If Packard was to continue, the design year '56 or '57 would have to be the hard end to this style. It would have been costly for a new ground-up design. Curious what it would have been? I could see it favoring Chrysler products of the late 50's - early 60's
EVERY PIECE of the exterior metal was brand new & fresh. Ditto for the windshield design and bumpers. EVERY single piece was new in the cabin, even the headliner, brake & gas pedal.. New engine, new transmission, torsion suspension. The firewall & a few inner bodywork pieces (modified), were the only pieces that remain. No more than 15% of the (then) near current 1951 remained, and only in invisible areas. Our 56 gets more heartfelt positive attention than any of our other really-sharp cars.
Believe it or not, the famous Packard Ultramatic is a *TWO-SPEED* transmission. What sets it apart from many other transmissions of the time is that it features a lock-up torque-converter, something no other US manufacturer did until the gas crunch of the late 1970's. The control is as follows: P for Park, R for Reverse, N for Neutral as you would expect. L keeps you in low gear. No automatic upshift into high. H starts you off in *HIGH* gear with automatic lockup engagement around 40-45mph. This is for those gossamer-smooth take-offs and no interruption of that smoothness by an upshift. As far as I know, with HIGH selected, there is NO downshift into low either. Low is essentially locked-out when the H button is pressed. D is obviously drive. Low gear start, automatic upshift into High and automatic lockup engagement. Interestingly enough, had Packard continued; they would have brought forth the first OVERDRIVE automatic transmission to market in 1958. Since Ultramatic was a 2-speed, Lincoln had a 3-speed and Cadillac had a 4-speed auto; Packard had devised a way of building an electric overdrive into the tailshaft of the Ultramatic. Yes, it was big, bulky and complicated but it worked!! Anecdotes abound that one was used in the "Black Bess" pre-production MULE car that was going to be the next Packard car. There were also two other engines being tested as well. A 395-cubic incher that was going to best Cadillacs' 390.... and a 425 cubic inch engine. The Packard V8 was designed to be bored and stroked to be even larger - capacity being set at 500-cubic inches!! However, it was found in testing that the larger engine produced so much torque, it was destroying the overdrive units. And then the rest of the story we know.... Studebaker-Packard decided to continue producing Studebaker's instead of Packards. That never made ANY sense to me. Packard was poised for a rebirth and Studebaker was foundering. Studebaker had not seen black ink on the books since 1950 and required a production break-even point of 350,000 cars.... a number they came close to in 1950 (with 342,000 I believe) but never came even close through the rest of the 1950's.
Now this is great information. Appreciate it greatly. Much thanks for your expertise and contribution. BTW, I once had a '70 AMX Go Pack 390 4-speed with 4:10 ish rear gears. Nothing would touch it back then box stock
sir, what a car. we used a 1956 packard as a family car for years. as a young man i delighted in showing off what the car could do. our other family cars were buick and oldsmobile. the packard was the best. in fact it is still in the barn. my sister was a student at columbia and i would pick her up at the train station with our packard. i will always be proud that we had a packard as a family car. when it graduated from university, i drove home in the packard. you asked a question about the drivers piano, which is packard's term for that shifter. please let me explain as i did then. if you want a car like a buick with smooth torque converter drive press h. you will accelerate with the torque converter then lock.with the direct drive clutch. if you want to drive like an oldsmobile or cadillac press d and you will start in low, go to high then to direct drive. what some people think is a shift is actually the the direct drive clutch locking out the torque converter. packard was the only ...only independent car company to ever devise their own automatic transmission. i had the chance to drive some great men of auto fame in the packard and they always asked where they could get one. general motors built their lock-out converter after buying a packard. i am glad you have that car. i would not able to resist, i would drive it, and it needs to be left as the newest packard. the 1956 packard the greatest packard of all the packards including all the great packards.. ahead of its class in everything. those are their words. me, i believe. best wishes.
68 years after it was made, the 56 Packard is still my all time favorite passenger car. To think, 28 years before this Packard, was the Model-T. 68 years later is a car that can easily transport you and your family cross-country, in unparalleled comfort. At any speed. The amazing presence of the exterior and the gorgeous cabin, is the "icing on the cake"
Thanks for sharing! Our family had a '55 Patrician. As a little kid, I loved all the neat stuff like the signal-seeking radio, courtesy lamps, etc. And oh, what a luxurious ride! What my siblings and I really liked, though, was the auto-leveling suspension. We'd go hop on the back and wait for it to level up, then run to the front and sit there so the back would go down and the front would go up. Back and forth until it stopped working. My dad could never figure out why the battery was always dying. We didn't know it used the battery, of course, and no one ever put 2 and 2 together. In late '62, the mufflers (I think there were four) went bad and my dad got a ticket for excessive noise. He couldn't find new mufflers anywhere, so he sold the Patrician to a collector. I cried!
Great story! Thanks for sharing and loved "till it stopped working". This '56 has a switch under the dash to disable the leveling system and we leave it off unless needed. The car does indeed have a very complex exhaust system. We'll be doing a POV ride along soon and let you hear the mellow exhaust note through a correct multi-muffled dual exhaust system. No tickets here! Now we did get stopped once for a "vehicle inspection" as the officer just wanted a closer look at the car! No citations, just smiles per mile.
Its pretty, and I'd be thrilled to drive it on the weekends, but as a daily driver? I like seat belts and fuel economy. You can also put 300,000 miles on a Honda Civic. in 100,000 these things had shot valves bad rings. And not a trace of rust proofing. They leaked and smoked. And if you lived in the Midwest they just rusted away. I loved the old cars, but they didn't last.
@@DanaTheInsane Exactly correct. Interesting how some feel it has 100k + miles. The engines never lasted that long without showings signs of age and wear as you described.
