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Which is the "correct" color scheme for 1955 senior rims? Should the rims match the primary color of the car or is a 60% black color acceptable?


My 400 rims are currently turquoise and I was recently questioned about the authenticity of such. The man that inquired thought that the rims should be black in color?

Opinions?

thanks

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Interesting question and I hope someone has a definitive answer since the parts book doesn't list any trim code for wheels. What's a 60% black? My current Caribbean HT was & is red-- a Patrician I had earlier was body color, blue. I believe both to have been original.

While I know brochures have a lot of artistic license in the illustrations, looked thru my 55 & 56 they pretty much all show body color. In addition, there were a few of what appear to be actual pictures of a couple of 55 Patricians in one and those wheels were also painted body color.

My 56 400 wheels were originally Eire Green which is one of the two body colors, the other being Dover White. Memory says the wheels were black inside. I have never seen white wheels. Friend's 56 Pat has red wheels on a Maltese gray/Dover white body. Pat has only 15,000 original miles. I have seen a lot of red wheels on various 55-56 Packards.

This was some discussion of this a couple of years ago:

https://packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=212&forum=3&post_id=1149#forumpost1149

..with a bit more on some exceptions for red wheels in another thread:

https://packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=393&forum=3&post_id=2449#forumpost2449

Don't confuse Packard's wheel treatment with those of other manufacturers and/or later years.

Thanks BH et al for the info. I'm planning on staying with the turquoise colored wheels.

My car has one in each color, the spare is pink!

the wheels on my 56 are black, but they definately dont have a factory paint job. the spare is green, which matches the cars original color.

My 2 55s have black spares and wheels, which ive never looked at all that closely.

Another question reference rims; is there a minimum diameter that the lug holes should be for the 1955 Packard? The shoulders on some of my lug-bolts seem to close to the outer edges of the lug holes! Do I have a safety issue here or am I maybe imagining things?

Is it a Packard rim? I had a similar situation-- believe it was on an Avanti-- when substituting rims from another car. The head was out to the edge as you describe and turned out while the wheels fit the hub perfectly, the bolt holes were larger because the donor car used larger bolts.