This significant 12-cylinder Packard retains its original vehicle data plate, identifying it as the 38th coupe roadster built on the 1507 chassis, delivered on 28 April 1937 by the Packard Jerome Corporation in The Bronx. Its original owner was reportedly Frederic Delano Grant Jr., a second cousin to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Grant retained the car until the mid-1940s, when he passed it to his nephew, then a student attending the University of Chicago—yes, as hard as it may be to imagine, this was once someone’s college car! In 1948 it was sold to Jay Spaulding Gross of Iowa and was kept by him until 1979, when it passed to Arthur Granlich of Arizona.

Following a short succession of intervening owners, in 1998 the Packard was acquired by the late, renowned, and much-loved collector Ervin “Bud” Lyon of New Hampshire, known for the fastidious restoration and care of his award-winning automobiles. Mr. Lyon undertook a body-off restoration in the hands of Chris Charlton’s Classic Car Services in Oxford, Maine, in which every component was returned to its original condition and finished to the highest possible standards. The engine was rebuilt with new pistons, seals, and bearings, as was the transmission, and the body expertly painted in Roosevelt Maroon with a tan cloth top and the interior finished in tan leather. Recognizing the outstanding fit and finish of the car, it was awarded a Classic Car Club of America Primary First at the 2004 Summer Grand Classic in New Hampshire.

The Packard was sold from the Lyon collection in 2009 to the great engineer and enthusiast William B. Ruger Jr., in whose ownership the car—long bearing a reproduction vehicle data plate—was reunited with its original plate. This had been remounted years earlier on an otherwise identity-less Twelve limousine of the same year, on which it was, fortuitously, rediscovered by historian Jonathan Sierakowski, who shortly arranged for it to be put back in its rightful location. In 2012, Mr. Ruger wrote of his Packard that “’37 was a great year for the Twelve, because it retained some of the older styling but has independent front suspension, hydraulic brakes, and a sturdier frame, none of which are seen on the ’36. It has the best combination of looks and engineering.”

That year, the car was sold to Terence E. Adderley, in whose outstanding collection it has been exhibited now for over a decade. Still in excellent cosmetic condition, this is one of the finest surviving examples of the Fifteenth Series Packard Twelve, an exceptional chassis, here with its most desirable body style, and boasting well-known provenance back to New York in 1937.