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I've seen Packards before that had been converted into pickup trucks, but this one is different. The builder took exterior body panels from a 1952 200 and somehow grafted them onto a 2000 GMC Sonoma. This is one strange looking vehicle and from the photos, I really wonder how well engineered this thing is. Would you pay $3,500 for this? For those unfamiliar with GM trucks of this era, the GMC Sonoma was a compact truck sold from 1982-2005. The Chevy S-10 was its corporate twin. Here is a picture of a stock GMC Sonoma of about the same vintage as the one used to build the Packard truck.

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I suppose you would have an easier time finding parts for the GM base vehicle but I don't think his effort is all that good looking. The all Packard creations made by Ross look so much better. No, I would not pay that kind of money. Workmanship is a big question too.

Before he retired, one of my friends had a business using the S-10 pickups of that era and the related enclosed SUV type companion model as the starting vehicles for handicapped and contract rural postal delivery conversions. For the handicap conversion he would add a large round plate with a chain drive over to the steering column so steering could be done by foot control. For the postal delivery, dash was redone so another steering wheel could be added on the right and sometimes foot control on the right as well. I was surprised by just how thin and with the weight reducing cutouts, so lacking in structure the inner sheetmetal supports are in those models. Since he was always adding, revising or reinforcing what was there in order to do his conversions I asked why not use something else as a base vehicle. It is a reasonably priced and popular vehicle with readily available and inexpensive parts and extra metal didn't cost much if some more was needed was the answer.

The point is unless the guy did lots of reinforcements to the pickup the idea of hanging something as heavy as a Packard fender off that thin metal kind of makes me wonder how well it will stay on. A fender falling off is almost as scary an experience as a California guy riding in a bus doing at least 70 on some freeway coming in from the Chicago airport and being passed by a car so rusted out the airflow was making a loose front fender flop up and down a good foot or so.

Beauty is the eye of the beer-holder.

Truly a strange build. Objectively speaking, it definitely looks worse than the other packups I've seen (including ones I'm fairly certain weren't Ross creations) yet there is a weird bit of charm to it. Not something I'd want to maintain or drive down the highway, but it would fit right in at a rat rod competition.

A "good machine to take to nationals" with "4wd".

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