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Tom, the Astral comes without wind shield but with installed force field, which deflects the stream of nucleons. Therefore the cabin crew is dressed with usual aeronautic clothes. The transparent force field emanating from those little holes seals off the cabin and encapsulates its air supply. But in hovering park position the force field is usually disabled.



For those situations the fins on the hips are necessary, especially for spacewalks to paddle through the solar storm. An old space legend is going about that the girl is Packard but the fins are Studebaker.

Tom

I saw this "car" in person at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles a few years ago. I believe it was on long term loan from the Studebaker museum.

I believe there are pictures of it in the Photo Archive.

Yes, It sits in the Basement of the Studebaker Museum here in South Bend.

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When the Astral was exhibited at The Petersen the control pod assembly was completely missing.

As shown here, the control pod display in the close-up image shows upside down.

Interesting to see the control pod switched over to the right on the magazine cover. But the driver's seat is no longer specially color keyed! Also interesting to see dates I've noticed over the years when it is displayed: 1957, 1958, now 1965... which would be a neat trick since there was no "Studebaker-Packard Corp. after 1962! Great stuff anyway.

Dilbert <a href="http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-01-21">does the Astral</a>:

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The Atomic Packard returns again.

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The Studebaker-Packard Astral has alternately had and not had a transparent canopy. Original press releases (which I still have) claimed it had a "two-layer canopy." When it was displayed in Detroit in the 1950s it had clear plexiglass canopies over the passenger cabin. These were later removed with all kinds of claims and excuses given.

Somewhere I have early pics of the thing with the canopies removed and sitting on the floor behind it. When I asked the guy who accompanied the exhibit why they took the plexiglass off he said it made it too difficult to photograph the interior. Created too many ill reflections. Again all kinds of stories ensued from "force fields" to "invisible glass" and more. I suspect the canopy pieces got broken along the way and they just didn't want to spend the $ to replace them.

Another thing I notice was the original control grips on the meter cluster and elsewhere were chrome when I saw them in the 1950s. Appear to be painted silver now.

Among the many wild claims for Astral were that it would receive power beamed to it via the "Asropod" on the rear of the design.

Also, while a video shows the rear, photos of the rear are almost never shown. I still have my press release photos of the rear accompanied by the original model who went with the "car." Er... her name was Barbara Dixon. Barbara points to the "Astropod" here...

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Packard-powered B-47 and Jimmy Stewart in "Strategic Air Command"

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