The hobby we all enjoy would have never sprouted and grown if a few smart people, including Bob Turnquist, hadn’t convinced others that really old cars weren’t simply junk. We take this moment to appreciate and salute Turnquist, one of the genuine trailblazers of collecting old cars, who died last Saturday at age 82.
Turnquist was best known most recently as the proprietor and founder of Hibernia Auto Restorations in New Jersey, but he was much more. From that shop, he restored perhaps 120 historic Packards of premier concours quality (in addition to hundreds of other cars), and had long reigned as perhaps the world’s foremost authority on those automobiles. His book, The Packard Story, remains a definitive study. Moreover, he was one of the co-founders of the Classic Car Club of America in 1952, and helped to create today’s definition of the Full Classic car.
Text by Jim Donnelly and photo by Richard Lentinello