@@DanaTheInsane People who buy luxury cars don't care about fuel economy. Undercoating was indeed available. People just didn't bother to get it. Motor oil was very poor quality compared to what we have today, except for the lack of zinc. With today's oil, and the appropriate additive, these engines will indeed last. In contrast, if you use oil that is the equivalent of yesteryear's oil in today's engines, they will probably be gone at about 50,000 or fewer miles.
That engine has a great, beefy rumble. My grandfather used to get a new Packard every two years. He had a turquoise blue 55 "400", (which was the two door model) and it was such a beautiful and thoughtfully designed car. He and my grandma came to visit us one weekend (a 5 hour drive) and that Friday afternoon, they pulled in driving a red 1956 "400", an equally beautiful car. My dad and I couldn't figure out why he now had a red car and a year newer. It hadn't been his year to trade. He explained that they had started the trip in the 55 car but developed some kind of mechanical problem along the way. He found a Packard dealer along the trip route and took the car in. The dealer explained how long it would take to repair it and my grandpa didn't want to wait that long. There was this brand new red 56 model sitting on the showroom floor, all serviced and ready to go. He just made a deal on it, wrote a check and off they went. His 56 model still had the column gear selector instead of the push buttons. 1956 of course was the last year Packard made a great luxury car. They merged with Studebaker after that and became just a Studebaker with a Packard nameplate for two more years (then went out of business completely). My grandfather switched to Cadillacs after that but while they were great cars too, he sorely missed his Packards. It's such a shame that like so many other great parts of this country's past, the company is no longer with us.
Mike, thanks for sharing such a great story with us and the large group assembled here who appreciate Packards. The folding of the cards at the end of the Packard era is indeed a sad story. PakardBakers I recall and were Packard Badged Studabakers, Sadly at the end. At least we still have the cars here with us!
I grew up in Southern California not far from West LA. In my grandparents neighborhood most of the homes were two story Spanish style with long driveways. About 3 blocks away from their place was a beautiful home with an arch over the driveway that connected to the house. The owners of the home drove a ‘55 Packard Clipper. It was two tone blue and white with the ship’s wheel in the center of the grille. Just parked there with that massive Spanish style home it just looked so classy. That was around 1959 or so but I remember it clearly.
I have similar memories of cars parked at neighboring houses as well. I can still see them all sitting there as if it was no big deal. Thanks for sharing!
In 1970 I drove '55 Patrician in upstate NY that was in rough shape. It had the torsion ride, non-push button shifter and power windows. Someone had previously added aftermarket sanders! It had two open metal boxes in the trunk over the rear wheels. There was a control for them strapped to the steering column. I never used them so I don't know if they still worked. The electrical system is a 12 volt positive ground. I had temporarily installed an 8-tract tape player which is not 12 volt positive ground. I made and attached it to a metal shell to fit over the carpet on the floor hump to keep the tape player from shorting out. I connected the tape player hot wire to ground and the ground to a power source under the instrument panel. Yes it worked! The power brakes on this car are amazing. When you applied the brakes, it felt like the vacuum system was pulling the brake pedal to the floor with very little foot pressure. The torsion ride is hard to describe. It is so soft it's like you are riding on a mattress. I miss this car.
When I was very young, I rode with my father to deliver a brand new 1956 Packard to an executive at the Smithfield Ham company in Virginia. It was one of the last Packards sold in central VA. My father was a longtime employee of the Packard dealership in Richmond, and he got the honor of making the delivery. It would be nice to see a full view of this beautiful car with no one in the way.
I am in my late 50's, and have been a fan of Packards since I was 16 years old! I have always loved the 1955 and 1956 models the most. The 1956 has more refined styling over the 1955 and therefore is my favorite Packard of all. I just happened to see this video title right after watching something completely unrelated and couldn't wait to watch it!! I have seen a few nice survivor 1956 Patricians over the years, but this one is truly the best. I wish it had the three tone paint, but this paint scheme is much more uncommon!! If only it had power windows and power seat, it would have been my dream Packard. The 1956 models all came so diversely optioned. Some left the factory with every option available, some nearly fully optioned, and some with oddly chosen combinations of options. I believe that they just tried to empty out parts bins, since management knew the production line could be shut down at any time. The move to Studebaker's South Bend Indiana assembly line to produce the badge engineered 1957 "Packardbaker" was truly the end of one of the most illustrious automobile makes that America has ever known. I see from the comments that this beautiful Patrician has found a new owner already; from what was stated, the new owner sounds like the type of person who will be a great caretaker. I normally never ask what prices cars have brought when sold, but I am very curious if you could give a close range figure for what it did bring, if you don't mind sharing. Thank you so much for letting us see this true Time Capsule automobile!! I just subscribed to your channel and will look forward to future videos!!
@NYWF, "Mr. Owner speaking here. Thank you for your thoughts, which are a treat to read. While I like the iconic 50's tri-color paint combos as well, the beautiful Dover White on this Patrician was part of what made me reach for my checkbook. If you'll look at Doug's traveling shot down the side, beginning at 4:50, you'll pick up the depth of reflection that a tri-color would only fragment. It's as if someone just took a big jug of thick, rich cream, poured it all over the car, and then augmented it with shining chrome. As we say here in the South, Hubba Hubba! As to the cost--well, discretion should be the better part of valor at this point, but I'll allow it was in the neighborhood of what a 2-3 year-old Buick Enclave might command. My grandfather drove a 1955 Buick Roadmaster Riviera, by the way. Those mid-50's luxury cars certainly wove a spell that continues to enchant nearly 70 years later."
