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Word to the wise: don't use ANY brake fluid at all in the convertible top electro-hydraulic system. Use automatic transmission fluid. It will never turn into rock-salt-looking crystals from lack of use and won't destroy your paint or seals.

As for cracked side rails, this phenomenon is not limited to Packards. Many other American-made convertibles of the 1950s had such brittle cast aluminum side rails. All of which is an absolute reason to never, ever try to manually force your power convertible top up or down. To do so is just begging for trouble and damage that will require parts to be replaced. The castings were not the strongest in the first place (they didn't need to be if used as designed)... and due to the nature of old aluminum, they have a terrible tendency to a condition known as "age hardening." As such they become even more brittle and less likely to flex under any out-of-plane pressure.

Take photos and show what you are talking about, don't just describe.

When you say "rear glass" suspect you mean rear side quarter glass.

The entire top frame has many adjustments, some not very obvious.

Some are hinged folding pivots.

Make certain that no pivot point or hinge is binding.

Note position and anchor placement of rearmost pivots. These can affect side alignment of frame rails.

Also be absolutely certain that BOTH hydraulic rams are traveling full and equal length.

Hope this helps.

Ahhh. Another interesting auction.

A Scottish Heather/Dover White 1956 Four Hundred disappeared several years ago from a Long Beach, California museum storage when the museum went broke. This car had original upholstery and wide whitewall tires.

It was indeed a California car since new too.

AND... it had a selector lever rather than pushbuttons...Hmmmm.

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Rather than "lemon" the title for this book-whoever published and "wrote" this ridiculous trash-ought to be the same title as the TV show that Vegas comedians Penn & Teller had, using the initials B.S..

RE: Edsel...
The Edsel was only a failure in as much as ...
? It failed to find a niche in the crowded segment it was looking to enter
? The purpose of starting a new brand at Ford was unclear
? Promises of the new car were not fulfilled
? The car was launched during the 1958 recession, which was a most inopportune time to do so.

As far as attacking the Edsel otherwise... it was purely a Ford/Mecury underneath. So why would it be so bad and the Ford and Mercury NOT be? Absurd logic. And revelation that somebody is being nothing more than a gasbag.

RE: Packard Predictor...
No idea what motivated the preposterous attacks on the Predictor other than a bad attempt at comedy... but whoever "'wrote" all this obviously never knew anything about cars... and certainly not about American cars. And quite obviously, nothing at all about Packards. Predictor was the most successful concept shown at the Chicago Auto Show that year it debuted there and even the papers said so. And so did the crowds. To claim otherwise out of a foreign book is like bearing witness to the Kennedy years when you were born in Russia in the 1970s!

Predictor actually DID predict so many things that followed that the list would be a half-page long. Read the history of the car as published in the Packard Club Packard Cormorant magazine for a REAL look at what it predicted. And claiming the roof copied "Ford Anglia" is like claiming is like claiming a Maytag upright washing machine was copied from a 1950s Zenith TV set. The Predictor ROOF came from the Packard Balboa-X... WHICH (if anyone is keeping track) also won numerous awards and was highly popular for its day. And FORD later copied Packard with the Continental roof of 1958-1960 and the Mercury "Breezeway" rear windows and roofs. NOT the other way around.

AND...making a big whoop-dee-doo over a windshield "dogleg" for a wrap-around windshield on an American car in the 1950s is nothing more than a confession of extreme ignorance about the subject. MOST 1950s American cars with the exception of MoPars had windshield A-pillar doglegs. This was NOT a design flaw and certainly not limited to Predictor alone.

And Predictor had ZERO to do with the downfall of Packard. This is just garbage.

RE: the "Arbib Dome"...
Finally IF the "writer" bothered to check, the Richard Arbib-designed concept car attacked was NOT called the "Arbib Dome" but rather was known as the "Astro-Gnome"...and it was merely intended to be a concept car...and a fascinating one. The fact that it did not "go to production" does NOT make it a "failure." On this basis that means virtually EVERY one-off concept is a "failure"...which is just more absurd talk-which proves what?

