Packard introduced its seventh series cars on September 12, 1929. Black Tuesday, October 29th, the day the stock market crashed, was more than a month away, and the new car’s prospects were bright. At month’s end, President Alvan Macaulay pronounced it “the greatest month in [the company’s] history.” Little did he know what would follow.

Still, it took some time for hard times to settle in. Auto sales had been riding high in 1929; in fact, the year would set a new record for the industry, with some 4.4 million passenger cars being sold. The seventh series Packards had a new look. Designer Raymond Dietrich had taken the theme of the 1929 Deluxe Eight and applied it to the entire 1930 line. There were new headlamps, and the side lamps were moved from the cowl to the wings. Lower and sleeker than their predecessors, the new cars set the stage for a new design idiom for the 1930s.

Packard sales decreased only modestly in the first quarter of the 1930 model year, but by spring, the work week had been shortened and redundancies began. When the model year ended the following August, sales were off by a third. The Standard Eight cars, however, fared much better than the Senior Deluxe and Custom Eight, in part due to their lower prices.

The Standard Eight Roadster offered here was acquired in Maine in the early 1990s from the estate of a longtime collector. It was then restored in the mid-1990s by John Scales’s Packard Motorcar Service, of Springfield, Massachusetts, to a very high quality and standard. Over the years since, it has been well cared for and maintained and is described by its caretaker as “running fine,” with a recent fuel system rebuild in the care of Aldrich Restorations in Ohio. It comes complete with the standard folding and opening windshield, dual side-mounted spares, Pilot Ray driving lights, a luggage rack, and side curtains.

This is a handsome “little” Packard from a good home, offered to another.