@@classicperformanceThank you for responding to my comment! You are a very fortunate person to become the caretaker of this beautiful automobile! And the more I think about it, I truly do like the all Dover White exterior; it is a very elegant color! I hope you keep it just as it is and not do any restoration other than maybe some engine detailing. It amazes me that it is so original right down to the cardboard box holding the tire jack parts in the trunk! As I said before, it is a true time capsule! Enjoy!!
@NYWF, we are fortunate to have such nice examples in our shop to work on and do content with from some of the most discerning collectors. We appreciate your interest and support! CP
My neighbor had a tan/brown 1956 Patrician with about 60,000 miles on it. When he bought it the leveling system was broken from being put on a lift without turning it off, but he got it fixed. It was nearly this nice, but it had poorly blended paint touch-ups around the headlight bezels. I was sad for Larry when he had to stop driving. He sold all three of the cool classic cars he had in his garage and moved away to an assisted living facility.
Glad you had the experience. There is a switch just under the dash to disengage the leveling system. My preference is to use it to set ride height and leave it off while driving. It is just for leveling with loads and as you probabally know, does not have anything to do with active ride quality.
@@classicperformance I use to have a 1955 Patrician with the torsion ride option. I would leave it on all the time. When refueling the car it would kick on to level the car to the frame. Also if I wanted to inspect the exhaust or something under the rear of the car I would put all my weight on the rear bumper and wait for the leveling motor to run and kick off. I would get off the bumper and the rear of the car would rise up several inches. Because the system has a built in delay before turning back on I could turn the toggle switch off and then crawl under the rear of the car. The owners manual that you have for this car has information on how to use the push button shift. The amazing part that I remember is that I says not to shift into reverse if you are going faster the 30 MPH! I never tried this at even 5 MPH.
My personal thought is this classic Marque is one of the most beautiful cars of '56. Sure beats the Cadillac by far, in my opinion. Packard and Studebaker were so far ahead of their time in design and engineering the public couldn't keep up, sadly. I also love the Studebaker Hawks. Today, they are works of moving art. What a find this car was. Thanks for sharing.
Could not agree more! She keeps right up with the crowded and fast interstate traffic of today even!!! However, she's mostly resigned to just Sunday afternoon drives and demonstrations when the neighbors come by and walk up to get a closer look.
One day, my wife & I started out about 5AM to visit the original owners family in far-away Coalport, PA, in our 56 "400". We then took the original owners son & grandson for a long ride. When we got home at about 1AM, our only regret was we had to stop driving. That was after 590 miles. Not the least bit fatigued. BTW, this was in 2014, after buying the car from them in January 1976, and drove it home in one of the three worst snowstorms of my lifetime. Family owned Hegarty Packard, Ford, the local bank & lumber yard. I think we're due for another trip back! The gas mileage is amazing on the road, due to the very "eager" engine and locking torque converter. The engine is so eager, that the car feels very, very light. (and we have a C7 Corvette & a 68 Caddy with 472 engine) So, if we lived in a less busy area, with horrible drivers, we could proudly use the car daily.out
I have my Uncle's 55 Clipper 4dr sedan. He was the cars second owner. He bought it the Ford Dealership in Kirksville Mo. in 1962. Picked it up on the cheap because it was a orphan car. It's got 78,000 miles on it now. It had 48,000 miles on it when I rescued it from going to the salvage yard. He was going to let them have it because it hadn't ran since my uncle died in 1965. It was parked in the basement garage of their home covered up in quilts and boxes. I got it to run and drive out of the garage under it's own power. I've rebuilt the engine, trans and rear end . Replaced the bushings ,hoses and brake lines. Gave it a repaint because the old paint had aged and it needed it. Still runs and drives like a new car. Super smooth ride and comfortable to drive.
Thank you for sharing this story. We love the rescued car stories. At only 48,000 miles, how did you determine the entire drivetrain needed rebuilding?
'56! What a high end car! I never knew anything in '56 was this well thought out and functional. No idea how that was kept in such perfect condition, but very grateful that it was and to see this perfectly preserved museum piece!
Thanks, FCAflyer! Could you imagine seeing this rolled out new in 1956 compared with the products current for that era. The car could be optioned up with dual quad carbs, power seats and windows, heated driver seat, and air conditioning, chrome rocker covers and a host of other smalls. Many of these options took another full decade or more to make it into other models.
Yeah. In my very small town in Virginia, NOBODY had any money and everybody drove Plymouths, old, cheap Chevys and Fords or Ramblers. I never saw anyting like that! @@classicperformance
That Mobil sticker on the door jamb at 3:40 is incredible. Already 22 years old, when most cars would have already given up the ghost. Amazing originality.
Correct! Folks traded quite quickly back then. One of the biggest fail points was often the paint. When that happened, it was just another old car and the love ended and she was traded. As well, new designs came out every year or two unlike today. So, to the eye, cars "aged" faster. It is great that someone preserved this car and for some reasons we really don't know.
Hope you post a video!!! All the best with it......and please.....Don't ruin it with HD shocks, that prevent the interacting suspension from functioning.
@@williamlegall2988 Being that the car only had 4,600 miles when we recently took delivery, the shocks are all originals. We did a rebound and dampening test on all of them and they perform as new. No plans to replace anything original unless it is a safety issue. The brake linings are all originals, but we did the wheel cyls and flex lines, but the master cyl is still the original.
The home is Circa 1915. We are unsure when the garage was built but suspect it was after that once modern cars came of age. Looking at the garage doors, to the left it also contains a wash bay with sloped floor to a large center drain.
Yes, they sure do! The '56 has the eyebrows which we like a little better. Check out the differences between '55 and '56 and let me know what you think! --they also bring out a lot of friendly faces when going down the road or parked at a show.
@hdickinson4171 we also love the "hump" of the squared off trunk lid. What would cause the eyebrows to rust out... water and salt of course, but what is the structure area or design that promotes this?
