Where the Packards are; Inside the Fort Lauderdale Antique Car Museum.(Brief Article)

Arthur Stone, a florist, began collecting Packards in the 1940s. This interest in the marque culminated in opening the Fort Lauderdale Antique Car Museum in May 2000. His objective is to display one example from each of Packard's 59 years in an authentic period setting. The collection is well on its way to meeting that goal, but it's not necessary to be as much of a Packard enthusiast as Stone to enjoy this fascinating place.

The strength of the museum is the depth of its exhibits, covering the development of early automotive technology and the changes that took place over the years building Packard cars. Everything here is on a friendly scale (including a transplanted English pub), encouraging lingering reflection. The museum building is broken up into a number of rooms of different sizes. A large central area displays most of the cars. It also contains lots of automobilia. Displays of radiator caps, tire ashtrays, dash instruments and hubcaps line the walls. Part of an Art Deco Texaco gas station entrance and two five-foot-tall fire extinguishers once used in the Packard factory are here, too.

All the Packards look great and are in full working order. The earliest is a striking-looking 1909 brass-trimmed runabout, painted white with all-white tires. Later models display details documenting the change in automotive hardware from brass to nickel, and the trend of coachbuilt bodies being increasingly replaced by factory-made ones. The difference between Midwest and Eastern coachbuilder techniques can be seen in an opulent Kimball-bodied town car made in ...