Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

Turbopacman, my wheels are untouched originals. The factory was in such a hurry to get them out the door that the back side of the rims are still in factory primer. The back side of my original fender skirts are in primer also.

Joel -

None of the wheels on my Packard cars were painted on the inboard side - except for a bit of overspray that found its way through the cutouts whee the center meets the rim. The dark primer held up amazingly well on the Carib, which spent all but its first few years on the road in AZ, and one of the Pats that was found in WV, but came from southern OH. The wheels on another Pat, which spent most of its time in the Cleveland area, did not fare so well - except for the spare in the trunk.

What strikes me about the original wheels on your Four Hundred is that they were painted to match the interior color, which seems to be darker than either shade of green on the exterior. Perhaps that's another case where they were using whatever material they could find during the final weeks of production.

Seems, then, like the wheels on the majority of two-tone cars were painted to match the main body color (hood and tops of fenders) - unless it was white. Has anybody found a set of wheels on these cars that were painted white by the factory?

What's funny is that years later, the GM cars I remember from the 1960s and into the mid-1970s their had wheels painted same as body color only when they had the small (standard) hub cap, while the wheels on cars with (optional) full wheel were painted black by the factory.