Re: Concept drawings
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Home away from home
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Interesting observations about Earl...although imo the '57 Packards as proposed would not have been truly competitive design-wise with Virgil Exner's exquisite Forward Look cars, much as we'd have liked them to be... they look heavy in the side view, not elegantly light and flowing like the Chryslers, and the weird "basket handle" on the fins does them no credit, whereas the fins on the Chryslers and DeSotos were a true work of art. The Packard tailights and bumper were but a caricature of the Chrysler design. The Edsel-like grille, which was resoundingly rejected by the buying public at the time, no matter how much it was trying to recapture lost Packard glory, doesn't quite work... A credible attempt, but no cigar in comparison with Exner's Magnum Opus, which was a design for the ages.
Posted on: 2009/12/28 20:09
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Re: Concept drawings
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Forum Ambassador
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There's really no comparing the forword-look for the Chrysler and the proposed '57 Packards/Clippers. Not that one is better than the other, but each appeals to a completely different tastes.
Yet, we're getting further off-topic and I see a new thread devoted to '57 styling: Your Opinion Whether the New '57 Packard Vertical Grille Would Have Been a Marketing Hit?
Posted on: 2009/12/29 10:06
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Re: Concept drawings
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Just can't stay away
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The 1942 Brook Stevens design is interesting and might have worked for senior Packards 1946-49, but I cannot see it being successful past that. The original Clipper drawings on the other hand, with the exception of number 1, look much less attractive, too Mercedes/European looking to have been accepted here, especially after 1950. The first one doesn't look all that different than the bathtub 48-50. Except it looks like it was based on a Hudson or Jaguar instead of a Clipper.
Posted on: 2009/12/29 14:02
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Re: Concept drawings
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Home away from home
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Guscha: Here are two of the actual Packard prototype they called Black Bess.
John F. Shireman Attach file: (38.06 KB) (6.98 KB)
Posted on: 2010/1/30 19:49
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REMEMBERING BRAD BERRY MY PACKARD TEACHER
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Re: Concept drawings
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Forum Ambassador
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Gerd -
I believe the image you provided is of the proposed '57 Packard Four Hundred, but executed as a 3/8 scale model. It matches a factory photo that I have, which was described as such in a club publication some years ago. The pic that I attached earlier in this thread (and previously submitted to the "Show and Concept Cars folder of our Photo Archive) shows a full-size clay model of the same styling, sitting on a turntable in a styling/design area of what I believe is in the East Grand Blvd. facility. (I have since gone back and edited the correspondng post a bit for clarity.) The pics that John Shireman provided show the one-and-only "Black Bess". It was a last-ditch effort to get financing by showing lenders they had more than jst rednerings and models. On further inspection, IMHO, "Black Bess" looks like it was cobbled from a 1956 shell - a bit rounder than the crisp lines of the proposed '57 Four Hundred. In comparison, some of the body lines of those clays are remind me of the '58-60 Lincolns. Even the Predictor has a few lines that remind me of the '58-'60 T-birds. Then, some of the lines of the front-end of the Predictor seem to have found their way onto the '63 Corvette.
Posted on: 2010/1/30 20:13
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