Quote:
DaveB845 wrote:
What I would have given to be a closer, or first-hand, observer to all these artistic and engineering innovations in that Golden Age of Detroit. Instead, I was stuck as a ten year old in St. Louis, then the second largest concentration of automotive industries in the U.S. GM had three plants producing cars, trucks and Corvettes; Ford made all the big Mercuries there, and Chrysler was about to spring its mid-sized car lines. But none of these plants produced the ideas that turned into new car designs like the Detroit area did. That must be part of the allure people like me have for plants like Packard and River Rouge, buildings like GM's old headquarters building on Grand, and the thankfully-saved Packard Proving Grounds.
In my travels I have observed that there are mighty few car plants that have not been completely re-done over the past twenty years or so. Some that still bear traces of the past (e.g. VW's Wolfsburg, Opel's Russelsheim and Ford's River Rouge) harken only to just a bit of the ways things were done before efficiency and economy became the benchmarks that today's competition requires. Other plants have been completely relocated and rebuilt to the point that they are unrecognizable to a worker from thirty years ago.
If Packard or Briggs had the metal and paint technology of today in past years, would more of them survived? Possibly, but Nash was dunking bodies in their Bonderizing process, and where are they today? Enamels of yesterday may have held up differently than today's water-based paints, but American society has become used to "replace it, don't preserve it" to the point that it would not matter anyway. We, who grew up when these magnificent Detroit creations were new, have some of the spirit to save what we can of that dream, drive and show them off, sometimes as a homage to those men and women who made them in the first place. There's still a bit of the spirit of those workers inhabiting my old Packard and Corvettes. I'm thankful to be able to still feel, appreciate and acknowledge it as I enjoy them.
The paint that Briggs was using was lacquer. Nitrocellulose lacquer. Primarily Rinshed-Mason (they were just north up Mt. Elliot from the Packard Plant on Grand Blvd.) but I believe some Ditzler may have been used too. Anyway, this kind of lacquer it was darned good stuff too. Hard as nails if properly applied. Its worst failing was a condition known as "blush" if applied in too cold an ambient temperature... or the other condition known as "lacquer crackle." The latter usually encountered in older age, largely from lack of elasticity from years of temperature changes. And there were supposed to be four coats of it... but sometimes on the V8s, the four coats didn't quite get applied somehow.
However, the Conner Plant was using some new Binks paint equipment with an airflow system in the booth that reportedly affected both temps and sometimes pelletized the already super-fast drying lacquer. In other words, the atomized spray that was supposed to stick on the car body actually hit it as dried dust and thus, no further coating as intended. Apparently they didn't quite have this all dialed in when the assembly lines started chunking out Packards.
Even the Howard Hughes/Jean Peters 1955 Caribbean had paint issues on it when I saw the car with only 800 miles on the odometer in the 1970s (see
The Packard Cormorant magazine Spring, 1980 issue). From the looks of things on close inspection we concluded that this car was painted at the dealer. It is serial number 8. That oughta tell you something.
As for nitrocellulose lacquer... I love the stuff. Can't easily get it anymore. But as a friend of mine once said, if you get a dribble while you're painting? Keep going and rub it out later! I've seen Packards sitting out in the desert for over a half a century with this paint. It gets oxidized, and dull. But one good waxing or compounding that the stuff shines line new money! My Packard buddy back in the 1970s used to buy a lot of old Packards... and he made the paint shine again by using a can of
Bon Ami! It was amazing how many paint jobs he brought back from the dead with his treatments.
As for clear coats on modern paints? I'll put a 1956 Packard fender and hood with factory paint up against any modern fender and hood with clearcoat on it. Sit them out in the sun for a couple of years in SoCal...and the Packard factory paint will STILL be savable and shinable. The clearcoat? Betcha it'll look like dried you-know-what and cracked, dull and peeling.
Finally on the body dipping process, Ford also used this very immersion in primer process on 1958-60 Continentals and Lincolns. Since those and the AMC cars were unit body construction, frankly, it only made sense! The Continentals and Lincolns of this period didn't bolt their fenders on... they were
welded on! The fenders actually contributed to the body rigidity. I think Ford guys found this out when they drove one over a China pothole during early prototype testing.
I don't think Packards had any unusual problems with rust for 1950s cars. Of course I have seen Packards in all states of condition. Apparently there are two definitions of "rusty." I've known people in Southern California who look at a desert car with surface rust and to them THAT'S "russsssssted out, dude!" Yet I grew up in Michigan where those very same cars would draw OOOooooos and ahhhhs and where people would cut off quarter panels and swiss-cheese rocker panels and pronounce, "I can save it!" The rustiest V8 Packard I ever saw was a Caribbean I bought. It had been sitting for many decades (unprotected mind you) next to the ocean in Florida. The car was SO bad that when I called a truck to move it and we attempted to lift it? The body came right off of the chassis! Sheet metal was about the consistency of wet toilet paper. But this poor car had been left sitting in salt air unprotected for many decades. You want real rust issues in the 1950s? Try a '57 Plymouth. My aunt's brand new one actually had
tinworm in about 16 months! That had to be some kind of record!
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