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Re: Caribbeans for Sale
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Hello... what is the trick to finding this and other photos of the Packards for sale? Where/how did you find this photo? I tried the internet address listed and no Caribbean. Not even a mention of one... Thanks.
Posted on: 2/25 17:47
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Re: Packard Bikes
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Remember the Packard-looking pedal car in posting #181?
Wellllll? Here is how it would have appeared when new... Attach file:  PackardPedalcarLeonDixon.jpeg (3,584.91 KB)
Posted on: 2/16 21:04
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Re: Had to laugh
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Ahhh. This one again. Myself and a friend, Darwin Lumley (we were both members of Society of Automotive Historians [SAH]) debunked this story when it first appeared. But the de-bunking never got published (yes, I still have the original typed manuscript to this day). For one thing, MacArthur preferred Cadillacs. It is a fact that while in the Philippines the General had a Cadillac for himself and another for his wife. Those Cadillacs carried license plates that read: USA-1 and USA-2. Furthermore, the ship that supposedly brought this Packard back from the Philippines was... actually SUNK off of Luzon in Layte Gulf prior to the return. So... uhhhh... that would be a neat trick for the Packard to somehow come back to the USA in 1948 aboard a vessel sunken in 1944. There were numerous other questionable issues about this story. But it is certainly a good story and interesting car. About twenty years ago, there was yet another of these olive drab Packards running around in Washington state... also being claimed to belong to General MacArthur. How many Mercedes did Hitler own? How many pink Cadillacs did Elvis own? Well... apparently a bunch of them, huh?
Posted on: 2/1 13:46
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Re: Jean Marais' 1955 Caribbean and other French V8 Packards
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Eeeek! You're hurting my eyes! Yes, seen the photo before. The interior has been re-done at least a few times (it once had Mercedes-Benz seats) and...OMG! That poor Caribbean. Somebody, somewhere (and it wasn't Packard) sat down and said... "Hey! I gotta cool idea. Don't tell anybody because they may wanna copy it! Let's repaint this car into silver-gray, pink and charcoal on the bottom! THEN... now get this...THEN... let's yank the interior and stuff in seats from some other car... and upholster the whole shebang in... BROWN! Makes sense, huh? Whadaya think?" Ghastly.
Posted on: 1/31 21:19
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Re: Packard Bikes
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Yes. Of course there were also the Wurlitzer and Rock-Ola "bubbler" jukeboxes. I had one of these, owned since the 1950s. An unimaginative, irresponsible relative left the machine sitting in a basement of one of my Detroit commercial properties when I sold the building many years ago (I was living in California at the time). The relative simply could not understand why in the world I wanted such a "heavy old contraption" saved????? And thus it was absorbed into the great disappearing disposal grinder of... Detroit. As it has become.
Posted on: 1/19 20:32
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Re: Was a 1955 Caribbean modified to make a 1956 Caribbean prototype?
