Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

Welcome to the forum Stu, looks like a fine Patrician. There are a lot of good minds on board here re: the V-8 Packards and a lot of combined knowledge. I have a lot of pushbutton control and torsion level control system experience and talk a number of people down from the air for the cost of their phone call, or email. We all stick together.

I like that quote "All impossible things can be made possible save the bringing of the fool's mind to the point of truth."--Shankaracharya but my favorite quote is by Gabriel Voisin, the aerodynamcist and car and airplane builder, from his 1935 Paris auto show catalogue: To paraphrase from the French...

"There IS something that travels faster than the speed of light; the thoughts of an imbicile"...


My car has the shift for the trans on the column; it's not a push button. The radio is one with the seak/scan bar on top and pushbuttons. I have only driven the car about 30 miles so far. No problems getting it home. Haven't had time to go through it yet. The nose seems to droop a little, so it might be the load leveler suspension isn't working qute right..

Thanks,
Stu

I am picking up the car later today. It is about an hour away. I have been researching '56 Patrician information for the last few days, and it appears that only 6 or 7 still exist out of the 3775 built!

I would think that number would be far higher than 6 or 7. There are 7 registered on here. If you were to ask the PAC or PI roster keepers, I am sure you will find that number in the 100's.

Somewhere at home I have the 2007 PI members directory which lists who owns what car (of it's membership). If I can find it I will try to get you a rough count on what PI is reporting.

Latest issue of the PAC membership directory lists about 110 1956 Patricians and there are perhaps an equal number in other hands.

I'm sure that there are more than just the 7 registered '56 Patricians here, but if there are actually several hundred out there, why so few registered? My experience is with Italian sports cars, and the registers for a particular marque and model contain about 80% of the cars that are known to still exist; not something like 5%. Thoughts please....

Two major Packard Clubs, Packard V8 club, various regional clubs, owners who don't belong to any of them, owners who belong to one or more clubs but don't bother to register their cars with all or any of them come to mind. The reasons are varied and legion.

My thought is that Packard owners at least the pre-World War 2 cars and the late 40's may be members of the Packard Clubs but are also senior citizens and many have no interest in internet online activities although some like me certainly do although not officially a senior.

Greetings, dretceterini,

Cars, wives and mistresses are all individual choices and none can say him nay . . . but a '52-56 Nash? I've had the bad fortune to own a '53 and a '56 (the latter had the Packard V8 and Twin-Ultramatic) They were both roomy, comfortable and quiet. However, so is my living room sofa and it drives about as well as did those Gnashes. They are also a style which never grew on me. I've come to love the Packard Hawk, but the Nash of that era still doesn't find a home in my heart or my garage. I will, however, keep you in mind should one be offered in my area. Just a last question, why not a '57-58? They were even less attractive to my eye!

thnx, jv.

I tend to like ugly cars! The main reason for having interest in the Nash Ambassadors is that I am an Italian car guy and the 1952 through 1956 Ambassadors were styled by Pininfarina, an Italian designer.

I have two 1950s Alfa Romeos currently, and have had about 150 Italian sports cars over my life, including 2 different Ferraris, back in the early 1970s!

The one car I owned (in the mid-1980s) that I wish that I never sold was a Moretti 750 bialbero Zagato coupe(only 2 built with Zagato coachwork!) It had an engine of only 750cc, but it put out 70 horsepower, and was twin overhead camshaft, with two 2bbl sidedraft carbs. It only weighed 1200 pounds, and was not much bigger than a child's pedal car!

Silly Italian sports racing cars (the generic term for all the marques that built cars like this is "etceterinis") like this are now worth $150,000+, and some worth as much as $500,000 !!!!

Hence my posting name dretceterini (Dr.Etceterini)

In the photo, the car next to the Moretti 750 Zagato is a Fiat 1400 sedan that looks kind of like a 3/4 size early 1950s Plymouth :) ...

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