Packard motor car company

The Packard Twin-Six was manufactured and sold in 1915. Joy made a trip in the spring of 1915 and Waldron made several trips afterwards, maybe as early as the fall of 1915, when Waldon was the General Manager of Packard. Henry B. Joy was born on Nov. 23, 1864, the son of James F. and Mary (Bourne) Joy. After graduating from Phillip's Academy (Andover, Mass.), Sheffield Scientific School, and Yale University, he began life as an office boy with the Pennisular Car Co., working his way up to clerk, paymaster, an assist. treasurer in the mining business of Utah. He later was Pres. of the Fort St. Union Depot Co., Detroit, 1896-1907; receiver of C. & G.T. Railway Co., 1900-1903; Dir. of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 1913-1914; President of Packard Motor Car Co., 1902- ; Pres. of the Lincoln Highway Assn., and Director of the Chamber of Commerce, U.S.A., the American Fair Trade League, and the American Protective Tariff League, among others. He served in the U.S. Navy during the Spanish-American War as chief boatswain's mate on the U.S.S. Yosemite, an experience about which he later wrote a book. He also served in World War I in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, where he earned the rank of Lt. Col. Joy resigned his chairmanship in Packard to serve in World War I. Prior to World War I, Joy bought land for a training field for pilots. He offered the land, now Selfridge Field, to the U.S. when it entered the war. Joy married Helen B. Newberry, with whom he had four children. He was active with many charities and a member of many clubs. Joy died on Nov. 6, 1936 in Grosse Pointe Farms, and was buried in Elmwood Cemetery. His obituary notes that in 1915 he drove westward on what became the first transcontinental automobile highway. Three teams of horses once had to pull his car out of the mud. Both Waldon and Joy were Michigan authors. Waldon was General Manager of Packard in 1915. He was also Pres. of Detroit's Rapid Transit Commission, and Dir. of the General Machine Corp. in Hamilton (Ohio). (Information from Joy's obituary and the collection.).

The Packard company was founded as the Ohio Automobile Co. in Warren, Ohio by James Ward Packard and William Dowd Packard in 1899. A group of investors from Detroit, Mich., led by Henry B. Joy, moved the business to Detroit in 1903 where it became the Packard Motor Car Company. The group commissioned a factory designed by Albert Kahn, who also designed the Packard Proving Grounds in Utica, Mich. The Packard Motor Car Company was in business until 1954, when it merged with the Studebaker company. The last Packard rolled off the assembly line in June 1956 and after 1958, the Packard name disappeared completey.