Re: Kanter's 1952 Packard Limo Restoration

Posted by HH56 On 2016/7/16 10:39:20

It is a conundrum.

One way to look at it might be if Packard promoted the model or had photos in a catalog the customer could select and get substantially the identical car delivered then it is low production. If there were no similar cars offered or nothing but conceptual renderings & sketches or the customer requested a design built to specific features and worked closely with a builder to modify a car to have those features then it would be coachbuilt.

By that criteria the limo you are working on would be coachbuilt since I don't believe Packard offered a limo or model like that for sale at the time while the 53-4 models -- no matter the assembler -- would be low production because they did offer limos and LWB cars in various publications.

The Henney built funeral cars are special purpose -- but other Henney cars are a gray area since they are essentially modified factory cars and extensively hand built to specific customer requested designs. Some models might have been jointly promoted by Packard but I doubt most were something the average customer could walk in a Packard dealership to buy -- except maybe the limos -- rather than going thru specialty channels.