No, this attempt at some kind of rank comedy book is both ignorant and absurd. And no... the only use it ought to have on a Packard book shelf is to illustrate just how far things can go while still having people posing with serious-sounding titles as "journalist" and "author." Editorial opinion is NOT automotive history. And neither is ill-conceived comedy. In my years writing for Ford of Australia, I learned the meaning of the term "spew" from my Aussie buddies. And I think "spew" applies here. A better use for this "book" would be for wrapping garbage and putting it where it belongs.

Ever seen a 1956 Packard and Clipper showroom display? Here is one still in the original box mailed from Packard Motor Car Company to a Packard dealer in California in 1956.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/301401857245

No idea exactly how many different 1956 signs were made, but there were several.


However, there is a new-old-stock 1956 Packard show room display in the original box for sale on eBay. The dealer never had time to even set it up due to the company going out of business!


http://www.ebay.com/itm/PACKARD-MOTOR-CAR-COMPANY-1956-SHOWROOM-DISPLAY-WOW-/301378122995?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item462b8934f3

Always remember that wire spoke wheels are dynamic rather than static assemblies. Therefore spokes and nipples move under dynamic conditions and what may seem sealed is suddenly no longer sealed. Special rim liners are a necessity even with tubes, but without them...even moreso... with other steps.

Bottom line, sudden loss of tire pressure at speed can be catastrophic.

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WIth a serial number this far into production, I assure you, the factory was not sitting around trying to figure out how to add Predictor-style airfoils onto the rear fenders of a production car. They were too busy shoveling things into the furnaces and preparing to see the company die. This would have been the least of a project on anyone's mind-even IF there was money around to do such stuff. Factory mods are almost never done on late production cars-especially when that design was about to be phased out anyway.

IF the factory was actually working on such an idea (and this is hugely doubtful), it would have been on the 1957 proposed models or Black Bess engineering prototype. It wasn't. There won't be any factory "documentation" forthcoming on such a thing... certainly not at such a late point in time. They had far worse things to occupy their time by then. Gotta be somebody's customizing job.

Here's another one you will probably want to add the huge list of bo-gus "neon histories." Take a look at the educational program being sold for several years now to school children. Ahhh yes. If you're gonna B.S. them, why not start out with the gullible kids, huh?

THIS wild fantasy claims that Mr. Anthony erected the first sign "on top of his Packard dealership on the corner of LaBrea and Wilshire Blvd" in Los Angeles. Wow. Of course, then other "histories" have parroted this same "history" back on their web sites and publications and it goes on and on and on.

But the truth is... there was NEVER a Packard dealership on that corner. Much less an ECA one. Where was Mr. Anthony's dealerhsip in the 1920s? Miles away downtown-not uptown in the Wilshire District! AND the closest Packard dealership (ON La Brea) did not open until the mid-1930s... and had the further distinction of being the very first in L.A. NOT to be associated in any way with Earle C. Anthony, Inc. But again, we can't let the facts get in the way of wild story telling...right?

By the way, the most recent issue of The Packard Cormorant magazine (available via the Packard Club) chronicles the history of this very dealership on La Brea.

Oh. And then there is the almighty Wikipedia... where anyone can make up and say anything they want... and publish it on the internet where it will be quoted and quoted and re-quoted as...uh...fact! READ the fine print on Wikipedia....

There is no truth detector on the internet... which is why Snopes was invented. Imagine that. A web site to tell you whether what you are reading on web sites is real or B.S. And that shouldn't be necessary. But it is.

Sometimes there just are no places.. or no easy places to do your own research. For instance, in the case of this neon sign, there must be 20 different absurd stories on the internet, in books, magazines and newspapers about when, how much paid, where and how many of the signs there were. You'll quickly find this out.

Having worked on the history of this sign since the early 1970s and after having personally known execs from Earle C. Anthony, Inc. and having collected countless company records, there are still people spreading more absurd stories... and willing to argue until doomsday over anything and everything related to this sign. This may be the most argued and B.S.-d history in the history of history!

