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In early July I took a trip to look at a 1937 120 Business coupe my wife had bought and the owner took me to a friends house and this is one of the many cars I saw.

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These are nice shots, especially the underhood view, which raises a question. I get the supercharger, but the intake looks mysterious. It appears to route air from the back corner of the engine compartment to the supercharger, and thence to the shiny tin box of whatever is in there.

P.S. Any idea where the steering wheel originated, or is it a one-off?

Under the "Shiny" box I am sure is the carburetor. The steering wheel looks just like any other '54 Senior steering wheel, only orange, and it has a different horn button.

Looks like there might be an air cleaner in the back corner. Wonder if there might be some sort of forced air using the air vent tube on that side which is why they ran it all the way over there.

For anyone curious, here is the Studebaker Avanti version of the supercharger box Kev mentioned above. The top picture was used on a specially sealed carb and it only pressurized the throat. The bottom pict which resembles that on the Panther was a box which totally enclosed the carb so it did not have to have the extra sealing. Am sure one of the experts here can elaborate as to advantages and disadvantages of either.

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The "shiny tin box" is a pressure box for the carburetor - used to equalize the relative pressures inside and outside the carb. Otherwise, fuel would come gushing out the vents (and any other opening it could find) instead of through the jets.

Not sure what this one was made of, but you'll find a pressure box made of cast aluminum used on the handful of supercharged 304-V8 (R3) Avantis built by Studebaker. The supercharged 289-V8 (R2) Avantis got away without such a box by using a sealed carburetor (with a polished, cast aluminum bonnet and remote air cleaner), but I'd heard that Paxton simply found that the pressure box was less complicated/costly.

After Studebaker, Paxton supplied a supercharger setup, with pressure box, as optional equipment for Shelby's GT350 Mustang.

Getting back to the Panther, engine compartment space was clearly at a premium with the supercharger and pressure box. Perhaps the back corner was the only place left to put the air cleaner.

The 1957 Clippers featured a supercharger as standard euqipment and also used a pressure box - as seen in the attached illustration from the 1957 Packard-Clipper Chassis Parts Catalog. Though we don't (yet) have a '58 chassis parts book, here, I suspect the Packard Hawk also used a pressure box.

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Very true, but if they had to put it there, wonder what was in the opposite corner. It looks like the heater might be in the regular spot but hard to say with the supercharger box in front so maybe it was moved--or did they even bother with a heater in a show car.


EDIT: 58-L Studebaker, or 58-K Packard, Hawks with supercharger appears to use the same setup from 57 that Brian posted.

Looks like there might be a heater box lurking in the right rear corner of the engine bay - obscured by the bend of that looooong air intake hose for the supercharger.

It's a shame that the Panther Daytona didn't see limited production for retail purchase that year.

Pictures of Daytona=AWESOME!!!