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Mahoning63 wrote:
Teague's grill proposal perhaps ran the risk of presenting like an Edsel but I think it is a work of art that should have been tried on a Packard somewhere, somehow,
The grille never totally went away, just got stretched beyond easy recognition over the entire width of the front end. It would've been hard to continue the small version like the 48-49-50 on cars that were being made in the mid to late 50's. Pontiac was successful in evolving their "schnoz" design from the 60's through the '70s, not without some ribbing from the public, but it didn't seem to hurt sales.
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reserved Teague's little jewel and hidden headlights for a super
upscale series that otherwise shared the standard line's bodies. It would have made for a very distinctive and mysterious flagship.
This is a great idea... why not make it a return to an exclusive "coach-built" Packard which all the old-timers (and of course many today) were crying for? The exclusivity of the Caribbean was not well publicized as a specially constructed Packard, and of course it really broke no new ground in styling compared with the other seniors.
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I really like the C-pillar Packard came up with for '55/'56 and wish they had kept it
Ditto. Hard to keep the look without the curved top, which had to go.
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Some of the Amerian cars of the late Fifties and Sixties are so low, wide and flat, I call them pancake cars.
We used to call them "sliders." I am also a big fan of the Rivs. You can thank the "CV" (constant velocity) u-joint and the resulting split driveshaft for that extremely low body. Not since Packard invented the bevel gear differential, back in the 20's, I believe, did any new design feature so dramatically affect the capability to drop bodies lower. And, of course, being that now it was possible to make cars lower, Detroit decided lower had to be better and slammed everything right to the ground. Even the huge '65 Buick Electra 225 I had back in the '70s was practically dragging the rockers. But those cars were
COOL and I miss 'em.
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Eventually they and Mercedes would have met in roughly the same place, albeit coming from different directions.
And isn't it ironic that the last hurrah for S-P selling cars was the Mercedes-Benz deal?
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