16 August 1903 (UPDATE)

Rutger Booy reports: "Today it is 100 years ago that a Packard model F(Adam Ward's pages) finished its historic trip across the United States. Back in 1903 two gentlemen from Ohio, E.T. (Tom) Fetch and M.C. Krarup, drove their ton-and-a-half, single cylinder Packard across a country that had no roads, no bridges and don’t even think of gas stations or garages. Fetch and Krarup started their journey on June 20 from San Francisco Bay, where they reversed into the Pacific Ocean (only with the rear wheels) to baptize the car. From then on the Packard was known as “Old Pacific”. On the back of the car they carried two twenty-foot strips of heavy canvas, to serve as an improvised road. Almost two months later, on August 16, they arrived in New York after endless hours of being stuck in mud, bombarded by heavy rainfall and building bridges across impossible terrain. The lithograph by Angela Trotta Thomas (angelatrottathomas.com) shows Old Pacific somewhere along the route, its drivers trying to fix a broken wheel. This lithograph is available at The National Packard Museum (packardmuseum.org) in Ohio."
UPDATE II from José Gomez: The car that is exhibited at The Packard Museum isn´t the one that made the run in 1903, that car is at at Henry Ford Museum. Notwithstanding, the Old Pacific II, owned by the Delphi Packard Electric Co. was used in 1983 by Terry Martin (President of the Packard Museum) in the remake of the famous tour and was used again to commemorate the Old Pacific Centennial.
UPDATE: José Gomez let us know about this great 'Old Pacific' gallery(www.Pacakardclub.org) included by PAC webmaster Marshall Katz. Rick Jorgensen writes that a similar car is to be seen at the National Packard Museum , (www.PackardMuseum.org) Warren, Ohio.

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