I found a partial mailing address on restored-classic.com:

Ken Thornton. Sacramento, California, 95608, US, , Email: dbscorp@pacbell.net

I've owned both a 22nd and 23rd series Custom 8 sedan, the former for over 20 years (both now sold off). They are truly one fine car, the closest Packard ever came postwar to the quality and class of the best of the prewar cars. One reason you don't see them often is that they only comprised about 3% of Packard's production between 1948 and 1950. I don't know which is rarer today, the 7-passenger models or the club sedan, rare to sight either one.

I suspect that the difference in perception of popularity may've had something to do with dealer location and availability. We had a relatively strong dealership in my area of far west Texas and Packards were fairly well represented numerically on the roads, there. New ones became scarce after about 1953-54 but the 22nd and 23rd Series cars were fairly plentiful up through the mid to late 1960s and were still regularly being driven by little old grey-haired people and poor high-school students.

Unless there was some special strengthening in the cowl, I suspect it was quite a shaker on the road without the support of the windshield frame, kind of like the early Darrins.

I sincerely doubt that Studebaker-Packard had anything to do with the styling of this car.

White jeweled mudflaps would be a nice additional touch.

Correct, the original material was a woven welting and stapled to the skirt. Bolt in from the bottom to a welded and threaded piece above. I'm told the original bolts were sized to fit the lug wrench but can't verify.

The execution of this car is much better than the BS trying to claim a true lineage. Forget the rhetoric and look at the car.

Don't remember the discussion on this one and didn't think it official either. That's why I said thought it was nicely done compared to some of the others.

I think there was a post on here somewhere before where we all made fun of this clunker. I mean, come on! A "1956 Caribbean custom made by a former Packard designer" that has a Patrician serial number???


There's one born every minute!

Portlandon wrote:

"The "Clunker Bill" shows a lack of understanding of "sustainability." The environmental cost associated with building a new vehicle outweigh the savings associated with increasing your fuel consumption by anything but an astronomically high number (think 150%). So unless people are trading in old Suburbans for Vespas, you'll be hurting the environment more than helping it. The one benefit is the auto industry stimulus that would occur from added sales. However, it would be a one-time hit -- not a real solution to the many things that really ail the industry."

Speaking of "sustainability", consider the following:

The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to, "DECREASE OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL." Last year, 31 years later, its annual budget was $24.2 BILLIONS, it had 16,000 permanent federal employees and 100,000 private contract employees.

Have we gotten noticeably less dependent upon foreign oil?

Pretty efficient, huh?

This is the point where anyone with prior knowledge and the ability to add two and two together to get four would be slapping their foreheads and asking themselves, "What was I thinking?"

Instead, we're in the process of turning what remains of our banking industry and our auto industry over to a bunch of similarly forward-thinking bureaucrats.

I'd feel a lot better about the sustainability of the human race if we didn't just keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again - all the while expecting a different result.

My Packard is sustainable as far as I'm concerned. I won't pollute the atmosphere as much with it nearly as much as the congressmen, senators, corporate executives and sustainability, "experts," flying around in their corporate jets and building plants to produce grossly overpriced merchandise that won't last until it's paid for if I drive it for another 40 years - unless we see fit to create yet another bureaucracy to, "regulate," it for, "environmental," purposes. How, "sustainable," in the overall scheme of industry and economy is another self-serving, non-productive giant bureaucracy?

Interesting concept & certainly had some thought behind it. Wonder if the Stude engine was as robust as envisioned though. Seem to recall reading that when developing the R series engines for Avanti and then Hawks etc, there was some limitations (aside from money) that they had to contend with. I believe Granatelli (or Paxton) made a few R5 engines which were bored out but the blocks had to be very carefully selected because there wasn't that much meat available.