Wow - what a Beauty! And such amazing contrasts of attention to detail from those minutely-crafted dashboard switches and details to the couldn't-give-a-toss, slap-it-all-over adhesive man. How strange to think that such a wonderfully over-the-top vehicle that must turn heads everywhere it goes today, would've seemed just another run-of-the-mill automobile back in 1956...I just love the way that motor purrs. many thanks for sharing...
Many thanks, Ted! Packard for a long time boasted and had a very large workforce of skilled craftsman and everything was done in-house at a "Manufacturing Plant". Today, cars are built at an "Assembly Plant", with most all parts and components coming in from outsourced contractors. Leer Seating comes to mind for many, especially BMW in North America along with GM, Ford, Stellantis, Diamlar, etc.
How the Packard went from such beauty in 1956 to an abomination in 1957 was the result of merging with Studebaker. The ‘57 & ‘58 Packardbakers were to be placeholders until Studebaker had the money to produce a true Packard. But that failed to happen, and it was lights out for Packard after ‘58. An inglorious end to one of America’s truly great automobiles. Many thanks for sharing this Patrician with the world and being such a good steward!
Packard made awesome cars. My uncle was an auto, and aircraft mechanic in 40', and '50's. Hd felt that Packards were comparable in many ways to Cadillacs...idk about that first hand but i do believe they were really good cars. Too bad the company was apparently mismanaged. This car is a testament to the quality of engineering. Vision of designers, and the uniqueness of many features. Love the car. Not many cars that i recall that featured awesome tri color schemes...several years ago we were at the Packard grounds for a granddaughters wedding. There were a number of beautiful packards from different decades as well as the awesome Packard record setting speedboat on display.
James, I have studied the Packard Proving Grounds history, now event center! That must have been just a spectacular day in such a unique setting! I will visit one day. On the bucket list for sure. Congratulations!
Hi James, I don’t really know that Packard was mismanaged. I thought the real reason for their demise was that they had very limited resources compared to “The Big 3” (GM, Ford, Chrysler). Packard wasn’t the only car company to die in the 1950’s. Kaiser, Hudson, and others also went defunct. Nash had to merge with Rambler to survive. Studebaker barely survived the ‘50’s and limped into the early ‘60’s. It was just tough for the smaller companies to compete against Detroit’s Big 3 with their big bucks advertising budgets.
@@OldRustySteele It wasn't so much mismanagement as it was a bad business deal. Packard was doing OK, but the management wanted to have a car for the middle class. Part of that was accomplished with the Clipper line, but they had their eye on Studebaker. Up until Packard merged with Studebaker, they had money and no debt. Studebaker was drowning in debt. After the merger, too many Studebaker front office people made their way into Packard's front office. They dragged Packard down with them. One correction, though. Rambler was a model of Nash, not a car company at that time. Nash merged with Hudson to form American Motors, which lasted well into the end years of the 20th century - until they were bought by Chrysler.
@@jimgarofalo5479 Thanks for the info, Jim. I didn’t remember that Rambler was a Nash model. I remembered my old man talking about Nashes and Ramblers as if they were separate companies!
The details on this car are amazing, the exterior side marker lights for example! The Ultramatic push button transmission to right of the wheel was unique. The rear tail lights and exhaust design is beautifully done. Sadly though Packard could not compete with Cadillac and this was the final year.
They could compete.. they just took too long to introduce a v8…. And they merged with Hudson… which hurt them….. then they merged with studebaker…. Which killed them …… sad because studie and packard were two of the oldest names in automobiles…
@@woodruffokjulee5615 packard was part of the 1954 American motors merger Involving Hudson and Nash that marked the beginning of the end….. Hudson, Stude, Nash and Packard were all intended to be part of American motors….
@@matthewjames4334 Yes, originally that was the plan but after Nash's George Mason died in October 1954, the four way merger was dead in the water. New Nash (AMC) President decided to go it alone without Packard and Studebaker. The earlier posting that Packard merged with Hudson then Studebaker is flat out wrong.
The '56 Patricians fitted with the push button Twin Ultramatic Drive are also equipped with power door locks. The button to control the locks is under the instrument panel on the left side next to the button to control the Torsion Level suspension. Packard was the first to offer power door locks. Another industry first introduced by Packard with the '56 models is the Twin Traction limited slip differential.
@packard5687 Never considered such. That will be another great find. I suspect they are vacuum operated? There is a large vessel in the left front fender just ahead of the antenna motor. Seemed somewhat large for just the wiper motor. Might be storage for locks?
The vacuum storage tank on the left front fender is for the power brakes. There is a vacuum pump on the bottom of the oil pump to assist the vacuum wiper motor. The outless was located on the right side of the engine block. This pump caused problems over time in that the base plate was made out of potmetal and would distort allowing air to enter the oil pump causing a loss of oil pressure to the top of the motor. The power door locks were operated by an electric solenoid at each door latch, not vacuum operated. @@classicperformance
The last living Packard dealer owner was a man by the name of Shelby Wendell Hawkins. He said the Houston market where he sold his cars was doing great but Packard dealers weren't aggressive enough when it came to promoting the cars. He went on to say the dealers were owned by wealthy old men who were set in their ways and the turnover rate was low since the cars were kept for years by the buyer. One of the things he mentioned was during its last days the cars would sit unsold on lots so long that the valves would be stuck. He was probably the youngest dealer in the area and he only sold them for about two to three years and then the company was gone.
Absolutely stunning! I love the showroom-new condition and the station-seeking radio. It's a shame it is not equipped with power windows; maybe the original owner didn't want the option. I love the side lights that go on when you open the front doors and the fact that rear seat passengers had their heat zoned by the driver! This car seemed ahead of its time for 1956! If you ever sell it, it will probably fetch near 100 grand. Thanks for posting.
