FIXATIONS : Car Lover Stands on His Own Fleet
“This is a very nice driving car,” said Bill Lauer, tapping some fingers on a deep red hood. “It’s extremely comfortable, surprisingly soft, very solid, with easy steering. They put the best of everything on it.” He reached in the window, pushed a button on the dash, and the engine started with a purr.
Lauer could probably make quite a new-car salesman, but he has no intention of parting with the auto in question, and, for that matter, it is decidedly lacking in “new car smell.” Rather, it’s a 1934 Hupmobile, one of dozens of vintage cars he owns and has garaged at various spots around the county. It takes him pretty much a full day to get around to see them all.
The other car sharing this particular garage is his pride and joy, a 1936 Packard Super 8 Coupe-Roadster convertible, nicknamed the “Butterscotch Flash.” It is the cover and centerfold car of the current Packards International Motor Car Club magazine, a bit of license taken by Lauer, since it was his final go at editing the magazine he started, along with founding the club, 30 years ago.
There was no such club for Packard enthusiasts before he started it. Headquartered still in Santa Ana, it now boasts some 2,500 active members. Lauer is known to some as “Mr. Packard,” and he certainly is a spirited booster of the belated auto brand, even making a plausible claim that the United States might not exist today but for the Packard Motor Car Co. (which folded in 1956). But, automotive monogamy isn’t his style.
“I’m an enigma because I like a lot of different automobiles. I’ll show at a Chrysler meet, and if people don’t know me they’ll assume I’m just a Chrysler man. But I don’t collect along set guidelines. I don’t buy a car for anyone else. I buy for me. I’ve never bought cars from the nostalgia aspect, either. There are just certain cars I always wanted to try, because I’d spent a lot of study and some seemed to me to have certain merits and interesting facets I wanted to experience.
“I like to laud cars like the Nash Ambassador, the Hudson, the Hupmobile and such that were terribly overlooked, weren’t given the respect and honor that the machines deserved. These independent companies made some of the best products this country every produced,” Lauer said.
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We spoke in his Spanish-style home and adjacent garages. He’s won so many trophies with his cars over the years that he’s given most of them away. There were few signs of his automotive passion to be found in his living room, which instead housed his collection of “American Brilliant” period cut crystal and two grand pianos. He did serve juice in Packard glasses on Packard coasters, though.
“I only smoke when I’m talking,” he said, and he indeed went through quite a few skinny cigarettes as he discoursed on his cars. As often as not, he would start on a subject with a world-weary tone to his voice, though it usually only took him a few sentences for an unbridled enthusiasm to slip into gear.
Not too surprisingly, Lauer grew up in Michigan, about 30 miles from Detroit in Saginaw. In his youth he raced a Nash Ambassador. He moved to Orange County in the ‘50s and worked with the Automobile Club of Southern California until 1965, when he started Custom Auto Service in Santa Ana in 1965, specializing in maintaining and restoring vintage autos. He sold the business nearly a decade ago to friend and head repairman Robert Escalante, who still runs it.
From his experience there and with his own cars, Lauer asserts: “If it’s in good condition I can absolutely tell you it’s got to be easier to maintain one of these cars than a new one. I started buying old cars because I hate the depreciation on new ones. Why not buy them when the value starts going up again? You’d be amazed how much money you save in the long run.
“Some people baby these cars, and there are some so over-restored--more perfect than when they were new--it would be a sin to drive one. But some people like myself like to drive the hell out of them.”
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It’s not unusual for Lauer to drive one of his half-century-old bombers from coast to coast. He bought a ’50 Nash Ambassador in West Virginia once and drove it home the long way, putting 5,500 miles on it. He says it didn’t even use a quart of oil. Some of his cars are one-of-a-kind. Many are in original condition, with mileage as low as 18,000. All are meant to be driven.
“I try to keep the fleet in such a condition that at any given time I could drive any of them to any point in the nation I wanted to go to. Just to have an old car doesn’t take any brains at all. To have a car you can drive anywhere and enjoy is the big difference,” Lauer said.
He opened the 6-foot, 4-inch hood of the ’36 Packard to reveal an engine that looked as if it could power a submarine.
“It takes a lot of torque to move this car; it weighs 5 , 450 pounds. You know, there’s a study showing that every 150 pounds a car may weigh more than another gives you a tremendous advantage in a heavy collision. I’ve driven this car at 115 m.p.h., and I have to wonder about the kinetic energy of hitting a Volkswagen, say, sideways at 115 an hour in a car of this size and weight. It boggles the mind,” Lauer said with a chortle.
Of course, that’s scarcely the gentlemanly thing to do, so he would certainly refrain. Packard, after all, had ads reading, “This is the car made for gentlemen, by gentlemen.”
“My feeling of dedication to Packard is not just to the automobile,” Lauer said. “It was to the company and the kind of men who ran the company. The finest. Magnificent men. Very dignified, operating on their reputations. And it’s no secret Packard dominated the luxury car market for several decades.
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“In Packards International, everything is done with a great deal of pomp, class and circumstance, because that’s the way the company was run,” he said. “I felt the company deserved to be commemorated, particularly considering that they saved this country’s butt twice. Without Packard, for example, we would not have won the last world war.”
Lauer went on to detail the story of the Spitfire engine, how the British were incapable of mass-producing it and how German air supremacy was guaranteed without it. According to him, the big auto makers were incapable or unwilling--Lauer cited “that old bastard” Henry Ford’s hatred of England--of undertaking such a task. Finally officials turned to Packard. The company’s head engineer, Col. Jesse Vincent, looked at the engine design, improved it dramatically and guaranteed delivery of completed engines within 90 days. They tore up their plant, began production and lived up to their promise.
Lauer continued: “Packard built that engine in unbelievable quantities. Roosevelt wrote, ‘Packard has given us the margin with which to win this war.’ There’s also a quote from (Nazi are commander Hermann) Goering that when he saw the first Spitfires over Berlin, with the engines made by Packard, he knew they’d lost the war.
“These are the things that compelled me, and I think they’re very compelling today. We’re sitting in this house today, I think, through the grace of Packard Motor Car expertise. I can jump on this soapbox anytime. I think everyone should know that story.”
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Lauer is spending less time on the soapbox of late. He has passed on the reins of Packards International and the editorship of the quarterly magazine. His current goal is to sell his house and high-tail it to Durango, Colo., with his CPA partner, where they intend to open a car museum.
“The club is in good shape, and I think a new challenge would be great, and a lot of fun. Plus, we can write the whole car collection off if we get that museum. The ‘kids,’ instead of being a terribly expensive luxury, might start earning their keep very nicely. It’s an interesting town: A million people a year go there to because of the narrow-gauge railroad there, but only 13,000 people live there. And perhaps you’ve heard that the quality of life in Southern California has done disintegrated,” he said.
He also doesn’t anticipate being in the forefront of collecting anymore, saying: “I feel quite satiated and quite happy with the collection. It isn’t that I wouldn’t have a Deusenberg--which people are asking $1.2 million for--or a Tucker, but given the price ranges they go for, I think can enjoy my little ’41 Dodge Coupe just as much.”
