Packard For Hire: Phil Hill’s Family Packard

Over the course of cataloging a series of period images from folks who wanted to rent their cars to the motion picture industry (see page 114), I saw a variety of images and letters from a wide swath of residents of the Los Angles area. However, one letter made me stop in my tracks. It was addressed to the Transportation Department of Selznick International Pictures, dated Dec. 1, 1938, with two photos of a 1919 Packard Twin Six, with Fleetwood town car coachwork, from Mrs. Philip T. Hill of Santa Monica. After researching it, I can confidently say that this was the mother of famed race car driver Phil Hill, who was the first American to win a Formula One Championship.

I had already known that Philip Toll Hill, Jr. spent most of his life living in or based out of Santa Monica, Calif., although he was born in Miami, Fla., on April 20, 1927. His father, Philip Toll Hill, Sr. was originally from New York state, while his mother, Lela (Long) Hill, was from Miami. By 1930, the family moved to Santa Monica, as Philip, Sr. became the city’s postmaster. While that was a notable position in the city, it wasn’t one from which you’d get rich. Yet his father was from a prominent family, so they had some degree of wealth. Combined with the higher-than-average number of luxury cars in the greater Los Angeles area, it wouldn’t be too surprising for the family to have a Packard Twin Six (albeit nearly two decades old). Or, along those lines, that young Phil would develop an early interest in cars. 

Phil wrote or commented for the record very little about his family life growing up, aside from him not being particularly close to either parent. Both of Phil’s parents died almost a month apart of each other in 1951; Lela on March 21 and Philip Sr. on April 20. It was his inheritance from their estate (shared with a younger brother and sister) that enabled him to afford to advance in professional racing. If anything, he was more attached to his aunt, who lived not far down the same street in Santa Monica. As someone who also liked cars, she gifted Phil his first car when he was 12 — a 1923 Ford Model T — which he kept at her house. She had enough wealth that she was the original owner of a 1931 Pierce-Arrow convertible sedan. Phil later obtained it and restored it in 1953, then won Best of Show with it at the 1955 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance — the first win for a Classic car — and immediately after, Phil won the Pebble Beach Road Race. So, it wouldn’t be out of line to theorize that a pre-teen, car-crazy Phil, Jr. would put forward to his mother to make the family Packard available to the movie industry. There also is the possibility that the Packard was originally his aunt’s car.

It should also be noted that after Phil retired from racing in 1967, he and Ken Vaughn operated Hill and Vaughn Restorations in Santa Monica, a well-regarded pioneer in the automotive restoration industry, whose restorations won several awards at Pebble Beach. Phil’s interest in what would be considered Full Classics^® by the Classic Car Club of America was in no doubt formed in cars such as the family’s 1919 Twin Six.

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