Re: How'd they do it?

Posted by Leeedy On 2014/4/1 17:46:36

Quote:

Thank you for your interest.

The 1953 and 1954 Caribbean bodies... I'm going from some pretty old memories now. As I recall, these were mainly built by Briggs... then given basic assembly at Packard... then shipped off to M-B to be converted into Caribbeans. They arrived at M-B with the rear of the body in red primer, fenders in black primer and hood in bare metal. You can see these images from my files in glorious color in past issues of The Packard Cormorant magazine.

The 1955 and 1956 Caribbeans... Were done at Conner. If I recall, they had a special area where the convertible top stacks and interiors were completed. This really is not all that unusual at all. Same procedure Packard followed in the 1930s-40s. Assembly line layout overviews for Conner didn't refer to models (Clipper or senior) or convertibles... only "2 Door" or "4 Door" There was also indeed a very large heavy repair area at the end of the line and several lesser repair areas scattered mainly on the southeast corner of the plant. And by the way... ah-ah-ahhh! paint was always done first... then trim... not the other way around.

RE: photos of senior Packards being assembled at Conner... You may notice that in magazine coverages at the time or even factory pics of Conner assembly work, most of the pics you will ever see were of junior cars...Clippers. Management wanted to keep the mystique higher for the senior Packards and avoided showing them under construction. Thus most 1955-56 line photos show Clippers.

I rode in the very first 1956 Caribbean prototype (or pilot production) convertible. It was actually a 1955 set up to look like a 1956. The seats were slightly different and so was part of the wiring harness. For 1955 and 1956, these cars were set up at a special "skunkworks" location for just this purpose. I have a photo of this car still with a 1955 decklid on it (this was changed later).

There were at least two outside firms that participated in the 1956 Caribbeans. One was an engineering company that made up a few odd Caribbeans (got photos, yes) and the other was Creative Industries. Creative worked together with Packard and provided facilities and expertise to set up the 1955 and 1956 Caribbeans. But they did not build the production cars as far as I know, just set them up. The final kinks (if any) were worked out at the super-stealth skunkworks. Due to the money crunch for 1956 it cost less this way.

Few people know it, but Creative did the same thing with De Lorean. First early proto I ever saw was at Creative.

RE: a definative text covering all of M-B and Creative's projects... Probably no one knows every single project they did since between these two companies there were thousands. I have decent records, though. M-B claimed they did Kaiser Dragon, Studebaker Golden Hawk, of course 53-54 Caibbean. Continental Mark II and on and on and on. They had a few company histories printed up in the 1990s, but those are very tough to get. Yes, I have one along with my items from the 1950s.

Yes, I have pics of various cars on the assembly line at M-B, but never any with mixed makes on the same line.

As for Creative's projects and history, you need look no further than the December, 1978 issue of Car Classics magazine which was sold on news stands everywhere and still sometimes turns up at swaps and on eBay. Car Classics was later merged with Car Collector magazine. Anyway, many of the projects Creative did (or participated in), including the ones for Packard like Panthers, the Request, the Predictor and more were in this photo article. This is the article that so many people are quoting today on the internet-whether they realize it or not-when they refer to Creative and their involvement with these cars. Why? Because nobody published this stuff earlier-and if anyone else knew earlier, they never said so in print.

There is one mistake in this article and this had to do with how the company was founded. Due primarily to the fact that there was apparently some slight politics involved, there was an alternative version supplied to the author about how the company came to be. That information was not altogether accurate. This was unavoidable due to how it was supplied. However the info on projects and photos were all accurate.

Creative was also involved in the MoPar "wing" cars and a jillion other projects. I am sad to see these fascinating companies gone now. Hope this at least provides a few answers.

One thing I forgot to mention ...is that while M-B was a bit on the proud side announcing who they did work for and the projects they claimed to do, Creative was sworn to secrecy on most of their projects. Thus they were extremely secretive and as far as I know, their only original history was written by me back in the 1970s. But even then it was difficult to do. I got as far as I did only because I knew people there. For instance, even then, I could only say and show so much. I knew that at the time they were working on future Corvettes, but was told not to mention anything more than the original car they worked on.

At one point I was given several thousand 8 x 10 glossy photos from Creative's old files going back to the 1940s. But on the way out of the Outer Drive building with two crates of photos, someone in charge of new contract procurement protested. His fear was that companies who hired Creative would no longer trust them if they could not keep secrets. So? I had to put the photos back and I understand they were destroyed. A crying shame (almost to the point of actual tears)... but that's what happened.

I still have a lot of rare photos that I did manage to save from Creative. And I even have a piece of the facade from the front of the old Creative headquarters building in Detroit before it was demolished (piece saved for me by friend)s. But the history that was destroyed is/was priceless... and yes, in all those thousands of photos, there were pictures of strange Packards that no Packard fan today has ever seen.