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Hello, If one works in the car business long enough (and heaven knows I did), one quickly finds so many things and people are somehow interlinked– one way or another. A magic aspect of the business. At least, that's how it used to be. The name of that concept car was the "M-Speedster." It is shown in its original colors and format– which unfortunately, sadly have been changed (read RUINED) since. While this has been so easily forgotten (with so many today busy taking and receiving credit for Miata– including folks who were never there), I originally suggested the color based on a 1950s Murray bicycle hue. It was originally known at Murray as "Flamboyant Black Cherry." It was my favorite color in the 1950s and was around BEFORE car people started crowing about "Candy Apple Red"... which basically ORIGINALLY looked just like a slightly lighter shade of Flamboyant Black Cherry. NOT like opaque standard red or "Fire Engine Red" as people today seem to believe. Or like the drab red that FoMoCo was once calling "Candy Apple Red" (it was neither translucent nor anywhere near the right hue). Ask 50 people today what "Candy Apple Red" looks like and you'll get 50 different answers. Some people have come to imagine that ANY red or bright red is "Candy Apple Red." How this happened over the years is anybody's guess. But it is a good example of why the internet and jargon tend to stray wildly from facts– as they once were. One has to be old enough to actually remember what real American candy apples once looked like! YES. And yesssss... if the name "Murray" seems familiar to Packard fans... the company that made the Murray bicycle line was an offshoot of the old Murray Auto Body Company. Yes... THAT Murray. And this leads back to Packard Motor Car Company. Yes, again. Anyway, the Mazda Miata M-Speedster concept was largely the design of Mr. Wu-Huang Chin– a brilliant designer who now lives in Taiwan. Others in the Mazda R&D (North America) Design Department (in Irvine, CA) at the time were as follows: • Mark Jordan (talented son of GM's famous Chuck Jordan) • Tom Matano (who some may have met on the PAC Packard National Meet tour at the Academy of Art school in San Francisco) • Tom Beaubien (a good friend and former Packard Styling employee who was one of the original builders the scale model of Packard Predictor) I worked with these immensely talented gentlemen for nearly twenty years and consider them all friends. Sadly, Mr. Beaubien passed some time ago. But you can read about his contribution to the Packard Predictor concept car in the story I wrote for The Packard Cormorant magazine, as published a few years ago by The Packard Club. Mr. Beaubien's family was such a part of Detroit that one of the old main streets there still bears the Beaubien name. An immensely talented guy from a solid old Detroit family. Now. This all said... I'm betting that absolutely none of you (or other Mazda fans on the internet) ever saw this one! And no, the image is definitely not Photoshopped. The future arrived... a long, long time ago... and some of us humans were actually there– as incredible as this may seem... 
Posted on: 1/19 19:26
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Re: Was a 1955 Caribbean modified to make a 1956 Caribbean prototype?
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No problem at all. I was also very pleased to meet you in person!
Posted on: 1/19 18:41
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Re: Was a 1955 Caribbean modified to make a 1956 Caribbean prototype?
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Ohh? Well... thank you for the kind thoughts and words!
Posted on: 1/19 18:32
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Re: Was a 1955 Caribbean modified to make a 1956 Caribbean prototype?
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Hello... Sorry. While 1954-56 Cadillacs had a lovely heating system (I rode in a new 1954 convertible regularly... IN Detroit... during winters and summers) the HVAC system couldn't hold a candle to Packard. The very idea of venting A/C via the roof was great for freezing heads. Not so great for cooling. This was well proven on 1956-57 Continental Mark II (I have one and two neighbors bought Mark IIs new). Packard's 1955-56 theater ventilation approach was light years ahead of Cadillac dinosauric trunk systems and others, except for Pontiac. We can see just by looking at history just how on-target Packard's approach was.
Posted on: 1/18 16:17
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Re: Was a 1955 Caribbean modified to make a 1956 Caribbean prototype?
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I have discovered over a lifetime of keeping records on these cars that factory build slips are merely factory build slips. Cars that were actually in the marketplace, out on the street or even with dealerships and distributors sometimes differed. Some were changed after the factory orders were filed (these came over a Telex at Conner Avenue). These changes took place at factory prep, distributors, dealerships. And then there were customers who insisted additions/changes at delivery or after delivery. These were Packard customers (most accustomed to being catered to by dealers) in an era of when you ordered a car rather than taking "the blue one or red one" simply because they were pre-ordered and sitting on the lot– like today. And Caribbeans were the creme-de-la-creme of V8 Packards. Therefore, someone buying one of these cars new was not merely a generic "John Q. Customer." I had a 1956 Caribbean hardtop with factory underseat heater. I have inspected others that were likewise so equipped. But yes, officially underseat heaters were not standard equipment on 1956 Caribbeans. One of the reasons (and a Packard engineer told me this) was the difference in the seat design and issues related to it.
Posted on: 1/18 15:59
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