Re: Snoozing for 30 Years

Posted by 55PackardGuy On 2016/3/6 18:29:28

Yes, there is "light" and then there is lightly built. Some very heavy cars are surprisingly fragile, and some lighter ones tough as nails. Engineering has something to do with it, I guess!

Cadillac apparently did a better job of hiding their "posts" on 4-door HTs. My Buick looked very sedan-like unless you opened a door with the window down.

Looks like you had a nice setup in San Jose. One nice thing about the '54 Packards like yours is that they have the distinction of being the last to come down the line at the original plant. I always wonder if anyone found out which serial number was the last.

According to a picture that showed them tearing up the conveyor behind the last car, it is a Clipper. There is another photo of a senior body drop (with air conditioning) that shows a bunch of smiling bigwigs and workers around the car. but the track is still intact,. I guess that was the beauty shot and the photographer hung around until the Clipper hit the body drop and got the destruction of the line in the shot.

Immediately tearing up the conveyor always struck me as a way for the brass to show that the move to Conner was irrevocable, thus making Chrysler feel more secure. Good for Chrysler! They got the deal of the century from what I can tell.

It is pretty well documented that a lot of the assemblers smiling in that picture were not very happy trying to build the '55s and '56s at the Conner "crackerbox." A lot of the maneuvers by Packard at the time were so harebrained that it is not surprising how Packard owners and fans of that generation would have speculated, quite reasonably, that Packard was basically sabotaged by managers from within and then scuttled. My dad was of that opinion. I really couldn't say for sure. I wasn't born for a couple of more years, so it all became hindsight for me.

(No offense or expert information is intended in these comments.)