Thanks for the interest! Back then, many folks were a bit scared of power windows and seats which could be optioned. As well, I believe a heated front driver seat was available. Honestly, we are glad it does not have those options. Most likely would be failure points after almost 70-years.
The Cord HAD to be the inspiration for the amazing dashboard. Ditto for the electric shift. However, Cord had the feature for a standard tranny, which (surprisingly) Packard didn't offer.
This car was the inspiration for the Soviet GAZ-13 Chaika. The two look quite similar, although the GAZ-13 was a longer, limo-like car, What an amazing specimen you have there!
Thanks for the good catch. I knew there was a Soviet knock-off, but didn't remember what it was. (I saw one at Red Square in Moscow 15 years ago.) And the Soviet Lada was a knock-off of a Fiat. Did they ever do any original design?
@@williamdonahue6617 The original Lada was not just a knock-off. It was fully based on the FIAT 124 (albeit modified for the Russian market), since FIAT had set up the production facility in Togliatti as part of a deal with the USSR govt. Yes, there were original designs, most notably the ZIL limo series and the (still produced) Lada Niva.
Along,with the chaika which translates to seagull,the top the line zil limousine had the same 1956 style bodywork.maurice kelly wrote a good book on Russian limousines called Russian limousines 1936/2003.
Solex and Herculite are trademarks of PPG (Pittsburgh Plate Glass) Solex is the tinting and Herculie is a high strength tempered glass line. Cool video!
SIDENOTE: your garage looks fantastic!!! I love how it looks. The perfect home for such a marvelous piece of machinery! That Packard is absolutely amazing!!! I never realized how much similar a Packard dash is to that of an Austin Healy, in its design looks. That dash practically sells the car on its own!
Frank, thanks for sharing. We too have a soft spot for the Packard 120. Check out our previous uploads to see our 120! Here's a link to get you started. ruclips.net/video/4H7QG5maFBc/видео.html
It really was a shame. This car even today after all these years, is still perfection in the way it has held up, how it looks, drives, runs and rides. We'll have a driving video coming out very soon so stay tuned! Thanks for your interest, Hugh. CP
Thank you for posting this video. I love everything about the interior of this vehicle! The quality and attention to detail stand out, even after all these years.
Very cool! My boss has one with even lower miles - a pink and white '56 Executive with only 1861 miles (with an oil change sticker from 1973 showing 1715). I had the pleasure of driving a '56 Patrician once and the torsion bar suspension made it ride soooo nice...
William, it happens and quite often. The original owner had an older Packard which he kept and continued to drive while this '56 was reserved for special occasions only. Then, it was put away in storage. You might recall the last Cadillac convertable produced in '76? People snapped them up and put them away, same thing happened with the limited edition 1978 Corvette Indy pace car editions, Grand National Buicks in 1987, and many others that still exist with no miles on them.
Thanks for the great story!!! Upstate, NY and surrounding areas are tough on cars. Those "positive earth" electrical systems famous on older British cars gave a lot of inspecting owners much unfortunate trouble. And yes, correct, that tape player chassis would not be able to come in contact with any metal structure of the car or would ignite something!
William, thank you. Take a look around, there are nice cared for examples out there for reasonable proces especially considering where the prices of classics have gone lately.
Thanks, Charles. The are some exceptional values out there on Packards depending on what model you look at. They are in reach unlike vintage Ferraris and Porsches and the like. --and they ride a lot better too.
Always liked all Packards , My uncle drove them in the 1950 ' s & as a kid I thought they were special ! Still like seeing them at Classic Car Shows here in the Mpls , MN. Area ! ! !
Yes, I recall always seeing them at shows too years ago. I don't recall ever having a family member or neighbor with one. Of course I grew up in the working class area of town which was not Cadillac or Packard parts of town.
I have a patrician still not sure if it’s a 55 or 56….. it’s mostly original but it has had a very bad respiratory done since I’ve been working on it. I’ve found jb weld, duct tape electrical tape etc all in places they shouldn’t be…. However my car is an award winner it one second place at a packard show in 82 and was at the centennial auto show in Houston in 86 I was amazed after sitting for around 20 years or so that everything still worked… it sat with the left side rocker arm removed and pushrods out for god knows how long ….I put it back together with 3 nos pushrods filled it with marvel oil and diesel and started baring it over by hand then tried the starter…. Eventually pumped the lifters back up cleaned the points checked the timing and firing order and it fired right up….. after that almost everything came to life…. Radio, head lights, tail light, courtesy, and clearance lights… horn Still needs the levelride suspension fixed… needs a water pump and I list of other things…. But I love my Patrician…….. don’t love trying to take the gauges out, but I love the car
Thanks for sharing the story about your car! Best of luck! and, you can easily tell the '55 from the '56, as the '56 has the eyebrows over the headlights. CP
I remember back in the late 80's when I was in highschool auto mechanics class one of our instructors Mr. Renfro was always talkng about Packards. Hell most of us kids had never even seen one but He sure loved them.
'ol Mr Renfro. Our auto shop teacher in that period was Mr. Medcalf. He had a cool black '68 short bed chevy stepside lowered with wide period turbine wheels and Belted TA RWL 60 series tires, might have even been 50's. The shop class cut the roof and made T-tops for it, installed bucket seats and a console among other things. He was a Chevy guy. Everyone thought that truck was the coolest thing ever including me. Thanks for your interest and reference to the old auto shop teachers. My guess today if they still have auto shop, it's all import tuner stuff and software. ??
