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Personally I think a more effective approach would be to buy one that doesn't need major work, then just paint it. You'll come out ahead over all the body work required for this one.

Shame you don't like pink, because this one is sharp, nearby, and at a fair price. Note that those are seat covers.

hemmings.com/listing/1956-packard-400-308978

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It is so very unfortunate that youngsters hired by auction companies in recent years have taken to repeatedly calling an Ultramatic a "2-speed" and leaving it at that. This is very misleading. A Chevy Powerglide is a 2-speed. There were Ford and Mopar automatics that were 2-speeds. A Packard Ultramatic was not/is not merely a "2-speed." This is especially true for 1956– which was one of the most advanced, futuristic automatic transmissions in the car industry at the time.

The 1956 Ultramatic had a huge lock-up torque converter– which took it a step away and above merely being a "2-speed." IF you could have a tachometer on a 1956 Packard and a serviceable Ultramatic, properly maintained... you will notice something. When the transmission goes into lock-up mode, the engine RPM will drop slightly. The slop/slippage of an automatic trans torque converter is by-passed and power is direct from the engine to the rear wheels. Garden variety 2-speed automatics could never accomplish such a feat. All of which is why Ford and others– even Asian car makers eventually copied features of the Ultramatic. Fact. The lock-up converter saves gas, lessens wear on the engine, increases power to the driving wheels... and almost could be considered an overdrive.

The 1950s were a very vastly different mindset from 2025. Packards were never meant to be Toyotas, Hondas or hot-rods. That was a different time back when fast & furious driving for a luxury car was unheard of. The 1956 Packard was a boulevard cruiser. As such, it was never intended for jack-rabbit starts, or record-setting 0-to-60 speed triumphs. It was intended to be smooth and powerful, but not to rub out donuts or drive enduros.

Today in a speed conscious, multiple-gear-driven world of 200 MPH top speeds and 0-to-60 minimum times, no. The Ultramatic is not going to be a competitor. But it was never intended to operate in such conditions and requirements. The Packard Twin-Ultramatic all-aluminum transmission for 1956 was a very advanced and highly technical component. Properly maintained and properly understood, this transmission ought to perform all of its original functions as designed.

Packard was very much on top of automatic transmissions and had already designed at least two automatic transaxles which would have appeared in production in the late 1950s had the company continued making cars. One of these transaxles was originally intended to appear in the Packard Predictor concept car, but there was no money to do so at the time. Packard's automatic transaxle was migrated over to Pontiac (via J.Z. DeLorean) and eventually saw production on the early Pontiac Tempest.

Oh... and as for the performance of an automatic 2-speed... if one just HAS to go there... go back and check what kind of transmissions Jim Hall's amazing Chaparral race cars used! Eh?

Ultramatics continue to get un-deserved bad raps– almost always from those who do not understand them. Worse, the number of folks yanking Ultramatics to adapt some kind of fandango wonky contraption transmission after all these years continues to amaze...

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I am almost certain this is Scottish Heather Four Hundred was once in my personal collection years ago– minus the added black stripe at the bottom and the wally-world universal eBay front seat cover. Had it for many years.

It was a good-running car, but seemed to have a lot of blow-by for such low miles. I was second owner at the time. This was in the 1970s.

Thanks PGH. Yeah, that does seem like a good price and close is good. But the color is just not for me.


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I called the Ultramatic a 2 speed and I don't work for an auction company. I am a transmission rebuilder who owns a transmission shop and has been in the transmission industry for 27+ years. Being the Ultramatic has 2 forward ratios, it is a 2 speed with the addition of a torque convertor clutch. While Packard was at the forefront of of automatic transmission design in some ways, it was still mid 50's technology. It would only make sense to believe as time progressed, Packard would have evolved the Ultramatic into more speeds for improved performance. The mindset for multiple speeds is nothing new, it happened in the 1950s.
I don't know who Jim Hall is, but after a quick search I'd suspect his involvement with GM he was probably using a Powerglide transmission. That's fine for a racing application where there is a lot of gear, a lot of power and a lot less vehicle weight. A 2 speed for a heavy street car? Very lame.

What is the actual number of people removing Ultramatics in favor of a fandango wonky contraption?

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Good question and I doubt anyone knows the answer. It is a fact though that that the shops or individuals who are known to be willing to work on Ultramatics are few and far between and for all practical purposes located on the east coast. There might be one in the middle and one on the west coast at Custom Auto but I doubt many would know any names to refer anyone needing work done on this side of the country. I suspect you can all but forget about finding someone in another country.

Even if you find a shop that might be willing the sad thing is that the Ultramatic had its quirks and operation was unique even back in the day and certainly different to what today's mechanics are used to. With no training other than old factory literature which even then was somewhat lacking, a few posts on various forums by those who have learned things thru the school of hard knocks, and videos like Ross has put out that situation is not likely to change much. As many have found out the hard way, without a mechanic with the understanding of how an Ultra works and then have the expertise to diagnose and actually find and change the correct part to fix a problem you have an expensive and usually still not working unit after all that work and expense. Until that changes Ultras are going to be replaced with something else which has become more and more evident over the last few years.

I believe there have been around a dozen GM conversions discussed on this forum in recent memory and an unknown number that might have been done on the quiet. Before Bendtsen's GM adapter TorqueFlite conversions were the go to when those adapters were still availablle so there are quite a few of those too. I can't remember hearing of any Ford conversions though.

It seems to me the Packard Ultramatic would have been a good match for a heavier car with a high torque engine. Smoothness was a big consideration, and less shifts = more smoothness. Larger engines that develop good lower end torque don't need a lot of gears. That said, I had a single coupling, 4-speed Hydramatic in a 1952 Cadillac convertible and I loved it. It gave smooth shifts at light throttle, and brisk shifts at heavier throttle. That car weighed 4600+ pounds, and its 331 CID V8 could move it right along. I also had a 1951 Buick with a Dynaflow. It was dead smooth, but rather slow off the line, with no gears in Drive, just a torque converter. If you manually pulled it down into Low, it would step right out.

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Too many...

The most common swap when they were new was simply to a manual transmission. Or trade in the car for a Chrysler or whatnot.

I heard the Powerglide swap kit guy say that he sold 300 kits. (If anyone has the ad saved, please post it. IIRC it was in the Cormorant maybe a year or two ago.) Considering there's probably not even 300 V8's really on the road and I've never seen one with a swap, who knows how many got installed. That number is over decades, though.

The 700R4 swap seems more common and there are a couple people on here with that swap.

I know of two cars with a Hydramatic swap, keeping the Push Buttons, both from Pittsburgh. Pretty sure I also saw one for sale one time, a 55, with a column shift Hydramatic swap.

Another one is the Mike Dulinski swap which is a Chrysler Imperial engine and transmission.

Lastly, I have also seen a number of floor shift manual conversions, the transmissions coming from who-knows-where.

Sierra Grove Packard sold that 727 conversion adapter for many years. Biggest issue with it was there were no provisions for eccentric locating pins so everything could be propery aligned, which then lead even more woes.