Re: A little Packard History from 1945

Posted by HH56 On 2019/5/23 12:23:16

If they had built a few -- even a limited run sold to the public -- can you imagine what one would be worth today it it survived reasonably intact.

Setting aside the uniqueness of design, with the state of plastic materials in general when exposed to UV and fiberglass being in it's infancy during the immediate postwar years, unless the car was garaged most of the time I expect any car that would have been built using "plastic" material and on the road would have had the sun and weather doing a substantial destruction within a fairly short time. Even after a few years of experience with fiberglass and getting out many of the kinks, the mid to late 50s Corvettes were still not that immune to cracks and delaminating if the material was exposed.

Did any of Henry Fords earlier soybean body panels ever make it into production? I've seen movies of him bashing a trunk lid with a hammer and it surviving a few blows but wonder how they would have fared in sun, weather and ordinary use.