My kind great uncle WW1 veteran lived on the other side of the country from my family, had been an executive in a big industrial company and was pretty well off, certainly compared to my poor young parents. He had a pristine older, late 30’s Packard and a new 56 Patrician that was a salmon and white two-tone. Those were just his daily use cars, what he and my aunt drove around. It had air conditioning with these clear plastic vent things that came up from the rear window deck. I seem to remember that the side and back glass, and over the top of the windshield was very lightly colored sort of light blue green. I could be mistaken about that. But the way the windows and bodywork were integrated in the design is something that affected my sensibilities permanently. Nobody had a/c then and, together with the push button drive, the thing was sort of a mystical presence in our infrequent visits. It was a beautiful thing, sort of magic for a kid. The older late ‘30s car was classically stately in a way that didn’t seem to want the world to change and, in a different way, the 56 was classic too, but in a reluctantly, still only the best, but ok here is the modern-world way. A totally different world than the one I lived in. One summer, probably 1957, we were visiting and he opened up the giant trunk to reveal a brand new red schwinn tornado bike. I remember his tall-waisted pants with a skinny belt, rumpled pressed shirt and tie, jacket and fedora - on a hot summer day and he was retired! - while he took the bike out of the trunk (it was carpeted with a cream colored wool-looking carpet) and put it on the kick stand behind the car in the driveway. It was too much to have imagined even thinking of asking for such a thing at the time. Over the next week all I did was figure out how to ride a bike dawn to dusk on the long, looping road to his house. He died in, I think, 1960 or 1961. He quit buying cars when they quit making big Packards, 56 was it for him, so my aunt still had those two pristine examples until she passed many years later. These memories are imprinted with the Packard car sensibilities that I didn’t even really have any explicit sense or awareness of. It’s not nostalgia, more of an incredibly intricate collection of things that got remembered, out of all the things that got forgotten, partially because of the unusual setting that now is kind of “pegged” to those Packard-provided background shapes, sounds and smells. The car you show here is a real gem and time capsule.
Appreciate you sharing such a great story and you are absolutely correct about the location of the AC ducts on the '56 Patrician. Under hood was the compressor, which looked like an old 2-cyl shop air compressor in a "V" piston configuration. The refrigerant lines routed back to the trunk where the evap coil, and air box was located. The vents blew forward from the package shelf in front of the back glass. The refrigerant was R-12. Packard was the first automaker to provide conditioned are inside the car in the 1940s.
There were no Packards in my lower-middle class neighborhood (north St Louis) growing up in the late ‘50’s, and I didn’t see many elsewhere around the city. When I went to college in 1972, one of the old semi-retired professors in my engineering department had a ‘55 Packard Clipper. My school was in a relatively small town, so he was easy to spot puttering around town. He died a few years later and I always wondered what happened to that car. It would have been a good one to restore since they rarely salted the roads in that town.
Thanks for sharing the story. Packards were rarely ever seen in my town either. I suspect they were pretty salt tolerant too as robust as the bodies were and the undercoating of the day.
I've seen a lot of classic cars all my life, and this is definitely in the top three time capsules! And I'm pretty sure that this makes the "55 or "56 Packard the first car to have entry / curb lights... 👏
Marko, thanks for the compliment. Interesting point you made about the side curb courtesy lights. We'll have to look into that. Take a look at our other three videos on this car.
We agree! and made to last has been proven over time with this example, being everything works including items you would expect to break over a reasonable period of time. -leveling system which includes sensors and a timed delay, self seeking radio, power antenna, vacuum system and wiper motor, to think of the immediate ones.
Did the radio actually work when you got the car, or did you have it worked on? If the radio was never touched, it's a real miracle after all the years. Thanks. loved the video!
Thanks for your interest @beeenn649 yes, the radio works perfectly as does the station seek and power antenna. Honestly, everything works on the car just as new. You might want to check out our other videos in the series. Quite an interesting find. A battery, fuel pump rebuild and 4 wheel cyls and flex lines was about all it took to get her back going after almost 50 years.
Hah! I am in Spokane on business. The Mobil sticker from 1978 at 3:56 says 508 West Third. I am in a hotel less than a half mile from that right now. These days there is a bank there....
Absolutly correct. It wasn't all about mass production, planned obsolescence, and company profits. It was about craftsman, workmanship and quality. Automotove manufacturing plants vs. today, where they are referred to as assembly plants.
Neighbor Wally drove a black on white '55 Packard from '65 thru '70. He was older than ourselves, but he and his pals would take us "yungun's" (10, 11, 12), out to the lakes here in B.C., Canada. Logging roads were especially fun while that ol' 4dr kept making its way up, down and all around switchbacks and countryside during those fun summers. Wally went off to college and we grew to appreciate what a good car was all about. Muscle cars became the next fad. A near new, forest green, 289 Cougar became my daily driver for most of the next decade. Wally came back from college with a '65 VW and a Honda 50 motorcycle (he was economically ahead of the times). The rest? Various power combos well into the '80's until family and good sense prevailed History, long gone ...
Thanks for sharing the story, Daniel. I could see that car on the switchback logging roads sucking up every bump! 289 Cougar, cool!!! Loved the hide-away headlights and slick sequential tailights.
If they only built new cars today like they use to. I would add Seat Belts to the Packard. Had a cousin who worked making Packard Cars. Early 1960's he went to Full time farming until he died. Great to see this car. I bought a 1957 Nash & totally restored it in the 1980's.
Theres a guy who drives his early 50s Packard 400 past my work on nice days, beautiful car, but I keep trying to flag him down so I can ask him for first right of refusal when he decides to sell it. Such great cars!
