Pebble Beach Concours: 1934 Packard Wins Best of Show PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. - A 1934 Packard 1108 Twelve Dietrich Convertible Victoria that spent much of its life in Puerto Rico - painted a garish red and orange and thrashed about as a taxi - won Best of Show on Sunday at the Concours d"Élégance here. The Packard, entered by Joseph and Margie Cassini of West Orange, N.J., has been the subject of an intensive three-year effort to bring it back to its former glory. It was nearly too far gone to save, Mr. Cassini, a judge in New Jersey, said in an interview afterward. "When it came back from Puerto Rico in 1968 it was almost rusted through," Mr. Cassini said. It was rescued by a serviceman who brought back it to the United States. From there it went to an owner in New Hampshire, then to another owner in Ohio, from whom I bought it in 2010. "Each owner wanted to restore it, but the task seemed too daunting," he said. Mr. Cassini, who entered a 1938 Horch 853A Cabriolet that won Pebble Beach's Best of Show honors in 2004, said this victory was an emotional one for him. "My parents were alive when we won with the Horch, but they've since passed," he said. I was thinking of them as I heard it announced that we'd won today. This is the pinnacle of our world - our Olympics. When you win here, you realize you have one of the finest cars in the world. Mr. Cassini says that he is the car's fifth owner. It was purchased originally in New York by a Mr. Ricardo Lacosta, a lawyer from Puerto Rico. He had it shipped there and it was in his ownership, and then his family's ownership, for many years. But it eventually was turned into a taxi. It was painted red and orange, probably with a paint brush, and driven all over Puerto Rico for many years. Somehow the car survived the abuse, the sun and the salt air until the serviceman obtained it and shipped it home. Mr. Cassini said he had been interested in purchasing the car since the 1990s, "but I never thought it would be sold. The gentleman who had it planned to restore it himself, because that is what business he is in, but he never quite got around to it. Eventually he realized it was a project that he wasn't going to be able to undertake until it was too late to save the car. It was ready to fall apart. Mr. Cassini turned to RM Restorations for help in returning the car to showroom condition. "It took more than 10,000 man-hours," Mr. Cassini estimates. But now it is perfect. Everything works. The radio, the lights, the windshield wipers - it runs perfectly - and it easily completed the whole Tour d"Élégance, probably 100 miles, on Thursday." His plans for the car going forward are unclear, he said. I think I'm going to put it on a trailer and give it a rest. Yes, it can go back to being a trailer queen for awhile. It has earned it.