Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

I also have one like that. I was thinking of restoring the frame and T/L, making it operational and showing it at car shows. I know, it's been done before, but not around here.

Craig

Quote:

Rusty, This is a very insightful statement. A friend of mine has a saying, and I think he's pretty much right "the world just stopped making the kind of people who bought Packards"


Going back to my statement the other day re: air bag Cadillacs, those cars got to be a nightmare not long after they came home from the dealership, the system develops leaks and the car is squat on the ground and has to pump up just to hop in and run to the store.
My next door neighbor has a Land Rover as the second car, it had air bags, and the same story played out, and he just had coil springs installed where the bags were--history repeats itself!
A T/L Packard will still be sitting right after years of neglect in 99% of the cases.

That would be a hit at a show. I well remember the chassis of the Bob Fordyce Patrician, later a Concours winner and on tour with us in Canandaigua 2 years ago, at the Warren Centennial and it drew very substantial crowds.

"Rusty, This is a very insightful statement. A friend of mine has a saying, and I think he's pretty much right "the world just stopped making the kind of people who bought Packards""

It was called brand loyalty. At one time all car makers could depend on a cadre of loyal customers who supported them through thick and thin.

I knew an old timer who bought a new Chrysler New Yorker every 2 years from 1939 until 1978. Then they stopped making that kind of car. He kept his last New Yorker for 5 or 6 years, then died.

You have to bring in new blood or eventually you run out of customers. I guess that is what happened to Packard, they kept their old customers but did not appeal to the younger crowd in the postwar period.

In 55 and 56 they got a shot of vitamins but it was too late.

"Pretty close to me, Guido"

'Ey, pal-ey, sos waht's wid dis Guido? Fuggegedaboutit! it's Ricco, see, so ged it roight or I'll send da boyz ova...dees old Pacakaads, see, like, they gotta pretty big trunk 'nd derze a new stadiuim goin up in Joisey... da Noo Yawka.

The guy that has the car I mentioned has a '56 Caribbean
hardtop and a '56 Patrician sedan in his barn, both very solid and very low mile, and about 5 other 55/56 cars behind it, including a manual trans car and one with leaf suspension... he knows what he's got though.

Ricco? Nahh, he sleeps wit da fishes!

That reminds me, did ya ever hear of the 1956 Packard Patrician Mob Edition? It had a 4ft longer tunk....

Ba dum dum!

Back to the question about who would want a V8 without TL, let me put it this way:

I?ve had a 51 200 for about 15 years and have driven it more than 40K miles, some of them at over 100mph. I love the way it rides and handles (with radials). Well, how about a 51 200 with 90 extra horsepower, delightfully weird two-toning, and a really beautiful dash? That is a 55 Clipper Deluxe. The chassis is the same. In most normal driving, the ride is virtually indistinguishable from a TL car. I'd say the TL cars corner slightly better because of better roll control. But with or without TL, I would happily match Packard handling with a contemporary Buick, Olds or Chrysler. The Packards really were better.

I love having TL in my pickup truck, but for normal driving around its about a horse apiece. Ross

Thanks for more info on the later Packard coil and leaf suspensions than I ever got with the thread I dedicated to comparisons with the TL.

The beauty of the T/L of course is all the things it does that are not related to the leveling feature, which is really just an engineering requirement to center the suspension so it can do its thing.

Air bag style springs have been coming and going since the late 50's. You used to see Lincoln Town Cars from the 90's wallowing around on collapsed rear bags all the time. An exception might be the late Cadillac Broughams. The leveling system on my dad's '89 performed flawlessly, and I have yet to see one dragging its tail. There are still a lot of them around, too. Maybe they finally got it right just in time to see it lose favor again.

The latest thing is headlights that adust to lower levels when loads are carried. I bet they won't be around long.

It's interesting that the Cadillac/GM air bag system on the late 50s Cadillacs was such an abysmal failure, yet the system in their Yellow Coach/bus chassis was rugged and long lived; it says they knew how but just cost-engineered a bit too much out of it for the car line.

I would agree that the car air spring suspensions have probably suffered from being underbuilt. There are plenty of heavy-duty hauling trucks out there with airbags, and they don't seem prone to failure--it would be an awful risk to use them if they were, but the manufacturers don't seem too worried if a country-clubber has to drag his sorry saggy-assed land yacht Lincoln to the course. Odd, though. They make a lot of money on those big cars.

I reckon it's just one of those components that requires a certain scale and heft to work, and it just won't keep its integrity when downsized and still subjected to a lot of punishment.