Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

I was reading a reprint of the 1956 Patrician DriveReport in SIA #36 (September-October 1976), and came up with the following questions...

1. The push button trans control came out in '56? I thought it was also offered in 1955.

2. Packard pioneered electric door locks on 4-door cars that could be controlled by the driver?

3. The article shows a picture of a Packard V-8 with fuel injection! The caption on the photo states one prototype exists in the hands of a Packard collector. Anyone know if that's true?

Question 1. 56 and had some running changes after introduction.
Question 2. There is a pushbutton near the doors under the dash on each side which activates all 4 solenoids to lock doors. To unlock you have to pull the button or handle on the individual door.
Question 3 will leave to someone else. I have read similar from other publications about the FI experimentation but don't know if still exists.

1. Pushbutton control was not available in 1955.

2. Yes, electric locks but only on the 4-door models, I believe. Was this a Packard first? Don't know for sure.

3. Yes, one was built, that photo in SIA is the only photo I've ever seen of the setup. Don't know if the car still exists but I'll ask the 56 roster keeper and if I find out anything significant I'll add a PS.

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Well, NOW I know why I've never seen a '55 with PB! I just assumed the ones I saw with shift levers were either factory or the previous owner got fed up w/the PB...

Bendix developed an electronic fuel injection in the fifties and offered it to various car makers. Chrysler Corporation and Nash were the only ones to take them up.

In 1958 Chrysler and Nash were slated to get the new system and a handful of cars were actually produced but they killed it because of reliability issues.

So, it is possible that a Packard V8 was equipped with Bendix injection as an experiment but never left the proving ground.The Bendix injection and V8 Packard were both available at the same time.

Whether such a car escaped the proving ground I don't know but it seems unlikely. But then unlikely things do happen sometimes.

If such a car exists it would be on the top ten list of rarest Packards if not at the top.

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We even in '56 there were cars without PB. While it was standard on certain models, it was only an option on others.

Only standard on Caribbbeans I believe. Percentage-wise a high number of Executives seem to have it as an option.

PS on the fuel-injected engine mentioned before and pictured in the Hemmings soft-cover book on Packards. Yes, I've been told that the engine survives, transplanted into an Executive. It was shown (don't know if that means driven or not) at the PAC National in Branson. The owner is working on an article for publication in a future The Packard Cormorant about the engine.

A few months ago there was an article on a 1958 DeSoto Adventurer convertible with the original electronic fuel injection. It was an original fuely car that had the injection removed in a recall and replaced by carbs. The owner was lucky enough to get the original injection setup back. Then he had to reverse engineered it to develop wiring diagrams and figure out how it worked.

He replaced the old capacitors and did other repairs and got it working as designed, without modifications.

So if the Packard one is still around and intact it should be possible to get it going. The DeSoto man must be the only person in the world who could show you how to do it.

Here's the FI'd Packard at the Branson meet. It looks like a homemade setup at best. I honestly don't think that this is a factory built job, as the work looks like something someone did in their garage. I'm thinking it's a collection of parts that someone cobbled together to try and pass off as a factory setup.

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About 25 years ago I spent some time at the Detroit Public Library looking through all of the 1956 photo boxes. I remember quite clearly a photo of a V-8 engine outfitted with the F-I set-up, and a typed card taped to the back of the photo explaining what the photo deplicted, the protoype (experimental) F-I set-up. Later I met Pete Graves (Packard guy, not the actor), who had come into possesion of that engine with that F-I system. I know Roscoe, next time I talk to him I'll ask if he got that engine or F-I system from Pete. There were also 8 x 10 glossies of the 1956 V-12, very obviously a heavily airbrushed, sliced and diced photo of a V-8 engine, and that's all. The photo of the 1956 Packard F-I set-up was taken from above, the engine was in a car, the hood was off.