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DaveB845 wrote:
The late and great Virgil Exner is off the hook for both the 1954 Plymouth Belmont and the Dodge Granada. My copy of "Chrysler Concept Cars 1940-1970" blames the Belmont on Al Prance of Briggs. Bill Robinson had done an earlier version but it was Prance who "corrected it" to the version we see today. The interior seems to have changed as often as the color of this car, including some versions with floor shift and some with Hy-Drive column indicator. Ionia Manufacturing and Creative Industries are responsible for the even worse 54 Dodge Granada. To me, it looks like a cross between the 58 Packard Hawk and a Daimler SP-250. Both could have easily been shifted over to a Packard label by some minor grill changes.
For me, I'll be happy for Chrysler to claim the credit for both. Apparently, the Motorama 1953 Corvette really got many to think about fiberglass two seaters. I do like what Richard Teague did with the Gray Wolf/Panther when his turn at bat came up. Imagine the thrill of seeing that car when the hood was opened to reveal a large iron Packard straight eight. Did the second version, the one that was updated with 55 rear treatments, ever get a V-8?
Again, as I said in an earlier post, there are many mistaken ideas regarding the Belmont. And the
Chrysler Concept Cars book has a few serious mistakes and omissions in there. Putting this all on Bill Prance is not accurate either. And again, as I stated previously, there is a Packard connection.
As far as the Granada is concerned, Creative and M-B only worked with what they were handed. It is not as if they styled the car... at least with the exception of somebody, somewhere along the way adding chopped-off Panther/Clipper tail lights onto the Granada... and that's another story for another time.
Finally, the presumption that the Panthers were a reaction to the release of GM's Corvette is mistaken. If anything, it was just the reverse. GM was just one of the first major car makers out of the box with one, but while others were working on the same ideas at the same time. Everybody from backyard mechanics to major car companies was working on a fiberglass sports car in the very early 1950s. There wasn't a car magazine published at the time that wasn't buzzing about fiberglass bodies.
Again, as I have stated earlier, Packard was already working on making a fiberglass (or what they initially called "plastic") car well before the war. George Walker and John Reinhart were two of the designers working on this project. This is well documented by at least 1941. By the postwar period, the work resumed, but not on any urgent basis. It is my belief that Jim Nance simply switched the priority on fiberglass to "urgent" as of his beginning with Packard. AND, I also believe that Nance rejected the existing designs that he was first shown and this created the stage (and the urgency) for the Panthers to be designed and built. Nance was not a man who liked to sit around and suck cigars while musing forever ad nauseum about doing something. He shared a philosophy with Earle C. Anthony whose slogan was "...if an idea is worthwhile, don't just sit around talking about it...DO IT! If not, forget it." Despite all of the nasty barbs over the years aimed at Nance... he wasted little time getting into action on what he thought (or was advised) were worthwhile ideas.
Of course, the 1954-1/2 Panthers with the 1955 cathedral tail lights were only basically cosmetic changes. The engines were still non-supercharged straight 8s. The exhaust was routed out of one port of the dual exhaust ports on the rear bumper. The other was a dummy outlet. This information and more was also covered 30 years ago in the original Spring, 1984 issue of
The Packard Cormorant magazine history of the Packard Panthers written by Leon Dixon.
The only functional/engineering changes with these cars that were obvious was the addition of a hood scoop and other changes intended to assist in cooling since these cars were quickly discovered to have a tendency to overheat during normal driving-which these latter two Panthers experienced most. Both also had "wind wings" originally added to the A-pillar with the Mitchell version eventually having an actual quarter/vent style window added. But no V8.
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