In the mid-80’s, I bought a 1952 Chrysler New Yorker from the former head barber at Leavenworth Fed Prison. It had less than 2k miles on it, because he just used it locally. This makes me wish I had held on to that car (among many others lol) 🥺
Beautiful car! I noticed the "Dagmars" on the fron bumper-did Cadillac take that from Packard? I believe the brown substance on the door s was "cosmolene"-an anti-rust compound used in the 1940s-50s.I'd love a car like this today!
I would think the opposite, that Packard took the "Dagmars" from GM. Cadillac with the Eldorado had them long before the '55-'56 Packards did. --as you know, they were nicknamed "Dagmars" after a well-endowed female television personality Virginia Ruth "Jennie" Lewis, known professionally as Dagmar, was an American actress, model, and television personality. In the 1950s she became one of the first major female stars of television, receiving much press coverage... and there is no wonder why.
My father owned a 1955 Packard 400 which he bought used in 1958. I learned to drive on it. Another little feature I haven't seen mentioned was that it had a foot switch to the left of the brake pedal which caused the radio to seek the next available station...like the seek bar on the radio.
Peter, Thank you for your interest and this interesting bit of information. We will have to look at the Patrician a bit more and see if the signal seek foot button is there. The seek function does work nicely from the in-dash radio controls.
A friend of mine told me one thing about the ride levelling. It was on all the time, so any prankster could bounce on the bumper when parked and watch the sensors go nuts trying to keep up.
This one seems to have about a 7 second delay so as not to keep activating while driving over curious terrain. Jay Leno does a demonstration on his and it also has a delayed action. Stay tuned, we'll do a demonstration video. It also has an off switch under the dash.
Thank you, nice overviews….of Patrician…..Interestingly,reminds me of my 1965 Car purchase: 1956;FORD 4 Door/Thunderbird Engine, Dual Exha,etc /auto: FORD White (?) ext.// BABY Blue FABRIC INTERIOR,, *cream puff,LOW mileage: I did not get pictures before totalled in Freak Accident in few weeks( just started planning build up & Keeper)…
The OHV V8 was late to the party, but an excellent piece. The bore-center spacing is a full 5 inches, unmatched until the 1968 Cadillacs, which adopted the same dimension. I have always understood the Ultramatic transmission to have two speeds, not three, with strengthening for 1956 after poor reliability in 1955. I was not aware a Patrician could be had with manual windows.
Correct. It is often said Packard was so committed to developing its own automatic transmission, and did, it delayed the OHV V8. But so true, great motor, but just too late to the party. Thanks for the information!
Wow, what a beauty! You mention not being sure of proper use of the transmission. Just wonder if the owner's manual you have addresses the subject. Packard had such a great record of automotive engineering firsts, not to mention their WWII production of the Rolls-Merlin 1650 V12 aircraft engine. Their disappearance in the post-war era remains a real tragedy.
Thanks for your response....I LOVED that Packard 400...was sorry when my father sold it although I had just left home by then...at the age of 18. I had discovered the floor switch but didn't know where the cable went...discovered that by lying underneath the dash with a flashlight and found the socket for the cable on the back of the radio....worked as soon as I plugged it in....I thought that feature was very 'cool'. When my father sold the Packard (boo hoo), he bought a '62 Buick Wildcat Coupe which I occasionally borrowed and I liked it but it certainly wasn't the Packard! Pm
My Uncle who owned and restored antique cars during the 60’s bought a Caribbean. It was apparently all original but needed some cleaning and maintenance . I never knew what he ended up doing with it. It was parked in Grandma’s garage
Ya know, Wesley, That is an excellent idea. Duh! 😊. Exactly what I will do! You know how us guys are, or at least me. That's a last resort! Appreciate your interest, comment and the view!!
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
The Packard Clipper is one of the most beautiful cars ever made.
We love the Clipper series, too!
Oh my, what a beautiful automobile! Great walkaround and narration Doug.
Thanks, Tim!!! Appreciate your interest and comment! Stay tuned, new Upload coming where we demonstrate the automatic torsion-level suspension. system
Thar car is like art.Unlike the garbage they make today.You can tell some real thought went into the design. Just beautiful.😊
Couldn't agree more, David! And it drives smooth as glass, sounds great and solid as a rock! Thanks!
It's a facelift of the by then behind the times body introduced in 1952, with a lot of chrome trim trying to disguise its age.
If Packard was to continue, the design year '56 or '57 would have to be the hard end to this style. It would have been costly for a new ground-up design. Curious what it would have been? I could see it favoring Chrysler products of the late 50's - early 60's
EVERY PIECE of the exterior metal was brand new & fresh. Ditto for the windshield design and bumpers. EVERY single piece was new in the cabin, even the headliner, brake & gas pedal.. New engine, new transmission, torsion suspension. The firewall & a few inner bodywork pieces (modified), were the only pieces that remain. No more than 15% of the (then) near current 1951 remained, and only in invisible areas. Our 56 gets more heartfelt positive attention than any of our other really-sharp cars.
@@williamlegall2988 Great information and data, William!! We wish it had worked out for Packard. It sure was not for a lack of effort!
That is the most beautiful Packard I have ever seen. That gorgous rich interior is better looking than today's high priced cars!
We agree! Thanks for the input and support, William!
Believe it or not, the famous Packard Ultramatic is a *TWO-SPEED* transmission. What sets it apart from many other transmissions of the time is that it features a lock-up torque-converter, something no other US manufacturer did until the gas crunch of the late 1970's.
The control is as follows:
P for Park, R for Reverse, N for Neutral as you would expect.
L keeps you in low gear. No automatic upshift into high.
H starts you off in *HIGH* gear with automatic lockup engagement around 40-45mph. This is for those gossamer-smooth take-offs and no interruption of that smoothness by an upshift.
As far as I know, with HIGH selected, there is NO downshift into low either. Low is essentially locked-out when the H button is pressed.
