The availability of optional equipment wasn't always clear from the showroom literature or even the parts catalog, but it was spelled out for the dealers for the purpose of ordering and pricing vehicles via factory-issued Trade Letters, which are rather hard to come by these days.

To help decode build sheets and production orders and figure out what equipment your car came with as standard and what else was available, optionally, this information has now been summarized in a format similar to what you might have seen in sales brochures in more recent years.

Equipment is listed merely in the order of appearance in the original Trade Letter. Only those codes which are optional for a specific model will appear on its production order and build codes sheet. Keep in mind that some equipment was also made available as over-the counter accessories, but not all dealer-installed accessories will have order codes.

If you find a discrepancy in this information and have an original copy of a Trade Letter to support it, please provide a copy to PackardInfo.com and we'll assimilate it accordingly.

Special thanks to Brian Harpst (BH) for all his research work for this content.

1956 Build Sheet and Production Code Chart

UPDATED 9/02/11

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