Otago Daily Times

October 29, 2017

Custom made for Amelia Earhart. Displayed at Warbirds Air Show in Nov 2017 in New Zealand. Still bears her initials “AE”.

The 1935 Packard Super 8 coupe is being brought to Wanaka by its Australian owners Ross and Robyn Marshall and will join at least 10 Packards from the United States and others from around New Zealand.

Mr.  Marshall said he bought the car in 2007 from a retired judge who had acquired the Packard from the rear of a storage garage next to Love Airfield in Dallas, Texas.

“It was later that documents and pictures provided by the judge confirmed the car had obviously been built especially for its first owner, Amelia Earhart, possibly as a gift from the Packard Motor Corporation as Amelia was a spokeswoman for the company at the time,” Mr.  Marshall said.

The car still bore her initials, he said.

Following her disappearance while flying across the Pacific in 1937, the car was kept by Amelia’s husband, George P. Putnam.

It was eventually sold to a Dallas used car dealer who then sold it to a notorious Dallas gangster, until the vehicle stopped running about 1948, Mr Marshall said.

The judge came into possession of the car in 1950. It had been under restoration for 50 years when Mr. Ross bought it, but the work was far from complete.

He continued the restoration work in the United States and when he moved back to Australia.

Mr. Ross hopes that one day the Packard will end up in the Smithsonian in Washington DC, along with other Earhart memorabilia.

Earhart was the first female pilot to fly across the Atlantic Ocean and set many other records.

It was during an attempt to fly around the world in a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra in 1937 that she disappeared.

Earhart had left Papua New Guinea bound for Howland Island but failed to arrive. Fascination with her disappearance continues to this day.

Rear view

Reprinted from with permission from the Otago Daily Times newspaper and the Warbirds.