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Never mind... You guys can make your own hood ornaments... Such criticism over the name of a bird... Wow just wow... My Holocaust surviving parents spoke of less hate than su8overdrive showed in his post.

Must be pick on Romanian Jew day here at the packardinfo.com ... lmao ...

On second thought - here's the product again just to show that Jews don't back down in the face of criticism ...

The White Glove Collection would like to formally introduce a new product.

The cormorant, swan, pelican, pidgeon, parrot, crow, hood ornament was introduced as a senior or deluxe hood ornament in the early 1930s. It was in use until 1957 in highly stylized form.

This is an exact reproduction, the mold of which was made from an original piece. All four pieces are NEW castings and triple chrome plated.

The link and some pictures are listed below.

Haters will hate but the more they hate the more it tells me I'm doing something they can only dream of... if you're gonna hate, at least show me your classic car reproduction product line.

https://whiteglovecollection.com/shop/packard-cormorant-swan-hood-ornament-and-radiator-cap/

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It's a pelican or cormorant, NOT a swan! Never was called a swan.

Sure looks like a Swan to me regardless of what Packard called it. Pelicans and Cormorants are much different looking birds. But, what the hey it's all in the past anyhow.

Through the eyes of a child…. It’s a swan…. That’s what I called it back then…. Pissed my grandfather off many times as a kid… so now… I call it that if I want just cause I can.

The ornament was intended as homage to the noble pelican of the Packard family crest, plucking from its own breast to feed its young. In the '30s, one of Packard's advertising fellows thought the rapacious cormorant, which steals from other birds, more elegant.

What's lost in this shuffle is that the cars look cleaner, innately elegant with the standard bale ornament instead of the above gargoyle. You can't tack on elegance, understatement. Just as we've seen imposing Super 8s and Twelves in photos of big city Packard showrooms in the late '30s shod only in black sneakers, so also were they displayed with simple bale ornaments.

When people offer pricey reproductions of baubles the history of which they do not understand, their sole intent is clear.

The "cormorant" overpowers the car, makes it look comic opera. Rolls-Royce got by with a small figurine, Bentley a simple flying B, Hispano-Suiza a diminutive horizontal stork, even the overblown Duesenberg J for the arriviste a small suggestion of fleetness.

For the insecure, the Winged Goddess of Speed is less obtrusive and sleeker, as is, for earlier models, Adonis, Sliding Boy.

(Please don't tell us the cormorant was standard on '40 180s. Packard was waning by then, good sales that year only because of drastic price cuts, and 2/3rds of their output 110s; desperately playing on their past while GM unveiling racy new C bodies.)

If you want to offer something useful, how about silkscreening our original cowl delivery plates? Many have the inscribed signature, stamp of the dealership selling our cars, and we'd like to keep that, not have a new piece of tin from Taiwan.

And if you really want to be useful, there are any number of electromechanical bits in short supply for various models you might reproduce.

The focus on bolt on effluvia like the above underscores most today more interested in talking about their garage queens and looking at pictures of shiny old cars online.

Meanwhile, this wonderful site for the preservation and rejuvenation of some of the best road cars, luxe or not, of the first half of the 20th Century concludes with a forum for "Packard Parts & Miscellaneous." Have used it to offer spares for sale. It works. Try it.

I couldn't agree more and always preferred the bail on my several former 1940 and 1941 Packards. It was very clean and no much worry of someone trying to steel it either.

As for pelican vs cormorant, yes, they are entirely different birds but both are sea birds while a swan is not. Here on the West Coast, I often see cormorants sunning themselves on rocks while having their wings standing high above them. We have pelicans here too, of course, but I have never seen them do that.

You can call the damned bird Fred for all I care.


Which reminds me, I have a 22/23 series bird I should sell off to someone lacking one, as I'll never use it.

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Sorry for being in business to make money - wow what a novel and out of the ordinary idea - please enlighten me as to the sole intent of making Packard automobiles - charity, fulfillment of a childhood dream, just for shits and giggles or ... was it to make a few bucks? ... hater

We should we celebrating folks that actually take on the challenge of trying to reproduce items for us. It's a very small a challenging market and tooling and design costs are not cheap.

Your welcome to your opinion, but not at degradation of others. At least not on this forum.

"Cars built by Gentleman, for Gentleman."

Let's try to adhere to that.

I am so embarrassed by the vitriol spewed toward a member of this site. I demand an apology be issued to Crin, he deserves better than to have been treated in this shabby manner. There is no excuse to behave like that to ANYONE.
Bob J.