Re: Ex-Packard Designers

Posted by Dave Brownell On 2014/8/4 8:33:33

As a father of five (now grown) children, I owe some of my surviving sanity to a series of Volvo 240 and full-sized GM station wagons with rear facing seats (thank you Plymouth Plainsman). These same children now have to face a world of Minivans and SUVs where they can see and hear every action of their fewer numbers of children. When we were younger parents, our family vacations of several thousand miles in two weeks would have driven us crazy (or apart) had it not been for our kids watching the highways slip away. The vehicles we did choose were easy to get in and out of, so thanks to engineers and designers who kept things reasonable when it came to active families and now, old folks.

When my 92 year old father-in-law first rode in my Packard hardtop, he remarked about how easy it was to access and move around in. My wife, used to a bunch of modern and very safe vehicles, and a dislike for most of my Corvettes, remarked on the Packard's visibility and open feeling. It remains the only one of my old cars that she wants to take a Sunday drive in. So, something was going right in those EGB studios sixty years ago. Even the grandkids like riding in the Packard, especially when it makes those "dinosaur noises" in the T-L suspension. Mine won't push them back into their seats like the Corvettes do, but it remains one of the few that can hold most of the gang and everyone can see out of (when they're not teasing each other). I wonder if that was in the engineering and stylists hard points?