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My thought was to paint the car in Matador Maroon unless I find some evidence of an original color that I would take under advisement - would the dash be the exact same shade as the exterior? I only ask because I seem to see a lot of cars where the dash is a complementing color, but not usually the same. I suppose it's also possible that the dash is original paint and the exterior of the car was repainted in most cases.
So far the only identifiers I've found is the anti-theft number and the vin plate under the hood, which doesn't have a paint/trim stamp on it. As near as I can tell, none of the original interior survives that I can even use to make an educated guess.

the dashes were painted to match the selected the color scheme of the car, so some dashes were outside body color and some were not, the blue, green and maroon cars had the same color dashes as the exteriors, the Sahara sand cars had black dashes and the black cars had matadoor maroon dashes

I still have not confirmed the existence of true factory or dealer delivered medium blue, red, or ivory cars which are rumored or claimed to have been produced, the orange car on the west coast is a mid 1950's repaint. Every time i ask to see the door post tag the color codes do not check out or have been painted over etc... same story with the build sheets hidden near the glove compartments

Started cleaning up the good engine today. Man what a beast! I thought it just had a lot of grease and grime on it (and I mean a lot) but it's looking like some sort of undercoating type material.

I made a lot of headway but there's a lot to go - when I say there's a lot of grime, I mean that I had to chisel with a screwdriver to get to the bolts that hold the engine mount on, and I didn't realize until about 30 minutes in that the bracket on the driver's side wasn't actually a cast part of the block.

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This is awesome information, thanks! That means even if my (obviously repainted) black dash were original, I'd likely have had a Sahara Sand car.

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The title/registration that came with mine listed it as red, but not only have I not seen anything to support it being red originally, I can't even find a trace of red PERIOD. It also occurred to me that with the lack of imagination of the state registration system, they likely would have called Matador Maroon red as well, which is why I was leaning toward that color on the respray.

Cleaned up and reassembled the good grill that will go on the car today - the one that came with had a small kink in the bottom rail, so I swapped it with the better condition outer from the Clipper. Here's the completed grill assembly.

Also continued scraping and cleaning the new engine. I got a lot off, but I'll probably have to break out the wire wheel to get the best of it. I also ordered the Packard gray paint from Bill Hirsch today, along with a quart of his silver rust encapsulator that I'll use on the inside panels before topcoating.

Plan is, after work today to go back to the storage building and try again maybe to get the Clipper spun around - if not, I'll at least get it up on dollies and get the driver's fender off, and hopefully start on the interior.


The panel that goes behind the lower grill bar - that looks to be just painted silver/gray, not chrome, is that correct? It's close to what the dull chrome looked like, but as you can see the chrome shined up pretty well, that panel didn't.

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Picked up some more parts today, including a gorgeous steering wheel, reverse lamps, and the center plate for the continental kit.

Unfortunately, that made me stop and take a look at the continental kit I bought for the car, and it doesn't look as though it belongs to a Caribbean. Attaching pictures, can anyone confirm? I don't see how the center button would release it, and prior it had to be released from behind the wheel.

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Any maker's name on the continental kit? The units used by Packard on the 53 and 54 Caribbeans were supplied by Huddleston-Whitbone but modified from their standard kits.

Sorry, forgot to update my email so I didn't see the response. I didn't see any branding on the kit that I could tell. If it's not right, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. At least I have a couple of good examples I can compare to when I get to that stage.

It's been a while since my update, but I've been carving up a lot of Clipper. Here's all that's left, after stripping, sandblasting, and the first coat of Bill Hirsch's wonderful whatever POR15 substitute is called.

From the guide, the frames have different numbers, but based on other information, that has more to do with position of outriggers.

After all the work on this, I'm really sincerely hoping that the 2678 body fits. :D

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Sorry for the bubble bursting, but that frame is not suitable for a Caribbean. The location and the height of the outriggers is quite different than needed to accommodate the hog troughs behind the rockers on the convertible bodies. Second it lacks the extra upper and lower plates that were welded all along the siderails and x-member. Lastly the actual gauge of metal is thinner than the convertible frame iirc. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

Having gone this far, I'll take a look and some measurements to compare. Outriggers can be moved from the old frame and bracing plates welded in if that's the only difference. Likely it's what was done originally. The Caribbean frame itself is badly rust damaged and I'm not likely to find another one.