PSA In The USA!?

If and when French cars return to America, hopefully they’ll be as eclectic as those in the annual Tour de Bretagne.

- Jamie Kitman

“Earns one?” I asked.

“Yez. Earns one. ‘Ask ze man who earns one.’ Zat is what ze publicité for ze Packard automobile hused to red.”

We went all the way to France to be reminded of one of the greatest advertising taglines in American history: Ask the man who owns one. By an affable Frenchman, whose broken English far outstripped our unintelligible French. A pinstriped, fedora wearing fellow driving the pastel yellow 1937 Packard 115C convertible with a rumble seat I found myself rumbling in.

To be accurate, not rumbling—more like promenading rather smoothly. With a silent six burbling up ahead, photographer Tom Salt sitting on the front bench with our driver, and me in the trunk where the hideaway jump seat resides, we were traveling gently through the Finistère region of France as passengers of the Packard’s owner and antiques dealer, Hérve Corvec.

Corvec and his imposing Depression-era cruiser, a standard of American excellence from a time long past, were two high notes among many in a weekend so lovely I’ll never forget it. Cool ocean breezes tempered the warm temperatures. The scenery was colorful and unspoiled, with roads wending their way through ancient villages with edifices of rustic stone and plaster, then up and over the gentle, rolling hills of the impressive French countryside.

The coastal roads were filled with old cars, trucks, motorcycles, and amusing wheeled devices of every make, description, and hue. From French esoterica and farming vehicles to Bugatti race cars, from American muscle to microcars and mopeds, from military effluvia to pristine examples of the French, German, and English mainstreams of yesteryear. Everywhere, too, crowds of waving locals lined the pavement to cheer us on as if we were national heroes.