For a 1950's Packard as a "frequent driver", the main issue I think is the Ultramatic, for the "original" ones not so much reliability, but simply the combination of sluggishness off the line and gearing that isn't conducive to sedate freeway cruising even at 65 mph. For the Gear-Start and Twin-Ultramatic, reliability problems rear their ugly head.
For this reason I think there are a lot of people that just punt and throw an LS motor and modern tranny in it, like in this article:
Senior in High School drives a Packard 200 Deluxe Wish they'd at least tried to use the 700R4 adapter and kept the straight-8. It wouldn't surprise me if the mechanic eventually also put in disc brakes, maybe even figured out some way to add a modern dual master cylinder.
Not saying this is great, just it sometimes is understandable.
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