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Quote:

Dave,

Is this published anywhere?

Yes, the second of my two published articles on the thief-proof numbers has an image of Packard's original engineering drawing for the embossed characters that comprise the thief-proof number. The two articles were published recently in PAC's "The Packard Cormorant" magazine.

Also an old listing by American Type Founders references the Packard type fonts as ATF #s 348 (Packard) and 353 (Packard Bold), though they do not show the actual font. I do have one font loaded into my PC and use it occasionally.

Snipet from the engineering drawing enclosed.

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Tommycourt, your car is a Deluxe Eight. The Deluxe did not have the egg-crate style grille, it had the bar style. The Custom Eight, Super Eight Victoria, and Super Eights had the egg-crate grille. The Stamdard Eight, Deluxe Eight, and Super Deluxe Eight had the bar style grille. Behind the dash you can find more info on your car, on top of the back of the glovebox there is a slip of paper. Be very catious and careful with it, as it is very fragile and thin. This document states all of the optional equipment on your car, as well as the paint code, and the trim code. When you find it, post the info here and we'll all see if we can de-code it. I'm very excited to see the codes myself!

The Custom Eight, Super Eight Victoria, and Super Eights had the egg-crate grille.

You might recheck you source for that infomation. In the 22nd series, only the Custom 8, regardless of body style, had the egg crate grille. In the 23rd series it was used only by the Custom 8 and the Super DeLuxe, again regardless of body style.

Sorry about that! The Super Eight did not carry the egg-crate, yet the other three models did. The Super Deluxe Eight, the Custom Eight, and the Super Deluxe Eight Victoria Convertible. This info is based on the advertisement pictures in the Model Info section (23rd Series).

In the snipet of the eng'ring drawing it appears that the "0" is concatenated with rite triangle via an "I" shaped mating connexion. Strange.

It may appear to you like that, but it's not. Look at the far left end between the sideways triange and the first numeral, you don't see it there. What you're seeing at the far right end are dimensional lines drawn for inclusion of a character height dimension which is off the edge of the picture as cropped.

Still not quite right, jrbuzz. You're tending to mix body styles with car lines or models. For example, you don't mention the 23rd series Super Eight DeLuxe touring sedan which also had egg-crates.

Look at it this way, forget body styles. A Custom 8, whether a Briggs 8-passenger, a Henney funeral vehicle, a convertible victoria, a touring sedan, or a club sedan all had the egg-crate - it a characteristic of the model or line, not of the body styles. Ditto in the 23rd Series Super DeLuxe, all the body styles within that model or line had that feature.

All these used egg-crate brightwork front and rear except the Henney funeral vehicles, some perhaps all of them did not use the rear egg-crate trim.

Sorry to want to clarify you comments again, I just want to present this clearly so future readers aren't confused.

I understand your clarification method. It's actually good you're correcting me because I can then learn all the more, so thank you! I think I did state, though, that the Super Deluxe Eight has the egg-crate style grille, yes? All Customs had it, as well. The LWB Super Deluxes carried the bar grille, though.

I don't believe you last statement is correct. In the 23rd series there were no LWB cars in the Super Eight line which would have carried the simple, horizontal bar grille. LWB cars were only in the Super DeLuxe line and they would have carried the egg-crate grille, but only 4 were built as 1949 models and 0 as 1950 models, at least according to Dawes. Rare models indeed, never seen one.

That situation in the 23rd series was in contrast to the 22nd were LWB cars were built in both the Super Eight and Custom 8 lines.

It's not always easy to tell a 23rd series Super DeLuxe from a Custom from the exterior, but the most obvious identifier to me has always been the trunk lid trim. In the Custom it wraps fully around from corner to corner, and Super DeLuxe only had a strip down each side, terminating before the curvature to the bottom.