The Greatest Packards of Them All

Posted by Ross On 2022/6/24 12:30:34

Dwight Heinmuller has been working for quite some time assembling a two volume book on the 55, 56, and proposed '57 Packards under the title of this thread. I have been wandering through volume one for about a week and just had volume two hand delivered a couple hours ago. The books are stunning and fascinating to the serious Packard fan on multiple levels:
-there is carefully researched history and no end of internal Packard documents and memos.

-there are hundreds of period in-house black and white and color photos that I have never seen in print in 50 years of being in the hobby.

-Over many years Dwight found and interviewed numbers of the engineers, stylists and other artists. There is much original material and insights from them including many of the photos mentioned above.

-Dwight commissioned artwork in color to show the various 57 models as they would have appeared in the colors that had been selected--beautiful. The development of the 57's was much farther along than I had ever surmised from other books.

Will you agree with all of Dwight's conclusions? Dunno, but you will have a lot of fascinating material to ponder and digest. Expensive? You bet, but considerably less than the price of a rechromed bumper guard. That relects the amount of work, the publishing cost, and the minuscule audience. For the postwar Packard fan it completes the good work that Robert Neal started in his books. You might want to take a look.