Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

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Reminds me of the opposite experience. Many years ago, I did some handyman work for a lady I knew from church. She wanted to sell her mid 70's Chevelle, so we agreed to trade, it was a very plain vehicle, six cylinders, stick on column. I never drove the car until the deal was done and I drove it home. Very peppy for a six it seemed, turned out to be a large V8.

I have never seen any pics of a Packard with factory seat belts

Howard (HH56) found a sketch in the accompanying documents. Peter, follow -> this link, please, to read his commentary.

They were only offered in 1956 as a dealer installed accessory. Obviously 56 was a low production year, and the seat belts were neither popular from the start nor worked very well in use. Pretty sure there are photos out there if you look hard enough.

source: -> 1955-1956 Packard Part List (also called the Parts Manual). Thanks to Brian (BH) for donating this content and his hard work in scanning in all of these pages!
Click to enlarge!

source: -> 1956 Accessories Booklet. Thanks to Randy Berger in heaven for the contribution of this material.
I changed the image slightly to have all the information in one place.
Click to enlarge!

I would love to find a factory set for my 1956 Clipper!

According to my 1987 Autumn Cormorant, one and only one '56 Caribbean Convertible was delivered with factory seat belts. This car was #5699-1021 delivered to Earl C. Anthony as his demonstrator. Car was all white on the outside and also had factory air installed.

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This is just plain not true. Whenever was published in that issue of The Cormorant (and I have not looked back in mine) was almost certainly based off of a factory order list. NOT on which cars actually got delivered or dealer-added with the seatbelts when new!

Factory order lists are notoriously erroneous in terms of actual history of a given vehicle. I have looked at too many cars over the years to know better. And there is a 1956 Caribbean hardtop that is sitting this very minute out in the desert in SoCal ... rotting with factory seatbelts. And I knew this car since the 1970s. Last time I saw the car, the driver's left-hand belt was carelessly left dangling out on the bare ground below the car. Poor Caribbean!

MOST Packard 1955-1956 factory seatbelts were actually installed either at distributors or dealers. So factory order lists for this accessory are almost meaningless. There were several Caribbeans delivered NEW to customers ... equipped with factory seatbelts. Not sure why this has become such a mystery today.

As for retractors on seatbelts, this does not make them necessarily so new. Retractors were accessories to accessories and became popular in the early 1960s. J.C. Whitney and OEMs sold them too. My 1964 Oldsmobile Starfire convertible was ordered NEW with deluxe seatbelts that came from the factory with the same spring-loaded retractors you could buy at auto parts stores. I also installed a set of retractors on my 1963 Ford Galaxie XL convertible (ordered new with seatbelts).

Here is my 1964 Oldsmobile Starfire convertible...



Here is a 1956 Caribbean that was equipped with factory seatbelts. It was last seen sitting abandoned in the California desert and being barbarianized....

The 1987 Cormorant I mentioned said that the seat belts were factory ordered by ECA and installed at the factory. There may have been others, but seat belts at that time in history were not thought of as needed or desired. Same thing with the air bag systems GM offered in 1974 through 1976, very rare. My Dad bought a brand new '63 Buick Le Sabre without seat belts but had the dealer install them a few months later. Don't know if they were GM original or aftermarket as there wasn't any logo on the release buckle. On a side note, speaking of rare options, has any seen a '55 or '56 with a rear defroster installed?