Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

Hello All - i'm doing some restoration my 56 Caribbean Hard Top, including paint MES code. I've noticed that nearly all of the cars I've looked at have the front wheel wells painted black. However, I've noticed one little advertisement where the front wells appear to be the same dover white as the top color. Could anyone tell me what is actually correct?

My 56 Caribbean convertible is also MES and the wheel wells are also Dover White. Good luck with your restoration.

My understanding is that from the factory the wheel wells were painted body color. Later many cars had undercoating applied that would cover that paint with black. My '54 Panama showed body color under areas where the undercoat had flaked off. I'm not an expert on this, so take my words with a grain of salt.

-Kevin

From what I have personally observed, I would agree with Kevin. I have a '56 Executive front fender lying about for the repair of my 400. The inside of the wheelwell is coated in that same black rust proofing stuff, however where the coating is no longer present the body colour is visible. I see no reason for why it should be any different on a Caribbean.

All of the front end sheet metal was dipped in black primer and baked. The front fenders were then laid on a pair of bucks and sent down a paint line completely separate from the body. Any paint on the inner fenders was black except for overspray 'cause nobody cared.

Here are some shots from a one family owned 56 400 with only 4000-odd miles that I woke up back in 2005 when the daughter of the original purchaser decided to sell. The car had NEVER been dicked with or restored although there was some minor paint touchup on the driver's side. You can see the baked on black under the wheel well with just a hint of overspray white. The particular car had never been undercoated as that was a dealer option. On the the engine side, you can see how the body color spilled down over the inner fender. There was no attempt to completely cover the engine side with color and they were pretty well completely black towards the bottom where they bolted to the frame.

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One reason to not paint the wheel well body color is it gets dirty easily, and has structural ridges, so it can look a bit off in some types of lighting. Comparison: (two different cars of the same year and paint scheme)

After reading tis looked at my/ RANDY'S Caribbean one side has under coat the other side painted steel. Wondered the under coating sometimes called muffle coat would help keeping car quiet. Always thought a nice piece of polished stainless would look nice there. As I remember the 50s Buick Skylark conv had that area painted a contrasting color as were brake drums

Yet another comparison picture. This car is highly weathered so the original baked on black has disappeared, but the overspray into the engine compartment is believed to be original paint. (The exterior of the car was repainted in the past, but cheaply.) You can see a smooth transition from green to rust.

This car was also undercoated to some extent, but not much is left, and it's not really visible in the photo.

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Let's clear this up. Regarding this question: ALL Packard front fenders 1951-1956 were originally mounted on a fixture at the factory and painted in black primer. I have shown original factory color photos to evidence this in past issues of The Packard Cormorant magazine going back to the 1970s. So this is not new information. Of course the front fenders were painted both in primer and final body colors prior to attachment to the car body and chassis.

HOWEVER... if a 1956 Caribbean was painted in normal factory-spec colors and not custom-ordered, then the splash wells and engine compartment were white. How did they get to be white? The first paint step upstairs (YES... UPSTAIRS IN THE MYTHICAL SINGLE-STORY PLANT) at Conner Avenue was to spray the entire front fender assembly white. On the engine compartment side, this amounted to white color fogged on about half-way down (look at any V-8 car). But on the outside of a Caribbean fender, this meant a full spray of Dover White, including the rear of the wheel well which was exposed during spray painting. This area was not normally masked. IF in stock colors, two Caribbean paint stripes were then added.

IF the Caribbean was ordered in custom colors, then the splash wells ended up in whatever the main color was.

For non-Caribbeans and special dealer or distributor deliveries, sometimes it appears that splash wells were either masked or re-blackened. THIS was done either at the distributor or during dealer-prep at the dealer. Thus these were at the discretion of the dealer or distributor. SOME were also at customer request.

These areas were also blackened when either factory or dealer undercoating was ordered.

As a final note of clarification there were SOME 1955 and 1956 Packards that were hand-painted for various reasons with much more masking done than took place on the assembly line. Some of information and cars will be further revealed and explained in an upcoming article in The Packard Cormorant magazine. One of these was the 1955 Howard Hughes/Jean Peters Caribbean for which I wrote the original history for TPC in the 1970s.

HERE is a factory 8 x 10 press photo (with original negative) of a 1956 Caribbean from my collection. Take a look...







Also got more examples... here is a 1955 Clipper 8 x 10 press photo (which may have been retouched by Packard) but showing a darkened rear splash well panel. And then a very good look at the same panel in a light-colored 1956 Clipper press car. The later 8 x 10 photo was taken by a private news photographer at the Packard Proving Grounds in late 1955.

I am very grateful for this information. Thank you very much!