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Been on a streamliner kick of late, decided to check out Clipper possibilities. This mod has 10 inches added to wheelbase forward of the firewall, though hood isn't much longer. Running boards would go, front pontoons would be fullsome and terminate forward of the front doors, grill would be vertical like the '40-42s but wider so that no additional air vents would be needed. Ultramatic would be nice, so would 16 inch wheels.

Many thanks to owner of '47 Club Sedan, all thoughts welcome as usual.

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Mahoning63 - nice job! One feature that I especially disliked about the Clipper 4 door cars including the 22nd and 23rd series was the amount of agility required to enter the backseat due to the intrusion of wheel well. How about applying your ample talents to something to solve that?

Interesting problem Dave, never realized. A tough one to solve because with 4-door, 4-window streamliners the rear doors need to wrap over the rear wheels for the greenhouse proportions to work. If it were a notchback with a defined trunk one could move the wheels back and lengthen the decklid and rear overhang similar to the LeBaron Sport Brougham, which would solve the ingress/egress problem. I am afraid that with this work-up function will need to follow form! I do wonder if the Clipper sedan's doors could be fitted without modification, at least giving decent head clearance when entering. I tried to reflect this but erred on the side of a more restrictive upper door frame curve.

The Buick 80 streamliners of 1937-40 had a nice 6-window design with easy ingress. For the Clipper this would dictate an extra long body; take a look. I think the sporty nature of the car suffers but at least rear legroom would be best in class.

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Here's another solution... simply move the rear wheels back on my first work-up and shorten the rear pontoons. Not a fan of the resulting proportions but the rear door lower section does get wider.

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Hi Paul

That's another missing Clipper body style! A four door fastback might have found additional sales, at least have given customers greater choice. It makes one slick-looking sedan, that's for sure. I like the longer rear door with less fender cutout too. Even though the rear fenders are shortened, it still works nicely with the fastback roofline.

Changing a Clipper four door sedan to a fastback with sections from a two door parts car would be an interesting project.

Steve

Interesting indeed, Steve. Did an overlay of sedan doors from a different image onto this work-up and found that the rear door window frame matched pretty closely to what I guestimated. It is not entirely inconceivable that Packard's designers contemplated a 4-door fastback as part of the Clipper's body commonality strategy. I really like the overall effect the fastback lends to the 4-door, washes out what was an arguably too short decklid and gives the car long, flowing lines. The integrated running boards, firewall-to-front axle length and front appearance were also areas of opportunity. Also the fender skirts, a minor nit of mine. Always found them too long and low and not flush. If you notice, I adjusted the shape to be taller and rounder.

Ever since I saw the '40 Buick 80 Fastback sedan at last month's Woodward Dream Cruise have realized just how darn good Buick's front design was that year. The car looks really balanced, the grill being not too high or low and the headlights at just the right width. Am starting to wonder if Packard had an opportunity with the Clipper to move in this direction rather than staying vertical. The Packard One Eighty rendering in Kimes' book that shows a Buick-influenced front demonstrated that they were think'n about it. I worked up a few images last night in an attempt to reconfigure the '48 front to be a bit more Buick-like. Won't pollute the forum but do think there's an opportunity to make a dazzling Packard with old parts that would otherwise never see restoration. The car would be sufficiently progressed from the 1930s design idiom yet not even close to the 1950s. A pure 1940s design and a glorious one at that.

EDIT: uploaded a new image in my first post after discovering from the door overlay that original image had slightly too long front/too short rear doors.