorations to prepare it for the 2014 Pebble Beach concours, where it came second in class. In 2015 he was back, with a rare 1934 Packard Twelve Convertible Victoria with custom trim by Dietrich, again freshly restored by LaVine Restorations. This time he won Best in Class, and since then there have been