Mr. Anthony's own records state that he brought back 3 neon signs (not 2) from France in 1923... and that NONE of them was erected on top of ANY of his dealerships ...and that the very first one was on the corner of 7th and Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles.

Even Georges Claude himself, via Claude Neon (where Mr. Anthony had exclusive marketing rights and even a partial ownership in the U.S. company) clearly stated that Mr. Anthony indeed put up that company's first USA sign in Los Angeles in 1923. But will this fact satisfy today's "historians" in neon? Nahhhh!

When some of these folks see that they are clearly losing, have no point and are missing the target, what do they do? Why, they simply MOVE the target! Can't hit it? Just keep moving the bullseye (or the bull) around until you can! The latest silliness now revolves around attempting to discredit Mr. Anthony and Packard for their pioneering efforts in neon.

One can argue this whole topic into the ground, of course. And make a lot of very bad guesses looking at photos without the proper background knowledge, OR by naively applying the thinking of the 21st century to the 1920s and 1930s in Los Angeles... which is just the wrong approach.

When a relative found out years ago that my family was descended partially from a very famous person in Europe, some silly person promptly jumped on the internet and blurted out that it was impossible this figure could have had any descendants since he had no children with his WIFE!! Wow. Kids born out of wedlock are impossible, huh?

Likewise, one neon person swore it would be impossible for Mr. Anthony to have a neon sign put up in the location where it indeed was- WHEN it was- since "he didn't pull any permits according to the records"...WOW! Brilliant. Only someone who knew nothing about the 1920s or Anthony and everything about arguing would make such a statement!

Mr. Anthony... was a man who could-AND DID-walk around in downtown L.A. carrying a briefcase with $1 MILLION cash. And that was serious money for the 1920s. He was also known for breaking rules-or skirting them. Like when he started the predecessors to Chevron gas stations and by-passed an L.A. city ordinance that said gasoline had to be sold either in a shop or a building... SO? He extended the roofs on his gas stations to cover the pumps-which is why this feature exists to this day! Voila.

OR when they told him he could not keep more than so many gallons of gas on hand to sell? He simply lined up tanker trucks out in the street!

When the City of Los Angeles had officials who balked at bringing the Brooklyn Dodgers to L.A? Anthony had his own KFI radio announcers go live on the air and give out the HOME PHONE numbers of the city officials who were balking at the Dodger move. You couldn't do that today... but GUESS what happened? HINT: they don't call them the Brooklyn Dodgers anymore, folks!

So "pulling a permit" to put up a neon in the 1920s? C'monnnn. (By the way, from what I know, this neon was placed ON an EXISTING billboard sign... it was not a typical skeleton neon stand-alone sign and most likely made any permit-pulling silliness academic... and probably unnecessary).

Powerful men like Earle C. Anthony and Howard Hughes didn't sit around in those days and get stymied by petty rules! It was a different world then ...and a different town. And more often than not, those in charge of running things accommodated these men and their companies.

And yes there were attempts to have neon signage or at least glass tubing that was made to light up in words or characters prior to Mr. Anthony's pioneering move. The Smithsonian has two such early attempts from a large indoor event I believe in St. Louis in the early 1900s. BUT for every obscure attempt such as these, there were hundreds upon hundreds of neon signs put up by Mr. Anthony and his franchise section of Claude Neon company once he got started. Anthony brought neon into permanent outdoor usage as signage and popularized the medium into what became a nationwide phenomenon. Attempting to belittle what Anthony did today is not "history"... it is muckraking and drama for the sake of basal sensationalism.

The internet, TV, books and today's "historians" who were never there and never got into this history until recently would rather look for anything and everything to argue the facts. Do they accept the words of Mr. Anthony and Georges Claude?? Nah! It's easier to just keep muddying the waters with endless arguments, ridiculous pronouncements, endless suppositions and presumptions.

And that photo you'll see all over the internet claiming to be 1923 and the original sign? It shows a small Packard neon mounted on a building that did not exist until 1929! And a position that did not take place until into the 1930s. But we can't let a minor detail like a fact get in the way of wild story-telling, can we?

So when it comes to this Packard neon sign history... welcome to the craziness...