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Hello Dave... I actually rode in the Plansman a couple of times... and I found this car when it was claimed lost to the car world for many years. Sitting in the rear seat was not much different than sitting in the rear seat of a 1955-57 two-door Chevy Nomad or Pontiac Safari wagon. In fact, the Plainsman was better! Why? Because it had far more headroom. AND the cool flow-thru ventilation (WHICH Ford was crowing about in 1964 as if they invented it)!

Plainsman was also WAY ahead with a lot of other features:

? Reverse-facing 3rd-row rear seat. As for talking to kids riding backwards in this seat... it never seemed to be a problem for the thousands upon thousands of GM, Ford and Chrysler cars that had it in production! Our 1961 Oldsmobile had it (by the way with body built by Ionia division of Mitchell-Bentley who did 1953-54 Caribbeans). Our 1963 Chevy Impala had it. We never had any problems and frankly, the kids loved it! Only our seat and almost all other production 3rd-row seats until very recent years were not power retractable. Again... a very way ahead feature.

? POWER retractable rear seat

? Power retractable assist step plates. THESE didn't happen on production cars until years and years later and they weren't retractable! And nobody had to climb over the tail gate... for this very reason... just like on production cars that followed decades later. As the dealers used to say, entering a station wagon with rear-facing 3rd row seat and step plates was "a 2-step operation": step up on the step plate...step into the seat well. Done. The tailgate was never in the equation.

? Hidden spare stowed in the rear quarter. Now, come on... how many wagons and SUVs copied this feature even decades later?!

? Power rear tail gate (again...?)

? Power retractable tailgate backlite window (again..?)

? Built-in hinged skirts (okay GM Le Sabre had this feature first, but they yanked it off of the so-called "update" version-which is what people see today and think it is how the car looked-and then GM cut the rear wheels open in the body later. Gad!).

? Power retractable left tail light assembly with hidden gas filler (by the way, this feature was also planned to be on Packard Predictor... until Chrysler slapped a patent on it and Predictor-at the last minute-ended up leaving the filler in...the trunk!!!!). Come on... give it up for this feature huh? You KNOW it's cool!

As I said previously, the "fat, stubby" look of the Plainsman came about as a direct result of Chrysler meddling with Dave Scott's beautiful original design. Dave's design had a sweeping reverse-angle wrap-around windshield... exactly (and I do mean exactly) like Black Bess and the planned 1957 Packards. See the forward slanted line of the roof section that leads right into the parting line at the rear of the door? That same line and angle was originally on the Plainsman windshield A-pillar design. And it made the car look very sleek. So IF you would not like the dogleg on the Plainsman, you would not have liked it on the 1957 Packards and Clippers either... because it was the same design. Likewise on the 1954 Panther for that matter. Same thing. You can see how it was intended to look if you read the original history of this car written by Leon Dixon back in the 1970s for Hemmings Special-Interest Autos magazine.

Today's auction companies want to convince you that somehow Virgil Exner did all this. The auction folk are either unaware of the correct history or purposely choose to ignore it and make up their own. Either way this history published in Hemmings Special-Interest Autos magazine was the real, true story of the Plainsman and how it came to be. AND it was the first time that Dave Scott rather than Virgil Exner was credited with doing this design-in total (except for the ridiculous vent window and mangled windshield). You can find more Dave Scott designs featured on other cars and even in Esquire magazine (where some thought his work was that of Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky).

Anyway, once Chrysler turned this beautiful design by one into a design by committee and they mangled it with the huge ungainly vent window, it gave the illusion of changing the proportions of the car completely. Brownlie and others at Chrysler though this kind of wrap-around windshield "looked too GM" (they apparently never noticed it on Packard Panther). Instead of having a swept-forward streamlined look, the eye now sees a giant vertical vent window that wrecks the theme and goes with nothing on the car. No wonder it now looks odd to some.

As for Packard influence on AMC cars of following years... yesss... but that was unavoidable with one Richard Teague steering the design ship over at that company. AND if you are really observant on AMC sedans, you will note that they used identical ribbed aluminum extrusions around some of the greenhouse glass (like the doors) after Packard's demise. Just like it was used on the 1957 Detroit-built Packard designs that never made production. Look at them closely. These little extrusions are even on Black Bess aound the door glass... just like later AMC cars. Kinda makes ya go... HHhhhhmmmmmm!

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Yes, but before we start patting Bill Brownlie on the back over the greenhouse and beltline indentation on the final versions of the proposed 1957 Detroit-built Packard designs it is important to know how this stuff works.

? Most production automobiles are designed with engineering "hard points" already set in place... prior to designers sitting down and putting pen to paper. For instance, the greenhouse size, shape, dimensions of the glass, etc. Even what may seem to be a design/styling feature like the beltline indentation with the rear upsweep MAY be the result of an engineering hard point. For instance to increase body rigidity or reduce "drumming" in sheet metal panels. So we really don't know how, why or where this feature originated...Richard Teague, Bill Schmidt, Bill Brownlie, or an engineer someplace.

? We do not know when these illustrations were actually made...before, after or during the time when the indent and greenhouse may already have been suggested or even set as hard points. Thus, even if the issues of the greenhouse and beltline indentation were purely for styling (and they probably were not) there is no way-especially at this late date and not knowing more details-to determine precisely who or what influenced who or what.

