Packard Forum Index » Post-War (1946-54)

Recently I asked a couple questions here after getting excited by some things for Packard that I never knew existed but which were apparently commonly known to everyone else. I was asked if I had been snoozing and the answer is yes, I have been. Here's why:

After having up to 22 cars at home in a residential neighborhood when I lost my storage, they were so packed in that I couldn't actually work on them so they sat untouched for nearly thirty years. Seven were packed tightly into the garage including both of my Patricians that I still own and two other Packards that I no longer own (a 1948 Henney-Packard Laundaulet and a 1940 110 Club Sedan - yes, it was a 110) while most of the others were in the high-fenced backyard, with a few of the more presentable cars, such as my current 1956 Clipper Custom Sedan and former 1952 Henney-Packard Nu-3-Way, sat in the front yard, also fenced to 6'.

Finally when I moved to a larger house but with no yard about eight years ago, I built a new workshop on family property in a rural area and since then I've bought equipment, done some organizing of tons of parts and started work on my 1965 Cadillac just to get it running and back on the road again. It runs and drives finally but still needs some tweaking to get it running properly and to be fully road-able! I have driven it around the block on gravel roads but that's it.

Next in line is my 1965 Imperial LeBaron which shouldn't be too difficult (knock on wood!) as it was one of those in the garage, then on to the first Patrician, which is where some of the parts and tools I commented on come in. Presuming it cranks at all, it will need at least a full cleaning/rebuilding of the brake and fuel systems and, of course, coolant and oil changes. The workshop is in Central Oregon while I live in California so my visits are for a couple weeks at a time, every couple months, but slowly progress is being made!

The Patrician, just like the two 1965s, was an every-day driver and had been rebuilt mechanically but never actually restored before being parked. It was missing most of its trim when I bought it back before there was an Internet so parts were a bit harder to source, especially as I am hard of hearing and do not readily use a telephone. I managed to find a nearly complete parts car with all the trim along with power windows that mine did not have and would love to find a stock A/C unit that is at least good enough to use as a pattern to reproduce but so far I've not found one. I have an uninstalled after-market unit that supposedly came from a '53 Mayfair but I prefer stock appearance on things like this. I'll likely even use the parts car's body but the debate is whether to use its two-tone blue which I really like or the original car's two-tone gray. It would usually be a non-issue as I love the blue but the gray car's dash is beautiful and I have a set of excellent seats and doors with panels that are also gray (a Packard Club friend totaled his identical '54 Patrician when I used to be active in the club: the doors and seats came from it) that I don't want to have to re-do to change color.

Anyway, for what it's worth, there you have it and here are some photos of the move. The car carrier could handle eight or nine modern cars but only five of mine would fit, prompting the sixth to be delivered separately. My favorite shot is the first one where I caught the car carrier passing by the neighbor's (my parents) house after I got news that they were on their way. I had to run from one five acre property to the other and got there just in time! The last shot shows the very beginning of the sorting out of parts from many boxes and crates, using the hoods and trunk lids as sorting shelves. When the pieces went to a particular era, I put it onto the lid of the appropriate car.

Attach file:

---

  (59.71 KB)


  (54.58 KB)


  (52.07 KB)


  (42.50 KB)


  (43.42 KB)

Sounds like you need a small Army of Grandsons or Nephews to get cracking!

That's not likely to happen but at my age just getting them running and driveable might be the difference between someone later restoring them or getting scrapped once I'm gone. My goal at this point is the former.

It's viral and there's no known cure for it...
Try liberal quantities of your favorite cold alcoholic beverage to ease the pain. Best to have a well stocked fridge close to the work. Lacquer thinner vapors are also known to make things look better but the combo or the new paint stuff is lethal. You'll end up like myself and others, if you do...

Yes, these things seem to have worked wonders!

Thanks for sharing your "archive" of cars and its rip van winkle type of awakening. I hope you will continue this thread as things unfold.

BTW your Packard/Imperial link is most interesting! These marques seem to share a natural connection in their pursuit of excellence in design, engineering and manufacture.

Here is an article reproduced on another Imperial site that your site reminded me of. After some digging on the hard drive, I found the link:

imperialclub.com/Articles/55Luxocar/index.htm

It's a fascinating read, I think.

That's cool and a page I hadn't seen before! Somewhere I have an old car magazine from the '60s that compares 1966 Cadillac, Lincoln and Imperial side by side but so many times even before there was an Internet I've met people with either a Packard or an Imperial and more times than not they also own the other. The Imperial had the same high quality (at least in the era of mine) that people respect and that Packard also had. There is no comparing an Imperial to a Cadillac even though I also own the latter. The Cadillac of the '60s were very light weight and went in more for gadgets than anything else.

