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Chris, Prewar was the end of the era of wood body frames which were cars with steel over a wooden framework but by the time this Packard was made (or "would have been made" if original) most makes used steel for the body EXCEPT for woodies which retained a full wood structure and appearance. It wasn't until postwar that woodies started having partial steel bodies and even then the wood was still somewhat structural and often comprised the entire upper half of the doors. It was really early to mid-50 that car makers started using all steel on the wagons, then adding wood as a trim detail and, of course, by the n Packard did not offer a wagon.

Cantrell lost the contract to build SW on Packard 110 and 120 chassis in 1939 to Hercules Body who started making them in 1940. So there are 1940 SWs built by both companies, but none had air conditioning and none were 160 or 180 chassis.

Henney built commercial cars with air conditioning (e.g. ambulances, hearses, floral cars) but the cooling coils were under/inside the front passenger seat, not out in the middle of the cargo/patient/casket area. They were only accessible from under the car.

My guess is that Harrah took a SW body from a 1940 120 and married it to a 160 chassis. He then added air conditioning from a sedan/limo/touring car by removing the cooling coil unit from the trunk and sticking it in the cargo area, perhaps not realizing it belonged under the front seat.

I made contact with an owner of a florist company in SFO. Refrigerated floral cars actually date back to the 1920s using a ice box system under the wood floor in the back. In San Francisco there's no need for AC most of the year. In today's flower vans there, AC is only for driver comfort. Flowers stay fresh and the high humidity is perfect for them without it. What the floral cars (as opposed to funeral flower cars that are like Packard El Caminos) were used for during Prohibition was cold beer delivery. Beer was put in vases with flowers. After repeal, the floral cars were used to deliver booze and other items to circumvent taxes.

Here are some photos from Jim Hollingsworth's book on 1940 Packards.

CORRECTION EDIT + PHOTO: Apparently a handful of woodie bodies were built for the 160 chassis. My bad, but in Jim's book none were recorded. If this car is indeed one, then maybe the numbers associated with the chassis/engine might tell more.

"Cantrell was forced to lay off a substantial portion of their workforce during the Depression and helped make ends meet by refinishing older suburban bodies for existing customers.

Luckily business picked up and between 1936 and 1940 Cantrell built hundreds of production station wagon bodies for Packard's new Junior One-Ten (122" wheelbase) and One-Twenty (127" wheelbase) Series as well as a few for the Senior One-Sixty (127" wheelbase) Series. Most were built with mahogany framing and yellow birch-veneered panels, in contrast to the rock maple framed, mahogany paneled wagons they were building for Pontiac and International at the same time. Packard added Hercules as a wagon supplier in 1940, and dropped Cantrell later that year."

Also, these wagons were 8-passenger vehicles, for taking hotel guests to the train station. They had a 2/3 seat where Harrah put the cooling coil unit and a full wide seat, fold down at the very back.

I would to have someone pick my car apart. It's just that it's so extremely done, besides the missing woodgrain dash, the clock is from another year, maybe '39. 1940 didn't have those big pointers on the hands.

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Looking at this from afar...wooden framed bodies on cars disappeared in the 1930's for good reasons. "Woody" wagons were an anachronism. They were comparatively expensive to build, and never really had global appeal. There were a few lingering examples of them - mainly from the UK coach builders - after WW2. These were called "shooting brakes". Armstrong-Siddeley also produced one post war, but they didn't sell many.

I guess there was not enough demand even prewar for Packard to want to build such a model themselves. But specialist builders persisted for some years.

So that brings us to the example here. It was clearly built for Bill Harrah, who happened to fancy that style of body. And he - or maybe somebody else - wanted air con. It was fitted this way because the vehicle was never intended for commercial use. It must have been quite expensive to build, but that was hardly a problem for the Harrah's.

It appears to be well constructed and sits on a genuine Packard chassis (origin/type unknown) with some original panels. It's not very different in that sense to a lot of the other rebody jobs, such as Ferraris, which were popular at that time and often incorporated a genuine chassis from a more mundane model. So what's to get excited about? It has not been passed off as the real thing, which is the biggest risk with these things.

It's just someone's idea of a nice car. Not mine, though!

As for the later metal-bodied "woodies" - it's hard to see the point. But they were popular enough for major manufacturers to include in their model line-up in the US.

Brian

And after all these years, I was under the assumption that wooden cars were being made at that time due to the strikes and shortage of metal for the bodies. Why else would they go back to wood?
Wes

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If you watch the video, the owner is obviously trying to pass it off as being the real thing. My other beef with the car isn't that it's a replica, but that it was sprayed so thickly with urethane that it looks plastic.

West

Yes, you're right. I watched the video and the owner was claiming it's the real thing. I wonder if he knew.

Not all auctioneers are so scrupulous in checking provenance. Of course, if they get it wrong, they're in trouble especially in the US.

The good news is that the truth about this one is now being told.

One of the (many) good things about this site is that such stories are easily uncovered by future buyers. If they're dumb enough to buy something unusual like this without checking then I would say they deserve to get taken for a ride.

There was a recent case here in Australia where an auctioneer insisted they had checked the provenance of a 1930 Packard 740 Roadster, and it was genuine. It was a beautiful job, but on a rebodied sedan. I know the guy who built it, and luckily so did the buyer. But the auctioneer still insisted it was genuine, even though the builder had earlier given them photographs of the original sedan from before he dismantled it.

There was another well known case in the US, where a non-genuine Jaguar D-Type was sold but the truth emerged later. It ended up in court and the buyer was compensated.

I think this "woody" is a well built and finished example, and pretty close to an original. As you say, not quite correct. Since it was created later - and presumably regardless of expense - it has been "improved" in some areas but still represents the period quite well. In my mind, this is way preferable resto-mods which are all the rage right now.

Brian

Joe, it is the breath-taking pic of the 1940 floral car that makes to post the below shown image here. The descriptions reads:

"1938 A commodious Packard automobile was parked enticingly in front of dealer showroom."


source:pressherald.com/media/gallery/historic-photos-the-month-of-may-80-years-ago/

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