? Finally, I happen to know personally that Bill Brownlie was not at all fond of "doglegs" created by reverse-sweep, wrap-around windshields (which the illustrations in question so obviously have). Bill told me this very thing when I interviewed him in the 1970s for a story on Dave Scott's (NOT Virgil Exner's) Plymouth Plainsman. The first thing that came out is that he and others at Chrysler resented the original reverse-sweep wrap-around shape of the Plainsman windshield-which was just like the proposed 1957 Packard and like the Packard Panther, etc.etc.etc. So? They tampered with poor Dave's design and the net result was a hideous, huge vertical vent window installed on the actual car built at Ghia. Just ruined a perfectly harmonious design and made it look fat rather than sleek by changing the locus of the eye to the vertical. The entire design perspective was changed just from tampering with the windshield. So why would Bill be promoting design that he claimed he disliked? Unless it was already set as a hard point!

Anyway, offered for what it is worth...

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Again, as I said in an earlier post, there are many mistaken ideas regarding the Belmont. And the Chrysler Concept Cars book has a few serious mistakes and omissions in there. Putting this all on Bill Prance is not accurate either. And again, as I stated previously, there is a Packard connection.

As far as the Granada is concerned, Creative and M-B only worked with what they were handed. It is not as if they styled the car... at least with the exception of somebody, somewhere along the way adding chopped-off Panther/Clipper tail lights onto the Granada... and that's another story for another time.

Finally, the presumption that the Panthers were a reaction to the release of GM's Corvette is mistaken. If anything, it was just the reverse. GM was just one of the first major car makers out of the box with one, but while others were working on the same ideas at the same time. Everybody from backyard mechanics to major car companies was working on a fiberglass sports car in the very early 1950s. There wasn't a car magazine published at the time that wasn't buzzing about fiberglass bodies.

Again, as I have stated earlier, Packard was already working on making a fiberglass (or what they initially called "plastic") car well before the war. George Walker and John Reinhart were two of the designers working on this project. This is well documented by at least 1941. By the postwar period, the work resumed, but not on any urgent basis. It is my belief that Jim Nance simply switched the priority on fiberglass to "urgent" as of his beginning with Packard. AND, I also believe that Nance rejected the existing designs that he was first shown and this created the stage (and the urgency) for the Panthers to be designed and built. Nance was not a man who liked to sit around and suck cigars while musing forever ad nauseum about doing something. He shared a philosophy with Earle C. Anthony whose slogan was "...if an idea is worthwhile, don't just sit around talking about it...DO IT! If not, forget it." Despite all of the nasty barbs over the years aimed at Nance... he wasted little time getting into action on what he thought (or was advised) were worthwhile ideas.

Of course, the 1954-1/2 Panthers with the 1955 cathedral tail lights were only basically cosmetic changes. The engines were still non-supercharged straight 8s. The exhaust was routed out of one port of the dual exhaust ports on the rear bumper. The other was a dummy outlet. This information and more was also covered 30 years ago in the original Spring, 1984 issue of The Packard Cormorant magazine history of the Packard Panthers written by Leon Dixon.

The only functional/engineering changes with these cars that were obvious was the addition of a hood scoop and other changes intended to assist in cooling since these cars were quickly discovered to have a tendency to overheat during normal driving-which these latter two Panthers experienced most. Both also had "wind wings" originally added to the A-pillar with the Mitchell version eventually having an actual quarter/vent style window added. But no V8.

Hello... I also assure you that several press photos of 1955 and 1956 Packards were indeed taken at the Cranbrook Academy/Institute. It is easily recognizable in photos, but I have seen several times online where people wonder about the location and don't seem to recognize the very obvious background and even statuary. Or claim it is someplace else.

Packard even had its own version of the Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild contest held there where young guys were encouraged to build models of designs they made for future Packards. Unfortunately, this contest seems to be forgotten in Packard lore now. But I still remember it.

Bill was screaming "OLDSMOBILE" here... loud and clear. If only he was around now to explain the philosophy behind this design! Ohhhh, that would be a good one! Thanks for sharing.

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Yessss. The original color of the Belmont was a light metallic blue (I believe called "Azure"). The "resale red" car of today is that same car after going through many hands (and auction companies) and with a few modifications tossed in the mix by various owners over the years.

One of these mods (thankfully removed) was a-you guessed it-back porch continental kit. Er... the Mitchell Panther once had a continental kit installed on it too! Danged thing was so long and heavy it couldn't get in or out of Creative's driveway on East Outer Drive (Detroit).

Suspect that J.J. Nance probably agreed with Dave's assessment. Got news fer ya... I am absolutely, positively convinced the Belmont was originally intended to be a Packard. If you've seen my Packard Concept Car presentation, you'd know about this. And you may just see some proof upcoming in an issue of The Packard Cormorant magazine...

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All I see here is a patent illustration. Seen it before. This was done for a proposed fiberglass Packard designed by George Walker. There were several of these.

But... how is Richard Arbib involved?

Ahhh. And Bill once told me that he liked neither the Plymouth Belmont nor the Plymouth Plainsman. But then what do I see here?

The Belmont's (which kinda-sorta came from Briggs) tunneled and heavily chromed headlights on one car... and the Plainsman's heavily tunneled front bumper ends, hooded headlights and wrap-around windshield on the other car!

Thank heaven the Kaiser-esque-cum-Oldsmobile-cum-Buick never made steel.

Bill, wherever you are, I'm sitting here smiling... and probably so are Bill Schmidt and Dick Teague!

That's not wood around the windows, it is faux/simulated woodgrain painted on pressed metal.

As for Hot August Nights in Reno, you never know what may turn up there.

Every one of these ghastly poseur thingies is very obviously ripping off the Packard radiator grille. And if any of these people buying them were so steeped in "art" then they ought to be evolved and informed enough to know one thing: they are simply buying bad taste with a rip-off Packard grille that is not forthcoming enough to admit it! Ripping off a Packard front end and then making it seem as if this is some great "art" that somebody today has dreamed up is a very sad, sad commentary. And it just goes to show that large amounts of money and large amounts of sophistication do not necessarily go hand in hand. Awful.