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Kimberly Andren, a Metro Detroit vintage car buff who has two classic Packard sedans, feels a personal connection to the 80-year-old brick and concrete overpass that's now a twisted ruin.
"We should remember it how it was," says Kimberly Andren, co-owner of this 1940 Packard photographed five months ago by Samantha Leigh Sutton.
"It crossed my mind -- was my 1940 Packard the last Packard to cruise under this bridge?" she posts on Instagram with this August 2018 shot by Samantha Leigh, a professional photographer from Armada.
Andren, a lifelong Michiganian who owns Motor City Vintage Rentals in Beverly Hills with her husband Darin, tells Deadline Detroit she shares the photo for the same reason families treasure snapshots of departed members. "It's like when someone dies -- no one shows photos of them dead. You want to remember the good times," she says in a phone interview.
"Seeing the images of this iconic bridge lying on the ground instead of where it should be weighs heavy on my heart," she posts at Instagram. "So this is how I want to remember it."
Andren's eight-year-old business also has a 1949 model. Both luxury collectibles are rented for weddings, parades and other events.
The same luxury sedan at the Packard Plant last August. (Instagram photo from owner)
The vehicle shown here, affectionately nicknamed "Beau," rolled across the bridge over East Grand Boulevard in 1940, a year after the 150-foot-long span was built to link parts of the sprawling Packard Plant -- a vehicle assembly site from 1903-56. The black sedan was shipped to a Los Angeles dealership, Andren's research shows. "We brought him back home in 2018," says her business site.
"My dad passed his love of vintage cars to me," she says at Instagram. He serves as chauffeur for the couple's rental clients, and earlier drove the pair to St. Hugo of Hills Church in Bloomfield Hills in the 1949 Packard on their wedding day.
Her poignant post with the top image says:
"Not many have seen this photo yet, so I figured we should remember it how it was!
"Samantha Leigh Studios snapped this just in time to preserve a beautiful memory."
♦ Credits: Motor City Vintage Rentals and Samantha Leigh Studios.
