The Derham Body Company of Rosemont, Pennsylvania, is almost unrivaled in American coachbuilding, both for the quality of its designs and for the extreme variety thereof. Whereas competitors often made a specialty of closed or open bodies, of conservative or modern designs, Derham would build essentially whatever their customers sought, and was capable of creating, with equal skill, both formal elegance and audacious sportiness. Sometimes both combined in the same car, as was the case of the sport sedan bodies that the company produced for Packard’s Seventh Series Deluxe Eight of 1930. These cars featured removable center pillars and a canvas-covered roofline, for a convertible look; they were among the very first examples of what later designers would call a “hardtop.”

The sole surviving sport sedan was, according to Edward J. Blend’s The Magnificent Packard Twelve of Nineteen Thirty-Four, sold to John Bromley, proprietor of the Quaker Lace Mills in Philadelphia and a longtime Packard customer in fine standing. After four years, Mr. Bromley returned the car and had its Derham body rebuilt and mounted to a new 1108 Twelve chassis—the ultimate Classic Era Packard in many eyes and the only example so bodied.

The Packard was reportedly sold in the mid-1950s to a Studebaker-Packard dealer in North Carolina and disassembled for restoration. In this form, the project passed in 1965 to Tom Dunaway Jr. of South Carolina, who sold it soon thereafter to Ken Vaughn of California. Mr. Vaughn would later partner with the iconic racing driver and avid vintage automobile enthusiast Phil Hill in the creation of Hill & Vaughn of Santa Barbara, which during the 1970s and 1980s would be perhaps America’s foremost classic car restoration shop. The Packard was an early product of Mr. Vaughn’s skill, with six years spent in its meticulous return to original condition. Such was the quality of the work that it promptly became something of a poster car for Hill & Vaughn, as it went on to win numerous awards in Classic Car Club of America competitions and at major West Coast concours. Most notably, it was First in Class and Most Elegant Car at the 1972 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.

Ken Vaughn held on to his prized sport sedan until 1998, when it was sold to the noted collector Otis Chandler, at the time assembling what became one of the most important stables of coachbuilt Packard Twelves. Mr. Chandler took the Packard back to Pebble Beach the following year, winning Second in Class with what was then a 30-year-old restoration. It remained with Mr. Chandler until his passing in 2006, then was acquired by John Muckel of California, who had its restoration freshened by none other than Glenn Vaughn, Ken Vaughn’s son, then operating his own restoration facility in Idaho. Mr. Muckel retained the Packard for a decade before it passed to a prominent collector in the Midwest, with whom it remained until recently.

Still in outstanding condition, with only the finest patina to its finishes, this is without question one of the most significant examples of the great Eleventh Series Twelve, with custom coachwork, no less, and lines are pure Derham in their sporty subtlety and hard to beat on any sedan of this era. It was a winner when first restored and it remains so to this very day, a testament to the skill of its designer and to the passion of the late Ken Vaughn.