beautiful car! where i grew up in Va there was one down in the woods that probably would have made a nice ride.... mind you, it was just twenty years old then. the guy that owned it had hundreds of old cars on his property, and in the ten years i lived near him he sold ONE..... i googled the place recently and ALL of them are gone. i guy i used to work for had two on his car lot; a 53 and a 54, both four doors. they both ran like sewing machines.
other than their being old and crusty, they were solid cars and i could have bought either one for $700. Brian, the owner, would start them up every month or so and let them warm through. other than the noise of the fan blade with the hood up, you couldn't hear them at an idle.
I drove the hell out of a 56 Clipper back in the 60s. What a great car. It had the best suspension on the road at the time with the tortion bars and load leveler. Unfortunately I put it on it's roof coming down a mountain road in the Adirondacks. ........... Here is some useless information:: The Clipper does'nt say Packard anywhere on it.
Only certain years. And even then there were dealer-add-on badges available for people that wanted to make the connection explicit. Packard should have spun off Clipper as a separate marque in the 1930s.
They didn't start making Clippers until 1941. At first it was the name of a new body style introduced that year. They had the new Clipper and the traditional styled senior cars. After the war they made only the Clipper style body but dropped the name Clipper. Then in 1954 they brought the name back for their lowest priced model and in 55 made it a series. I believe they planned to spin off the Clipper as a separate make, the way Chrysler spun off Imperial about that time.
Packard waited too long to develop their own V8, and the lag killed them when they needed money to work up a new line of cars, as the '56 body was pretty much the '51 underneath and getting "long in the tooth"... getting merged with Studebaker meant losing their distinctive body style and having to do slap-on trim kits on Stude bodies... (not picking on Stude, just that they're their own distinct style). Packard may have gave up on building cars but they owned nearly every modern electrical wiring patent at one time or another, and still make wire and wiring products. a well-kept Packard is a reliable and powerful machine, well worth the effort to maintain it.
when I used to fire up my 1940 Packard staight 8, it would run smooth as silk and you could barely hear it running. (miss that car!)
Evidently there are 2 different versions of taillights depending on what model of a 56 Packard it is? I took a pic on my phone last week of a 56 Packard in the pull-a-part yard in Indy. Couldn't believe it was in there. The engine looked like somebody had done some work to it judging by the fresh paint on the pulleys and water pump and such. Wonder if that motor was a good runner? PM me and I'll text you the pic of the car if you'd like to see it.
Right, but the post-war Clipper nameplate was really a revival of the 1930s Packard 120 concept to replace the 200-series Packards. Packard built cheaper six-cylinder cars to stay afloat during the Depression, which worked but devalued the brand as a whole. By the early 1950s Packard was competing more with Buick and Olds than with Cadillac. The Clipper spin-off was to be priced below true Packards ala Cadillacs LaSalle companion, thus allowing the Packard nameplate to regain its exclusivity. My point was that instead of building 120s as Packards, Packard should have introduced the companion nameplate way back when.
I question the idea of the six cylinder Packards devaluing the Packard name for 3 reasons: 1) They offered a lower priced six cylinder car as far back as 1923. This was typical of the times, Rolls Royce Pierce Arrow and other luxury car makers offered a truck sized chassis for the chauffeur driven limousine trade and a smaller, easier to drive car for the owner who drove himself. There was nothing unusual in this and as long as the small car was a quality product, it did no harm to their image. 2) Progress allowed building a mass produced car that was practically as good as a custom built job for a much lower price. All the hand made cars were going out, and the depression didn't help. 3) Other expensive cars had mass produced companion cars (that replaced the super duper jobs). Lincoln had their Zephyr, Cadillac had their LaSalle, Chrysler had their Airflow. None of these killed their parent companies. In fact the "juniors" grew up to support the "family" just as the Packard juniors did. If this wasn't enough, Packard dropped their six cylinder models after 1947 and made only straight eights. This was unusual, most car makers had six cylinder models at that time. Making eights exclusively put them in a class with Cadillac, Buick, Lincoln and Mercury. Not bad company and Packard was selling in the upper medium and high price brackets. I don't think the lower priced mass produced cars sunk them. Other companies made the same decision at the time and it didn't sink them. I think what did them in, was abandoning the luxury car market to Cadillac and being too old fashioned and too slow with things like snazzier styling, V8 engine, tailfins and the like. They were trying to offer the public a genuine choice in luxury cars. They were after the steady conservative trade in the upper medium price and high price brackets and they were willing to concede Hollywood and Broadway to Cadillac - as long as they dominated the rest of the country. Unfortunately the whole country wanted Hollywood and Broadway styles and Packard just looked old hat and out of date. By the time they wised up and got with the program (1955) it was too late.
Here are a couple factory show cars that were on display at the National Packard Museum in Warren, OH.
Thanks for posting those pics. I have never seen those cars before. I am familiar with the Packard museum in Dayton, OH but not the one in Warren...I'll have to find my way up there..
We had several Packard ambulances in our Fire Department. Straight eight's and they came on a special order with dual carburetors from the factory. Henney was the ambulance body and coach builder. When they reached replacement age they were refurbished. All ran until the mid 60's and gave great service. The later replacements were from a variety of GM ambulance chassis builders but none were as tough or dependable. Normbc9
I'd like to see pics of the dual carb setup. What year are they? Packard was one of the first to adopt the 4 barrel carb as soon as they became available (1952). Are they dual 2 barrels?
Yes, dual two barrel and a cable linkage with an electric choke on one carburetor. They were '54 models and also had a Ultra-Matic transmission in them. I'll have to go down to the Fire shop and hunt up some information. Those straight eights were a really smooth but powerful engine. Normbc9
I just called the Shops and their records show 359 c.i. in line straight eight, 235 HP, Torsion Bar suspension, Dual range (Hi-Low) torque convertor and factory provided transmission cooler mounted between the frame rails up front. We are now digging for photo's. Normbc9
I have this 55 two door hardtop , 60,000 actual miles , Had to weld in a piece the size of my thumb, that was the only rust , It's on the far back burner now , Joe
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