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Gosh, Leeedy ... I am humbled!

I would say, however, that my real point was to emphasize the importance of seatbelts relative to automotive safety. I stand corrected that Packard did offer seatbelts as an option in its cars, but the significant word here is options. Very few cars during the 1950s were equipped with seatbelts, with the exception of some sports cars.

My 1960 Ford Sunliner had all of the options offered by Ford that year except for seatbelts. Here I was, a crazy teenager driving a big, powerful car at excessive speeds with nothing to keep me inside of the car in the event of a wreck. Smart.

I recall that my father's 1966 Lincoln Continental and my mother's 1967 Ford Country Squire came with seat belts and shoulder straps that were clipped to the headliner. I didn't use either.

I remained dumb about using seatbelts until 1979 following an accident in which I was a passenger. The driver, who was wearing his 3-way seatbelt, walked away from the single-car wreck without a scratch, while I had a bad cut on my forehead that required stitches. I like to think that accident knocked some sense into me.

Just like I feel that our cars are safer riding on radial tires, I also believe that if Packard (or its dealers) offered seatbelts, then it is not only acceptable, but advisable, to install lap belts in those model year cars.

Wikipedia notwithstanding, this is my opinion and I stand by it.

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Please! No need to feel humbled. That was certainly not the intention or purpose of the posting.

The auto industry has long, long known of the value of seatbelts. But it was the American public that did not want them and were suspicious for years of any car that had them. It is said that Ford sold more safety in the 1950s than they did cars. They finally had to back off a bit. I remember the TV commercials and ads. By the way, Hudson Italia was another car of the 1950s that came with seatbelts.

As for Wikipedia... far too many people use Wikipedia as if the name is interchangeable with "encyclopedia"... and it isn't. There is just a lot of silly stuff that ends up on wiki... being presented as if it is authoritarian fact rather than rule by overwhelming numbers and DIY history.

Sometimes it is right with very interesting history and info. Other times it is not. So a little critical thinking is called for anytime the name is referenced as an authoritarian and infallible source. That's all.

As for my early use of seatbelts... A set came in the trunk of my 1959 Continental Mark IV convertible, but they were never installed. I started using seatbelts regularly in the 1960s. As I mentioned, my 1963 Ford Galaxie XL convertible had them. My 1964 Oldsmobile Starfire convertible had them too.

There used to be a display every year at Detroit's Cobo Hall when the Autorama Hot-Rod & Custom Car show was held. They usually hauled in some horribly mangled wreck that some person lost their life in... just to scare the daylights out of the kids. Another time, a good friend was out racing through the neighborhood in Northwest Detroit when he ran a stop sign and ended up hitting a fireplug and cross-traffic in his dad's brand-new 1960 Mercury. One of the passengers in the rear seat was thrown right out of the Merc's huge wrap-around rear window and died. It worked for me and I wore seatbelts after that.

As for all the other stuff with radial tires disc brakes and all that... to each his own. Radials are a wonderful thing... but I drove a lot of cars for a lot of years without them... and never once had a tire safety issue-particularly when they went belted. Same for disc brakes. Things have gone so far overboard these days that some people are talking as if drum brakes never stopped a car! Not true. They had issues, yes, but they always stopped my cars just fine. And I'm talking a lot of cars... including gaggles of Packards over the years.

Anyway... no need at all to feel "humbled"...

My father's 1965 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 also had lap seatbelts. I still have the "Body by Fisher" adorned locking mechanism. It was manufactured by Jim Robbins Co. in Royal Oaks, Michigan.