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Re: 56 concept
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Home away from home
 
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As I recall, I was told that Creative Industries of Detroit did no lengthening whatsoever to the rear door. What they did was shave off the entire top of a Patrician rear door (all of the window frame assembly). Then, if you will notice, they went further... also shaved the vertical beltline surface and structure. Because this area no longer existed, it became necessary to place the door handles on a new lower position on the door. Of course, this was never finalized. Look closely and you'll see there is no place (no structure) to attach the handles in the usual positions. So any argument about this placement is moot. The idea here was to get a lower look to the car. Because this was basically a Four Hundred 2-door hardtop with four doors mooshed onto it there was an accentuation of the "high-pockets" look and a resulting stubbiness-both of which Dick Teague disliked. Look closely and you will note the roof has been somewhat altered. All four side windows would have been totally new pieces-made just for the 4-door hardtop only. But the 4-door hardtop would have looked even lower than the Four Hundred 2-door hardtop. Because of all this, the expense of making this car in production was simply not justified. So the 4-door hardtop would have to wait for 1957... but then we all know what happened to that plan.
Posted on: 2018/11/18 13:54
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Re: 56 concept
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Home away from home
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Look closely and you'll see there is no place (no structure) to attach the handles in the usual positions. So any argument about this placement is moot. The Creative concept's door handle location was never a point of contention, at least not for me, since it is part of history. It was only on the recent concept illustrations that I questioned it and even then it was mainly to encourage Paul to come up with a version where they were back in the beltline, which he so kindly did.
Posted on: 2018/11/18 14:07
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Re: 56 concept
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Home away from home
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You raise a great point. Using the existing tooling and eliminating the window frames and the very heavy b pillar would not really achieve the look, although the budget would be modest. In a full body retool you can do some clever things to lower costs. Or make the move to offer only a four door hardtop, no sedan. As a luxury maker that might fly as no bare bones line was necessary
Posted on: 2018/11/18 14:10
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Re: 56 concept
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Home away from home
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"As I recall, I was told that Creative Industries of Detroit did no lengthening whatsoever to the rear door."
I don't think this was the case. The 1.5 inch body insert is no longer there. There are only so many ways it could have been removed. The least likely would have been to cut the car in half and remove 1.5 inches. I don't think hard drugs were that readily available at the time so we can probably rule that one out. They could have moved the rear doors forward 1.5 inches, but the cut line location at rear edge of rear door suggests stock location. That only leaves lengthening either the front door or rear door. Since the rear door needed modified anyway to make the jam reverse opening, seems it would not make sense to touch the front door, which besides removal of sill only needed the handle relocated. And given the hardtop coupe's 5 inch further forward location of C-pillar vs Patrician, they probably would have wanted the rear door to extend forward to enable better rear entry/egress. A longer front door would have resulted in the opposite. What I think might have happened is that Packard's body shop was told to build a Four Hundred hardtop coupe body but do the passenger side as a Patrician and don't install the passenger side doors, just mount the whole thing on the chassis and ship to Creative. If you look at the driver's side of car you can see the door cut line between front door and body, and it's located much closer to C-pillar than passenger side. Contour front doors on coupe are almost 9 inches longer than sedan. To help confirm which door got lengthened - front or rear - I did a "what must be true" exercise in next 3 images. In first image I copied the front door rear edge cut line and pasted it approx 1.5 inches FORWARD of existing cut line, depicting the scenario where Creative would have received this car and added 1.5 inches to front doors to get back to original historical photo. I then cut/pasted the full width of the side trim on the front door in altered photo onto the rear door trim, to see how far it extended past rear door. See first photo. In second photo I put pasted a new cut line AFT of existing cut line, now depicting scenario where Creative added 1.5 inches to rear door. I then cut/pasted the front door trim from that altered photo onto rear door and predictably, it extends back approx 3 inches further or 2 X the body insert. In third photo searched and searched until I found a F3Q view of approximate perspective as Creative's car. Cut/pasted the side trim. Pretty clear that it matches the second photo; judge for yourself. There are a few other clues in the Creative photo that tell us that they extended the rear doors. First, there is what appears to be a weld line just forward of fender bulge. This is where they probably added the rear section of another stock front door that had been sent to them. Second, they appear to have welded the new door section to the body at bottom. This may sound like an odd thing to do but body shops sometimes make temporary welds to hold sections in place so that the main weld can be done, which in this case was the vertical weld. None of this can be confirmed mind you, just my best guess. Attach file:  (112.03 KB) (111.69 KB) (93.72 KB)
Posted on: 2018/11/18 16:37
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Re: 56 concept
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Home away from home
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The lest expensive way to have created a 4D hardtop in 56 would probably have been to use the 122 wb chassis. Then they could have "simply" moved the Executive's rear door forward 1.5 inches. The rear fenders would have come from the coupe, trimmed back to new door cut line. Most everything else would have been behind the scenes tear-up. The only major challenge might have been hanging the rear doors securely - there wasn't much vertical surface to work with on the jam given wheelhouse directly below.
Come to think of it, they could have moved the rear door forward on the 127 chassis too. I think the proportions are better on the 122 car but the size wouldn't have been in same class as SdV. Then again, Exec was competing a rung down in price. Attach file: (32.98 KB)
Posted on: 2018/11/18 22:10
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Re: 56 concept
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Home away from home
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Ahhh... well. I should have known better than to say anything at all here in this raging furor over coulda-woulda-shoulda-mighta that is now going to be argued into the ground. But I'll say one absolute last thing: According to what I was told, Creative Industries did nothing at all to lengthen the rear door. It was a shaved Patrician rear door. I knew the guy who worked on it and he had no reason to lie about it despite whatever measurements can be approximated or calipered or whatever can be made from Photoshop in 2018. AND... the body used was a Four Hundred 2-door hardtop morphed into a pillarless 4-door. There was no "body insert." And for the record, what is shown here is just one of the incarnations of 4-door hardtops that were proposed. It is a proposal, not a final production piece. Who knows if any of it could have worked? There were others and while those photos are not around and available today, they existed. As did Patricians made on Clipper bodies (they made those too...and there are photos of these that exist). There was a lot done that people don't know about and can argue over today.... but not everybody doing the arguing actually saw this stuff. That is all I know. I've got no further comments on this subject.
Posted on: 2018/11/19 18:00
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Re: 56 concept
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Home away from home
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I don't see it either as this discussion is about Paul's concept, not Creative's. Certainly it was mentioned and comparisons made but no furor!
Note: odd, this post shows before OD's when I made it almost an hour after!
Posted on: 2018/11/19 18:39
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Re: 56 concept
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Forum Ambassador
 
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I've been looking for a "raging furor", can't seem to find it.
Posted on: 2018/11/19 18:42
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Re: 56 concept
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Just can't stay away
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Looks like Creative was thinking of raising the rear tail fins too.
Posted on: 2018/11/19 20:49
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