After spending more than 40 years gathering dust, a silent movie star’s limousine may rev its engine once more, and in Durango.
Durango resident Tom Duke recently purchased the limousine of the famous actor and comedian Harold Lloyd. Regarded as one of the most influential actors and filmmakers of the silent comedy film era, Lloyd was also a stunt man, director, producer and screenwriter.
Lloyd spent part of his childhood in Durango and other Colorado towns before making his mark in Los Angeles, where he spent the height of his career behind the wheel of a 12-cylinder, 1935 Packard limousine.
The limo, a dark blue model with black and tin-colored leather interiors, ended its four-decade dormancy in storage three months ago when Duke bought it online. He is the third to own the vehicle after Lloyd and one other individual, who didn’t drive it, Duke said.
By his own admission, Duke is no fan of the late movie star.
“That had nothing to do (with the purchase),” he laughed. “Maybe this buy is about my ego, but this is what I am – a hick from Nevada with a college degree from a big party school (University of Nevada, Reno).”
Duke found the Packard after he searched for months, even passing up the chance to purchase a limo belonging to famous Prohibition-era gangster Al Capone, he said, because “it was only an eight-cylinder.”
But why blow a pretty chunk of change on a limousine?
“I was in the market, and I’m retired,” he said.
Duke, 72, has always had an avid interest in cars. As a 15-year-old growing up in Reno, he started repairing old Ford Model Ts with a local man who kept a collection of more than 1,000 rebuilt cars. The very first car he worked on, Duke said, was a 1929 Model A.
“I like good and old things,” Duke said from an airport en route to Monterey, California, to watch a Porsche race. “I like the process of learning how the mechanics work. That’s also why I wound up buying a rental business. Cars were really basic back then. The main reason I love mechanics and power is because my relatives had a large construction company, and I was raised around that. It’s a good thing to get into something that has power.”
Duke owned Target Rental since he moved to Durango in 1982. Now retired, or “happily unemployable,” he passed the business on to his son Jim, which afforded him the time to return the famous Packard to the road.
But that’s still a few months away. Part of the reason Lloyd’s limo caught Duke’s eye was because it had been largely restored with a rebuilt engine in Los Angeles, but there are still a few kinks. Duke’s first two joyrides ended in getting towed back to the garage.
Today, it sits on a lift in the Animas Valley, where John Sobers, who rebuilds Packards and other old cars, is changing the oil, replacing brakes and repairing some very old wiring.
Strangely, this is the second time Sobers has encountered Lloyd’s limousine. In the 1970s, Sobers was working for the Nethercutt Collection, an automobile museum. Soon after the movie star’s death in 1971, Sobers made a trip out to see the Packard, as well as a Rolls-Royce, in Lloyd’s estate. Badly in need of paint and other repairs, Sobers passed on the Packard.
“It wasn’t anything special,” Sobers said. “Now, suddenly, it’s here again. I thought, ‘It’s a small world.’ What a coincidence that it’s traveled around the country.”
As a self-described “laid-back person,” Duke declined to disclose a specific price tag, but he said the car cost him in the range of $100,000-$175,000.
When the car is finally up and running later this fall, Duke ticked off Vallecito, Mancos and Creed among the jaunts he has planned for himself and friends.
Lloyd was often photographed with his automobile in the 35 years he owned it. Now, in a sense, he’s returning to Durango through a relic of old-Hollywood’s golden years.
“I’ve restored cars since I was 15, and I’ve been looking and looking for something like this for a long time,” Duke said. “Now I can share a 1935 driving experience with my friends.”
jpace@durangoherald.com
