Re: 1955 Air Cleaner Decals

Posted by Leeedy On 2019/3/2 10:39:32
Quote:

Let the ride decide wrote:
Of course there is this decal, reproduced by Dwight Heinmuller.


I know this decal has turned up on at least one batwing air cleaner (which I strongly suspect was a P.R. car or Press car). But over all these years I have never seen one of these on a production car off the line. .. and I've seen hundreds of Caribbeans since 1955.

The Howard Hughes/Jean Peters Caribbean-as very, very early 1955 did NOT have this decal. I first examined this car in the 1970s when it had about 600 miles on the odometer. You can see the pics I took of the air cleaner back in the 1970s in the article published in The Packard Cormorant magazine back then.

Two of my Caribbeans were original low-miles cars. No "V" decal on either air cleaner. But ALL had the curved orange/black decals down on the pots. Likewise for the Howard Hughes/Jean Peters Caribbean.

I'm certain that there is much more to the story of the "V" decal. Also one may note that during the Cadillac Eldorado run of the same period, Cadillac was installing chrome metal "V" symbols and drawer pull knobs (instead of wingnuts for the pots) on their version of this AC "wet" dual-carb air cleaner. The Cadillac air cleaner mounted backwards when compared to the Packard mounting. Otherwise, the Packard batwing looked very plain and no different visually from the Chevrolet dual carb batwing. In fact many Packard units have been pirated thinking they were the same as the rare Chevy units (the Chev carbs actually mount closer together and won't fit). The decal for the batwing would have been a cheap way to differentiate the Packard batwing and upgrade the appearance. But I've just never seen one on a dealer-sold Caribbean in all these years...

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