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Just this past Saturday, I picked up a 1953 Packard Caribbean in pretty rough shape in Flower Mound, TX for restoration.

I wasn't really looking for a project, just playing around on Craigslist, but when I found this, I couldn't pass it up.

When we pushed it into the driveway in my heavily HOA patrolled area, three neighbors promptly dropped dead of strokes. :D

I've already found a lot of great information on this site, and I'm sure I'll need a lot of help as I try to restore the car as correctly as possible.

For example, the title lists the car as Red, and some of the pieces I've found seem to be a bright red, but according to documentation I've found, the only red Caribbeans were available in from the factory is a Maroon metallic. Is that the case?

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You have got a project.

Is there a data plate on the driver side door post? If so what is stamped on it?

Is there a body tag on the firewall?

What is stamped between the triangles on the firewall?

Yes Matador maroon was one of the colors for the 53 Caribbean.

Did it come with an engine?

Use this site as well as The Packard Club site for help.
packardclub.org

There are a couple of 53 in Packards North Texas.

I haven't found a dataplate on the door post yet - the whole car had been stripped down, sandblasted and primed, so it's hard to even see what the original color was.

The anti-theft number on the firewall is C00666 I believe (my wife made note of this fact, and then insisted we watch "Christine" when we got home)

It didn't come with an engine, but came with a purportedly running parts car that I haven't seen yet since it was at a seperate location, but I'm supposed to be taking delivery of that one today. I don't imagine it will be running, but at least that means the engine probably isn't seized.

The body tag on the firewall is still there, it has the VIN as 2678-2037

Just took delivery of the parts car - unfortunately it's a Clipper, not a Cavalier, so a lot of the higher end pieces I needed are absent.

But all the other parts of the car are in very good shape, it'll be a great parts car. The sheetmetal is good, the dash is great, the engine bay is unmolested.

Once I've pulled the original parts for the Caribbean, I might drop a different motor and trans in it, just to get it out on the road again so it can live another day.

Looks like you got quite a project there. I have a 53 caribbean. If you need any pictures let me know. Good luck finding the parts.

An interesting observation in your photo #840 is that it apparently shows the lead work where the senior rear fenders were grafted onto the junior rear quarter to permit the Carib to have senior tail lights. I'd never before seen just how that was done and had always assumed the grafted section was much smaller and just in the proximity of the tail lights themselves. Interesting.

Theft-proof number C00666 would make it a relatively early 53 Carib, probably somewhere between #s 2062 and 2126.

That's neat to know about it being an early car - I was out looking at the floor pans last night and feeling a bit overwhelmed. It looks like I'm going to have to recreate some of the structural bracing, or else cut it off the parts car and weld back onto mine. Luckily most of the way through I have one side but not another. For example on the first underbody brace, the passenger side is mostly good, but the driver's side is all rotted except where the bolt goes through. On the under seat brace that goes over the floor, the driver's side is there, but the passenger side is totally gone. The area under the door is totally missing on the passenger side as well, but mostly present on the driver's side. I can see a need to find a place that sells steel in bulk, else I'm going to be buying out Lowes pretty regular.

I had ordered all 6 of the floor pan sections, and the inner and outer rocker panels, so they should be in today and I can start to see what will get covered and not.



I checked on the drivers side door sills and the door itself, and I don't see any plates or stickers that would tell me more, unfortunately.

OD

Are the body tags the same as the production numbers on the data plate for the 53 Caribbean's? If so he stated;

"The body tag on the firewall is still there, it has the VIN as 2678-2037"

Argh!

I had a great idea yesterday about swapping the frame from the donor car, the 53 clipper over to the Caribbean, since it's still altogether and in better shape, but the chassis is different.

That led me to another realization... the Clipper also has a different engine than the Caribbean, so unless I lucked out and it happened to be changed over (not holding my breath) then the engine is a no-go as well, and I'll be in the market for another one of those.

At least the transmission appears to be correct.

Closed car and convertible frames are not directly interchangeable due to the significant reinforcement for the convertible. I suppose you could fabricate all the various reinforcement plates and properly modify the closed car frame as the factory did.