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I spotted an (insert obscure car name here) classic car today! (Archived)
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Here is a color photo on delivery day of a new '56 Caribbean at my hometown dealer, Carl E. Filer Co.:
http://packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=9805
The car was sold to a local Doctor. One day the dealer (a friend of mine) got a call from the Doctor. He was at the Cleveland Clinic (a couple hours away) and could not back out of his parking space! It had to be towed home.
I saw this very car (serial no. 5699-1258) in 1998 in Kernersville, NC. It was in beautiful shape, still had the plaque on the dash 'built for A. L. Bailey, M.D." but was now mounted on factory Packard wire wheels.
I don't have a scanner, but fintail, on my office wall right in front of me, I have an 8 by 10 from 1958 of that dealership building with a neon tri-star and "Mercedes Benz" sign in the showroom window. Small-town dealer for sure.
For a minute I thought it was a flat black paint job, but a closer look revealed at least 7 shades of gray.
Of course, it was still running. Not bad for a 20 years or so old car.
All things considered, Packard did a pretty good job making it look up to date.
Also, that triple-toning works because it's basically just simple, straight lines, so it's nice and clean. Nothing fancy or complicated on the sides, like how many other makers were doing their contrast colors.
Caribbeans are very expensive, and the Four-Hundred hardtop is up there a bit too, but the rest of the line are very reasonably priced. From years of looking, I'd say that condition for condition, bodystyle for bodystyle, a '57 or '58 Packardbaker usually brings more money than a '55 or '56 Clipper.
I make no bones about it, though, that the '56's are the last true Packards, of course.
I agree about the 'straightforward' two-tone lines on this particular model Packard. The same year Studebaker President Classic had (IMO) ridiculous two-toning, going here, there, and the other place. The '55 Packard Clipper suffered from this too I think.
I had a high-school friend who just loved the V8 Packards...his Dad was a Packard dealership mechanic in a larger town about 15 miles from us, and had a '56 Packard Executive when new, until 1963.
2017 Cadillac ATS Performance Premium 3.6
The convertible Packards are more handsome--gets rid of that awkward passenger cab.
Packard was a very (very) conservative company, so I could see why they liked a certain "formality" to their designs---a car where a gentleman could wear a hat while driving.
Black with dark gold accent color along the middle.
I wanted it, but when I saw the owner come out and look at it before he got in, from the pride he was showing, there would have no reasonable offer to be made.
http://www.1956packardpanther.com/Panther/torsionLevel.html
The cars were definitely smoother over bumps than other cars. My good friend whose Dad was a Packard dealer in that era would take prospective customers over bumpy railroad tracks in a new Packard and late-model Buicks or Olds they had as trade-ins. That was the best decider of ride in their opinions.
Base-model Clippers had coils in front and leafs in back, but had the torsion-level as optional. Most were so-equipped.
What these Packards did well was isolate you from any idea of what was actually going on.
Much ado about nothing is my recollection.
Now the Ultramatic transmission--that was pretty neat stuff and that really was innovative.
I remember that the cigarette lighter was labelled "Liter" in these cars. The dumb, little stuff one remembers!
yes, the Ultramatic did have some problems--it was an electronically operated automatic (electric push buttons instead of the crude buttons on Mopars) with a lock up torque converter (quite common now).
The 352 cid engine also had lubrication issues.
I remember how you could steer these monstrous cars with your one finger.
:surprise:
It is interesting to me how many automakers, on the brink of going out of business, came up with these wonderful 'swan songs'---hoping that some bold new innovation would save them. (Packard, Studebaker, Pierce Arrow, Graham-Paige, Cord, Duesenberg, etc etc.)
But of course that never works. It was the company that produced bread and butter cars that were affordable, reliable and attractive that survived in the 1950s.
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Is that image a painting? Seems off, somehow.
Looks like something from the 1939 New York World's Fair.
Oh i don't think a '42 Continental coupe is even worth restoring. You'd never see your money back.
The owner says that the Lincoln Continental club did some research and that they know of only 14 of these coupes still existing.
A longtime writer in the national Studebaker Drivers' Club magazine ran into Ebert in the '90's at a Steak and Shake restaurant in Michigan City, IN. They spoke briefly and Ebert said he was headed to a vacation home in western MI. I read online yesterday that Ebert was quoted as saying if he "...were on death row, his last meal would come from Steak and Shake". Pretty funny.
Talented guy and pretty brave with all the health-related issues he'd had the last decade.
2020 Acura RDX tech SH-AWD, 2023 Maverick hybrid Lariat luxury package.
Still, a looker, and one of the earliest recognized "classics" IIRC. I prefer the earliest versions with the pointy 1939 style nose. On the coupes, the rear quarter window would look a lot cleaner without the soft pillar.
The '56 Caribbean had reversible seat cushions...brocade on one side and leather on the other. Unlike the Four-Hundred though, you got no rear-seat center armrest, even in a Caribbean hardtop.
Those seat cushions were heavy enough that there was a service bulletin about a repair to keep the front seat passenger cushion from flying forward every time the car was stopped (without a passenger in it, of course).
