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Another question from a brand new Packard owner.

My Packard has low miles and the upholstery is in immaculate condition. It does not appear to have been reupholstered. My question is how much headroom/seat height is normal in one of these cars? I'm 6"2", and it seems to me that I'm sitting rather low in relation to the windshield. I can drive it and everything okay, but it just seems like I'm not seated up as high as I feel like I should be. My wife is 5'4", and she has trouble seeing out the front windshield at all from the passenger side.

The seats were set rather low in those cars. I have always put wooden blocks under the seat tracks on any one I owned as I greatly prefer to sit high in a car.

If you want to download the 48 fact book there are some interior dimension charts for the various body styles. Depending on how much headroom and legroom under the wheel you have when seated it might be possible to add some shims under the seat tracks to raise the entire seat frame depending on the length of the threaded studs going thru the floor. This was something dealers could have done to fine tune to a drivers comfort when the cars were new and some years even had various height shims listed in parts books.

I concur with Ross’s observation. My ’54 front seat was elevated with one inch rough cut white oak pieces, one block for each side. The bottom side of these blocks even had rotary cutter cut-outs to clear some ‘bumps’ in the floor pan. I don’t know exactly who installed these, but the attention to detail suggests it was not their first rodeo. To facilitate some under seat non-OEM electrical equipment I replaced the previous blocks with 1 ½” units . . . red oak this time, darn ¼ sawn white oak would have been classier. I’m about 5’11’’ and find the elevated seat results in a comfortable/acceptable driving position. I still however find the seat cushion a bit soft. The condition of the cushion springs and the weight of the driver will surely alter the amount of lift required. Interestingly my ’48 does not have seat riser blocks and that seating position is equally OK, go figure. Todd if you think the seat needs to be elevated the solution back in the day was wooden blocks with longer bolts, however as Howard mentioned shims at the individual bolts seems to be an option for less aggressive shimming. I’ve also have the impression that shimming seat heights was quite common years ago, meaning if a sale of a new car was contingent on the height of the front seat I’m sure each dealer would accommodate the customer needs.

dp

These are great replies. Thanks guys. I will look into the possibility of having my son the cabinet maker make me some shims. I had no idea that this was a common practice back in the day.

There are factory service letters for some earlier cars with templates for making wooden blocks/wedges to change seat height and back angle. The same concept can be applied to later cars.

I redid my 53 Cavalier seats over the winter and I just put my front seat in tonight. I tried to mimic as much as possible exactly what Packard did, that is, I didn't add extra foam or cotton, and when I hopped in tonight I sat noticeably higher than the old seat. All that to say, part of the reason you're sitting low may be that your seat is a bit tired. For clarity, I am referring to your car's seat, not your seat. LOL

*Ignore the colour and fabric on this seat, it's just a practice seat cover.