Packard Forum Index » Modification Discussion

Here's the car in blue. Lots of trim variations were possibe, as Clipper in particular demonstrated. But they needed to have a purpose.

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  1955 Packard 127 4D Hardtop rich color.jpg (971.07 KB)

Here's a recipe for a 1955 Packard Coupe-Sedan.

Ingredients:

1 Four Hundred body and chassis, with chassis and roof extended 7.25 inches and made Formal
1 pair Four Hundred front doors, beltline removed
1 pair Patrician rear doors, beltline removed, and changed to be reverse opening and with lower B-pillar structure integrated into door. See Henney for detailed instructions on how to do this (if they are still talking to you… as in you, Packard).


Directions:

Combine all ingredients to create a 134.25-inch wheelbase car with rear legroom that is 2.25 inches greater than Patrician.

To access rear seats, open front door, then pull inside lever to open rear door. When closing front and rear doors, always close rear door first.

To roll down glass, push button downward on door. To roll up, push button upward.

To use as Formal Sedan, hire chauffeur and let them keep car serviced and fueled, open and close front and rear doors for you, load and unload your luggage, take you wherever you wish to go, and beep when passersby gawk.

To use as Enclosed Drive Limousine, add partition assembly and exterior rear door handles, and contort yourself getting in and out.

To use as open car, use Caribbean top and decklid & stowage assembly, and extend top 7.25 inches.

To park in garage with door closed, make sure garage is the length of the car, or 224.65 inches, plus a few feet to walk around it.

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  1955 Packard Coupe Sedan.jpg (1,050.69 KB)

2-door front doors are too wide, unfortunately, and mess with the visual proportions. The nicest so far is in the earlier post with image 8 1b having the belt molding, the stock rear window and roof.

That Coupe-Sedan was having fun. But I do think one of Packard's opportunities was something to compete with the Cadillac 75. Not a 3-row, instead a 2-row Executive sedan. The coupe's front doors together with the sedan's rear doors, the outer stamping of which might have initially stamped without a dogleg and so could be left fuller for this application. The five inch longer end panel between rear glass and decklid was a winner. Trimming the C-pillar back to open up the rear door glass was in the cards too. All of this and a forward cantilevered B-pillar with some deco trim could have made for a nice Formal Sedan on 139.25-inch wheelbase, with rear legroom that was 7.25 inches longer than Patrician. Maybe 50 buyers, and good catalogue eye-candy.

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  1955 Packard Coupe EDL Formal bw.jpg (1,061.47 KB)

I think Packard needed to get rid of those high pockets for '55. The designers never wanted them in the first place and the industry had moved away from that style. Mercury lowered the beltline on its '55 sedan to create a new Montclair series with a higher price than it had ever offered, and people bought'm up. Packard was tooling new front vent windows that year anyway, so might as well get rid of the beltline. The old-fashioned upright roofs needed to go too, the longer one replaced with a 5-inch longer version of the existing hardtop, with door uppers offered in both full frame and hardtop style. And reverse-opening rear doors would have gotten rid of the body insert between t the doors, and allowed the door handles to tuck in on the narrower part of the body sider rather than sticking out on the hips.

No Clippers, just Packards starting with a '55 Cavalier 127 wb sedan and pillared hardtop sedan. There would also be a 122 wb Three Hundred hardtop coupe with similar pricing. All with cathedral taillights but maybe with the familiar '55 Clipper's front design.

The 127 wb Four Hundred and 132 wb Patrican would use the 5-inch longer end panel, and the 127 wb Caribbean convertible would be offered too.

A longer wheelbase Executive/EDL car would have been helpful to the cause too, built in Conner.

Don, I just realized that I made a mistake on your favorite car by not accounting for the high pockets when positioning the rearmost part of the front door glass. It needs to end just forward of the door handle button so that it could go up/down. Sorry for getting your hopes up. A narrow fixed B-pillar would be needed.

As for the '55 line-up, what I really think was needed was Panther's styling and proportions put into production as a 2 and longer wheelbase 4-door closed car, plus an open car, with the V8 delayed until '56.

I'd like to take some of the Dream Car design elements to build out an alternative showroom that was 100% Senior in its basic elements. Leaving model names aside for now, there would be a Two Hundred, Three Hundred, Four Hundred and Five Hundred series, each with a 2-door and 4-door model.

For the first three series, those models would be a 2-door hardtop and a 4-door sedan. The Five Hundred series would include the Convertible and Formal Sedan, each extended its greenhouse 5-inches rearward, the Convertible to package the folding top and the Formal Sedan to provide five more inches of rear seat legroom.

The Two Hundred and Three Hundred would use the existing 122 and 127-inch wheelbase chassis, while the Four Hundred would add five inches courtesy a longer end panel between rear glass and decklid. Within each series, the 4-door would always use a 5-inch longer wheelbase than the 2-door The Four Hundred 2-door hardtop is the actual model that Packard offered that year.

If you look through the images you can see where material cost was reduced for the lower trims levels.

Here are the 2-door cars first. For the convertible I used an extended hardtop formal roof as stand-in.

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  1955 Packard Hardtop 122 200.jpg (986.50 KB)


  1955 Packard Hardtop 122 300.jpg (993.29 KB)


  1955 Packard Hardtop 127 400.jpg (966.42 KB)


  1955 Packard Convertible 127 500.jpg (967.73 KB)

And here are the 4-doors on 5-inch longer wheelbases. The trim strategy is identical to the 2-doors. And note that for the Three Hundreds, I replaced the Dual Safety Courtesy lights for chrome ribs, to remove the cost of the lighting, including wiring. But the design still facilitates two-tone paint below the beltline, which would have been important for this price range.

I gave all the sedans brightwork on the door frames to minimize the car's biggest shortcoming. This would have been reasonable given that the '55 Mercury Montclair's sedan had full brightwork on its door frames and it cost the same of perhaps less than the would-have-been Two Hundred sedan.

The images are somewhat distorted because they were taken at close range.

Pricing for the Four Hundred sedan was going to be near or at Sixty Special.

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  1955 Packard Sedan 200.png (2,844.27 KB)


  1955 Packard Sedan 300.png (2,866.92 KB)


  1955 Packard Sedan 400.png (2,870.12 KB)


  1955 Packard Formal Sedan 500.png (2,829.32 KB)

Perhaps the Formal Car could have been offered with the standard rear glass to keep the build cost down and let some light into the car. Still leather covered to hide weld seams and add richness.

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  1955 Packard Formal Sedan 500 Alternate.png (2,843.84 KB)

Maybe the better approach would have been to lengthen the front doors by five inches. Then the proportions would come together and the optional division window would align with the B-pillars.

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  1955 Packard Formal Sedan 500 Alternate 3.png (2,824.20 KB)