By Sheila Pursglove
Legal News
Attorney Michael Gzybowski entered his very first car show in July — and went home with two awards for his Panhard PL17, one of only a handful in the U.S. that are still running.
Gzybowski, a patent attorney with Brinks, Gilson & Lione in Ann Arbor, entered his car in the 21st annual Rolling Sculpture Car Show held this month in downtown Ann Arbor, an event that attracts exotic, antique, classic and one of a kind vehicles.
Gzybowski and his yellow beauty snagged the “Editor's Choice Award” from Car & Driver, and the “Twisted Wrench” Award from Rennstatt, Inc., a local repair company.
“My church, Lifepoint, was looking for events to get involved in so I offered to put my car in the show,” Gzybowski said. “This is the first time I’ve shown my car since I bought it 44 years ago. There were some 300 cars in the show and about 8 to 10 awards and I was the only one who won two.
“Panhard started building cars in the late 1880s and there is a lot of history behind my car,” he said. “I suppose 97 percent of people have never seen a Panhard or even heard of one. It was a treat to just be able to share my car and let people see it. A lot of people thanked me for showing it.”
Gzybowski said his car isn’t immaculate, “but it’s beautiful and very artsy and everyone who has ever seen it really likes it.”
The car’s first owner was an attorney, who bought it from a dealer in Warsaw, Ind. He later sold the car to Gzybowski’s friend.
When the car stopped running this friend asked Gzybowksi to help her get it in working shape — and when she decided to sell the car, she let him have first dibs.
“I bought it for $250 because it was just a real odd looking car,” Gzybowski said. “Panhard sold these PL17's in the U.S. in 1960 and 1961 then Citroen bought Panhard out and quit selling them. Only 270 were ever sold in the U.S. It took me over three years to find anyone who knew much about them and how could work on them.”
Gzybowski was directed by a museum in the U.K. to John Skene in Cloverdale, Ind., who had bought up the dealer's stocks of parts and worked on Panhards.
Skene rebuilt Gzybowski’s car over 3 to 4 years.
“Then I went to college, a job as a patent examiner in the U.S. Patent Office and the car was in storage for years,” said Gzybowski, who earned an undergrad degree in engineering from Purdue University, and his J.D. from George Mason University of Law in Arlington, Va.
The car was stored at his mother’s home in Fort Wayne, Ind. When his mother moved three years ago, Gzybowski brought the vehicle to Ann Arbor.
After joining a Panhard club, he found there are fewer than 20 PL17s still running.
The club also has a source of parts from a company in France.
“My club is thrilled with my win,” Gzybowski said. “I think I’ll have to enter it into more car shows from now on.”
Gzybowski also found the “Points and Condensers Preservation Society” in Ypsilanti, an organization that stores cars and holds monthly meetings and events.
“I started driving my car around town two years ago,” he said. “Last year the carburetor leaked gas onto the engine so I didn’t drive it. It turns out there are club members in Ypsilanti available to help work on cars. The carburetor got fixed and the car is running better than ever and I will drive it regularly around town this summer — when it’s not raining.”
Panhard by way of history
• June 13, 1895 Emile Levassor drove a Panhard et Levassor car with a two-cylinder, 750-rpm, four-horsepower Daimler Phoenix engine over the finish line in the world’s first real automobile race. He completed the 732-mile course, from Paris to Bordeaux and back, in just under 49 hours, at a then-impressive speed of about 15 miles per hour.
• Panhard became a modest sized builder of mid to upscale technically conventional cars primarily for the domestic French market.
• After WWII, Panhard completely re-invented itself, abandoning the upper-middle class cars and developing an ultra lightweight low cost car for the post-war era.
• This led to the development of Panhard’s Dyna Z in 1947 which went through three iterations until 1959 when the Dyna received a new front and rear and was renamed the PL17 (Panhard Levassor; 17 = 5+6+6, being 5 CV (fiscal horses, in the French power rating system) plus 6 for the car's six seats, plus 6 for the car's economy of 6 L/100 km (39 mpg).
• PL17s were built from 1959-65 with about 270 being exported for sale in the United States.
• In 1961, a Panhard PL16 won first place in Monte Carlo and Panhard PL17s took second and third places.
• Panhard PL17s became well known for speed (horsepower and aerodynamics) and fuel economy with its two-cylinder air-cooled front mounted 850 cc engine.
• In 1965 Citroën acquired Panhard and quit exporting Panhards into the U.S.
• The last Panhard passenger car was made in 1967.
• Today there are fewer than 20 Panhard PL17s in the U.S. that are still running.
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