Re: Re-bodied ?

Posted by Owen_Dyneto On 2013/1/8 16:33:50

The topic of body makers isn't a short or easy one, far too large a topic for a simple response, but there are many very excellent books available on the topic. The first thing to do is to note that there were many mass volume body makers whose stock in trade was to build large numbers of "standard" bodies for car manufacturers, such as Pullman and Briggs who built for Packard at various times, Hayes who built for Peerless and occasionally for Chrysler in later years, Fisher Bros. for GM, Seaman for Nash, and on and on. Over the years there were perhaps half a hundred such companies. Franklin didn't generally build their own bodies, nor did Stutz in later years. These nominally "factory" bodies normally don't carry any identification as to maker. You'd have to become a very serious student of the industry to wrap yourself around this topic.

Then as a separate cateogy of body builders there were the custom coachwork houses, Dietrich, LeBaron, Brwester, Locke, Derham, Murphy, Holbrook, Willoughby and many others who made small series of custom bodies for individual luxury car makers, and one-off creations based on individual buyer's tastes. Most of these bodies carry identification badges; these are often on the lower right side of the cowl between the hood and the front door, though at times they are on the sill plates or other locations. To add confusion there were bodies built and tagged as Dietrich which were actually built by Murray, just to name one such example.

Unless your two cars have such special coachwork, the bodies for your 633 and 1506 were built by Packard themselves. There is an excellent website on the custom coachwork body builders as well as some of the "volume" speciality builders. Seehttp://www.coachbuilt.com

If your interest is limited to Packard coachwork, you might go to the "Bookshelf" on the site and take note of Hugo Pfau's book "The Coachbuild Packard" - probably long out of print but copies surface from time to time. Another superb work on the subject is also by Pfau who writes from first hand experience in the industry, "The Custom Body Era". there are also harder to find books on the Swedish, English, German, and other overseas coachbuilders.

A picture of your turn signal device would be most interesting, devices like you describe are most often found on European makes, sometimes called wig-wags or semaphores. It also may be some sort of aftermarket gadget.