Quote:

You could try a '65 Buick Electra 225! I noticed your '65 4-dr HT Cadillac on the car carrier, and it's even the same color as the Electra I had back in HS and college. I loved that car, and would like to have another some day. It was a 4-dr HT, unfortunately with a post, unlike your Cadillac.

But light? I think it weighed in at about 4000 lbs. No gadgets on this one. Manual everything and an a.m. radio. The 445 ft. lbs. of torque that the 401 ci "Wildcat" engine put out certainly made it feel light! I remember the first time I drove it vividly. Off the line, with just a tap on the accelerator, it felt like nothing else I'd ever driven. Sorry to say, our '55 Packards could not compare. I was a little hurt about that realization. I thought Packard V8s ruled the world.

But this is still Packard territory, so I will defer to the majority and get off of my Buick high horse.

The Cadillac on the carrier is a 1965 Fleetwood Sixty Special so is not a true hardtop, having pillars as that model does. It also has eight power windows including the four wings.

Quote:

Yes, but I meant light weight construction. Once I picked up my 1964 Ghia-Imperial by its rear bumper using an engine lift to get it up as far as possible, then later tried the same thing on the Cadillac. The Cadillac's bumper went up but the car stayed firmly on the ground! The Imperials and Packard were built well and probably the Cadillacs of the era were too but by the sixties the Cadillac went for gadgetry while the Imperial remained sturdy with excellent but basic accessories, such as a fantastic A/C (even dual as an option) but no plumbing nightmare of a climate control.

Anyway, perhaps I should ask BigKev to move this thread to the project blog area where I can expand on the Patrician work when the time comes! Just a thought and I was about to post some old photos to get it started but I have apparently not yet scanned the negatives so all I could find was this old Polaroid SX70 shot (I have many Polaroids back to the early '50s) that I had taken on a diagonal of my old outdoor storage yard in the north edge of downtown San Jose. By the number and positioning of the cars, it was taken early on in the many years I had it available. Just so you don't have to tilt your heads to see it, I rotated and cropped the image to the odd shape and size you see here.

I must have driven the 1954 Patrician that day because it is in the center where I would usually park whatever I was driving and it had never been stored there. On the left is a 1951 Henney-Packard combination and a 1940 110 Club Sedan. The latter was purchased before it was even quite an antique and came from the Packard Seattle Company, and I bought it in Seattle, then later drove it to San Jose before starting to re-restore it some years later. I owned the 1940 since the mid-'60s but the '51 Henney was purchased sometime in the '70s and was my first postwar Packard, followed a year or two later by the Patrician.

Left to right:

1964 Imperial LeBaron (sold); 1951 Henney-Packard Combination (sold); 1940 Packard 110 Club Sedan (sold); 1964 Ghia-Imperial limousine (sold); 1954 Packard Patrician (still have); 1964 Imperial Crown Coupe (sold); 1965 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham (parted out); 1965 Imperial LeBaron (still have).

Attach file:

---

  (44.20 KB)

Yes, there is "light" and then there is lightly built. Some very heavy cars are surprisingly fragile, and some lighter ones tough as nails. Engineering has something to do with it, I guess!

Cadillac apparently did a better job of hiding their "posts" on 4-door HTs. My Buick looked very sedan-like unless you opened a door with the window down.

Looks like you had a nice setup in San Jose. One nice thing about the '54 Packards like yours is that they have the distinction of being the last to come down the line at the original plant. I always wonder if anyone found out which serial number was the last.

According to a picture that showed them tearing up the conveyor behind the last car, it is a Clipper. There is another photo of a senior body drop (with air conditioning) that shows a bunch of smiling bigwigs and workers around the car. but the track is still intact,. I guess that was the beauty shot and the photographer hung around until the Clipper hit the body drop and got the destruction of the line in the shot.

Immediately tearing up the conveyor always struck me as a way for the brass to show that the move to Conner was irrevocable, thus making Chrysler feel more secure. Good for Chrysler! They got the deal of the century from what I can tell.

It is pretty well documented that a lot of the assemblers smiling in that picture were not very happy trying to build the '55s and '56s at the Conner "crackerbox." A lot of the maneuvers by Packard at the time were so harebrained that it is not surprising how Packard owners and fans of that generation would have speculated, quite reasonably, that Packard was basically sabotaged by managers from within and then scuttled. My dad was of that opinion. I really couldn't say for sure. I wasn't born for a couple of more years, so it all became hindsight for me.

(No offense or expert information is intended in these comments.)