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http://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/dealer/packard/120/1799211.html

This beautiful 1939 Packard 120 coupe is currently listed for sale on Hemming's. I was just wondering why it doesn't have a hood-ornament. Did the club coupes not have hood ornaments that particular year?

as always
Garrett Meadows

That 39 has the base
'Bail" hood ornament. I believe the Goddess of speed was an option.

It has a hood ornament. Sadly, in today's gotta have it mentality of what remains of the vintage/pre-'50s old car hobby, people think these cars "need" what were options.

Many of us have seen photos of---or in person if old enough--open models of late '30s Packard Twelves, for example, parked on Persian carpets surrounded by potted palms in big city showrooms shod with blackwall tires, adorned with the same basic "bail" hood ornament as the '39 One Twenty you cite. As lifetime vintage car buff, Packard owner, writer and professor of English, SUNY Buffalo, Robert Mehl recalled, snapping photos of what were then known simply as "fine cars" in posh neighborhoods of his adolescent Pittsburg, PA in the '40s, you never saw fog or driving lights on cars of any cost then.

If only more buffs today might use their Packards as exemplars of less is more, understatement, befitting the understated elegance these cars embodied originally, instead of festooning them with every option they can justify, and in circus wagon colors.

Like the frog boilt to death in pan of initially tepid water, we've seen what cars remain today transmuted into garish parodies of what they once were, often justified by a magazine ad illustration, itself an example of artistic license merely to grab the reader's attention much as TV ads in today's ADD society.

su8overdrive, couldn't agree more.

I absolutely agree with every single word.

Your perspicuous response is spot-on. As an unlearned Packard devotee who has never even ridden in one and will never own one--I'm an impoverished special education teacher--I'm always learning new things about Packards, e.g., that hood ornaments were optional. I had erroneously come to believe, based solely on photos, that the readily identifiable Packard hood-ornaments were perfunctory.

Even without a hood ornament, that Packard is beautiful.

as always
Garrett Meadows

Garrett, if you keep your eyes open, and pennies in a jar, you could find some decent pre-war sixes for under 10K, and I have seen many nice post-war drivers for under 5k!

Quote:

Whoa! Hold on just a little bit. Hood ornaments were standard on the senior cars, at least by 1940. It would have been optional to order without. The bird was standard on the 180 (as were double-sided white sidewall tires!!), and the doughnut pusher was standard on the 160. I suspect you might find the same is true between the junior and senior cars earlier than that, as well.