Dream car the star of the show

THE Southern Cape Old Car Club Heritage Tour, supported by Recollection Rides, is exhibiting one of South Africa’s oldest automobiles, the Packard Convertible One Twenty 1941, in an upcoming Heritage Tour.

The tour, which takes to the road from September 23, will be showcasing the car, which is one of the most revered and anticipated vehicles of the event’s participating automobiles. It has been 80 years since the classic automobile became the last of its kind to roll off the production line.

Club chairperson Mike Alexander said they were excited to be hosting their first event since the beginning of the pandemic, featuring about 24 cars across a variety of brands ranging from the early thirties to the 1980s, would be part of the tour. The tour lasts for four days and three nights, venturing from George, passing through Franschhoek and Oudtshoorn, stopping at various sites, landmarks and hotels along the way.

The tour caters for everyone, from vintage car fanatics, road trip lovers, families, local travellers and promises to be a real adventure.

Sep Serfontein was so smitten with this rare collector’s item that he decided to focus on Packards and their preservation. Serfontein said it was a 40-year voyage for him, going as far back as the mid-1980s when the classic car was discovered in a Cape Flats garage.

“We acquired the Packard during a complicated exchange in 1987, after which it spent a quarter century in storage in Pretoria.”

The search for parts in South Africa and the US was a quest that lasted decades. A number of 1941 sedan wrecks were bought for their parts and stripped; a roof frame was only tracked down in 1991 and the engine was rebuilt by Pretoria-based connoisseur Jan Snyman in 1998.

As a result, Serfontein and his collaborators had to physically recreate some of the parts over a 20-year procurement process.

The Packard finally made its way to Wilderness in 2009, to form part of a collection of contemporary vehicles, all dating back to the 1940s.