Amazingly to me--David Soul's parents lived in my hometown of Greenville, PA in the '70's, when I was a teen. His Dad taught at Thiel College there. When David would come home for the weekend, attendance at the Lutheran Church would double as news got around the 8,700-odd folks in town (1970 census)!
I've mentioned that GM VP of Styling, Bill Mitchell, also grew up in Greenville and also in the '70's, the parents of Watergate figure John Dean lived in town too. George Will's mother was from Greenville. I find all this rather amazing for the size of the town and considering it is not a suburb of a city, but I attribute at least some of it to the college there.
One thing that amazes me, when I see a '55-56 New Yorker, Imperial, or Desoto Fireflite, is how thick and voluptuous the seats are. They really are almost like living room sofas! I can't recall the Chrysler Windsor and Desoto Firedome seats, but I think they were thinner inside. And while the '57 Mopars made the '56 versions, as well as just about all the competition, look obsolete, you could see evidence of cost cutting in the seats. Some of the fabrics were still pretty nice, depending on model, but the seats themselves were thinner.
As for the Imperial, in 1955-56, what really, did it give you over a New Yorker? It used the same Hemi engine as the New Yorker (331 CID in 1955, 354 in 1956), but was heavier, so performance had to be down a bit. It used the same body shell, so it didn't give you any more interior room than a Chrysler...or Desoto for that matter. All the extra length was in back, which did give you a longer rear deck and more trunk room, but most of that room was over the rear axle or even ahead of it, so it was only useful if you were hauling long items that would fit up in there. And yeah, the Imperial had a nice interior, but I can't remember if it was really all that much nicer than a New Yorker. Especially with the St. Regis package.
Such a nice car!
uncommon back in the 80's when it came out. Ultra rare out on the road today.
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I don't agree with the whole list, but I don't think there are many that I can say "What the hell are they talking about??!". For one, I like '74 Matador coupes but I can see why somebody wouldn't.
100 Ugliest Cars of All Time
I agree, it's a pretty good list----a few quibbles which I'm sure we all have, but by and large, it would be difficult to defend many of these cars.
In their defense, sometimes "ugly" can be charming, but that's a dangerous game for a car company to play.
It's the bumper that screws up the '74 Matador. A little photoshop could clean that car up real nice.
I remember I was just a young twerp and my dad had left Packard after the Holocaust in 1956, and got a job with Lincoln-Mercury. His first "field car" was a '57 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser.
My brother and I were horrified. After cruising in Packards to be dropped off at school, we decided to walk :P
It was so bad that when he moved over to Renault, we were delighted to ride around in a Dauphine. That was 1960 or so, when Renault actually outsold VW for a few months there.
I think it's the headlights that mess up the '74 Matador coupe. Too bug/frog-eyed looking for my tastes. Overall though, I like the shape of the car. I think if they could have worked hidden/pop-up headlights into the design of the car, it would have looked neat.
Oh, and reading through that list, one little detail caught my eye. Is a '72 T-bird really only 214" long?! I think the downsized '77-79 T-birds were something like 214-215" long, and thought it was about a foot shorter than the T-bird it replaced.
I guess it's possible though, as the '72 T-bird didn't have those jutting 5 mph bumpers that were added in later years. Those alone could have added a good 6 inches in the front and another 6 in the rear.
I always thought that I could see some '58 Merc in the stillborn Packard prototypes that were being considered for '57 and later.
I've read that the '57-58 recession did no good for medium-priced cars.
Re.: the Dauphine...I've seen maybe a couple in my life, but I only know that my Stude-Packard-MB dealer friend told me he took a couple of those in on trades and in his eyes they were very troubleprone--although I can't remember what he felt was troubleprone on them.
Too bad about the Dauphine. It was *so much* better engineered than the VW--faster, way better gas mileage, roomier, warmer, better handling, better brakes, better visibility.
What it didn't have was that reliability & parts & service network thingie.... :P
It didn't, although part of the problem was that the middle-priced field was getting really crowded, as well. I always thought it was a bit odd that the one middle-priced brand that did fairly well in 1958 was Oldsmobile. Its sales were only down something like 23-24%, compared to around 41% for the middle-priced market, as a whole.
I always thought the '58 Olds was, for lack of a better word, the "most fallen", stylewise, compared to the '57. But, I guess that there was something about it that appealed to buyers that year.
Maybe it could simply be that everybody else was so bad, quality-wise, that middle-priced buyers thought they had nowhere else to go? Chrysler's '57 models developed a bad rap really quickly, and supposedly '57 Mercurys weren't so hot, either. I've also heard that quality had been slipping on Buicks, as their popularity kept rising and GM rushed to keep pace with demand. As a result, sales cooled off in '57 and even more for '58.
In contrast though, I think Oldmobiles back then tended to be pretty solid, durable cars, and I don't think they ever got a bad rap for quality. Until the Diesel, that is!
The Aztec should be #1 on any list.
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2025 Ram 1500 Laramie 4x4 / 2023 Mercedes EQE 350 4Matic
That Lincoln "wagon" is pretty bad, if anything, for the unhappy marriage of angles and curves.