D is obviously drive. Low gear start, automatic upshift into High and automatic lockup engagement.
Interestingly enough, had Packard continued; they would have brought forth the first OVERDRIVE automatic transmission to market in 1958. Since Ultramatic was a 2-speed, Lincoln had a 3-speed and Cadillac had a 4-speed auto; Packard had devised a way of building an electric overdrive into the tailshaft of the Ultramatic. Yes, it was big, bulky and complicated but it worked!! Anecdotes abound that one was used in the "Black Bess" pre-production MULE car that was going to be the next Packard car. There were also two other engines being tested as well. A 395-cubic incher that was going to best Cadillacs' 390.... and a 425 cubic inch engine. The Packard V8 was designed to be bored and stroked to be even larger - capacity being set at 500-cubic inches!! However, it was found in testing that the larger engine produced so much torque, it was destroying the overdrive units.
And then the rest of the story we know.... Studebaker-Packard decided to continue producing Studebaker's instead of Packards. That never made ANY sense to me. Packard was poised for a rebirth and Studebaker was foundering. Studebaker had not seen black ink on the books since 1950 and required a production break-even point of 350,000 cars.... a number they came close to in 1950 (with 342,000 I believe) but never came even close through the rest of the 1950's.
Now this is great information. Appreciate it greatly. Much thanks for your expertise and contribution. BTW, I once had a '70 AMX Go Pack 390 4-speed with 4:10 ish rear gears. Nothing would touch it back then box stock
Greetings from Turkey. Thank you very much for showing this beautiful car
Our pleasure! Thank you for your interest from Turkey! Stay warm over there! Appreciate your interest! More to come soon on this one!
sir, what a car. we used a 1956 packard as a family car for years. as a young man i delighted in showing off what the car could do. our other family cars were buick and oldsmobile. the packard was the best. in fact it is still in the barn. my sister was a student at columbia and i would pick her up at the train station with our packard. i will always be proud that we had a packard as a family car. when it graduated from university, i drove home in the packard. you asked a question about the drivers piano, which is packard's term for that shifter. please let me explain as i did then. if you want a car like a buick with smooth torque converter drive press h. you will accelerate with the torque converter then lock.with the direct drive clutch. if you want to drive like an oldsmobile or cadillac press d and you will start in low, go to high then to direct drive. what some people think is a shift is actually the the direct drive clutch locking out the torque converter. packard was the only ...only independent car company to ever devise their own automatic transmission. i had the chance to drive some great men of auto fame in the packard and they always asked where they could get one. general motors built their lock-out converter after buying a packard. i am glad you have that car. i would not able to resist, i would drive it, and it needs to be left as the newest packard. the 1956 packard the greatest packard of all the packards including all the great packards.. ahead of its class in everything. those are their words. me, i believe. best wishes.
Thanks, Russ for all the great information. Appreciate your support!
Un gran auto Una obra de arte clásico Fue copiado por los ruso para hacer el Chaika
Well put ...
@@juanasanelli6831 Juan, Sí, tienes razón sobre la Chaika. ¡Gracias por su interés y apoyo al canal!
68 years after it was made, the 56 Packard is still my all time favorite passenger car. To think, 28 years before this Packard, was the Model-T. 68 years later is a car that can easily transport you and your family cross-country, in unparalleled comfort. At any speed. The amazing presence of the exterior and the gorgeous cabin, is the "icing on the cake"
Thanks for sharing! Our family had a '55 Patrician. As a little kid, I loved all the neat stuff like the signal-seeking radio, courtesy lamps, etc. And oh, what a luxurious ride! What my siblings and I really liked, though, was the auto-leveling suspension. We'd go hop on the back and wait for it to level up, then run to the front and sit there so the back would go down and the front would go up. Back and forth until it stopped working. My dad could never figure out why the battery was always dying. We didn't know it used the battery, of course, and no one ever put 2 and 2 together. In late '62, the mufflers (I think there were four) went bad and my dad got a ticket for excessive noise. He couldn't find new mufflers anywhere, so he sold the Patrician to a collector. I cried!
Great story! Thanks for sharing and loved "till it stopped working". This '56 has a switch under the dash to disable the leveling system and we leave it off unless needed. The car does indeed have a very complex exhaust system. We'll be doing a POV ride along soon and let you hear the mellow exhaust note through a correct multi-muffled dual exhaust system. No tickets here! Now we did get stopped once for a "vehicle inspection" as the officer just wanted a closer look at the car! No citations, just smiles per mile.
Much more solid build than todays vehicles. Legendary.
Agreed. --All you have to do is cross railroad tracks at speed and it quickly confirms your thoughts on how solid these cars are.
Its pretty, and I'd be thrilled to drive it on the weekends, but as a daily driver? I like seat belts and fuel economy. You can also put 300,000 miles on a Honda Civic. in 100,000 these things had shot valves bad rings. And not a trace of rust proofing. They leaked and smoked. And if you lived in the Midwest they just rusted away. I loved the old cars, but they didn't last.
@@DanaTheInsane Exactly correct. Interesting how some feel it has 100k + miles. The engines never lasted that long without showings signs of age and wear as you described.
@@DanaTheInsane People who buy luxury cars don't care about fuel economy. Undercoating was indeed available. People just didn't bother to get it. Motor oil was very poor quality compared to what we have today, except for the lack of zinc. With today's oil, and the appropriate additive, these engines will indeed last. In contrast, if you use oil that is the equivalent of yesteryear's oil in today's engines, they will probably be gone at about 50,000 or fewer miles.
Very true, Dana. We always use oil with appropriate levels of ZDDP for older engines with flat tapped camshafts. Thanks for the good insight. CP
That engine has a great, beefy rumble. My grandfather used to get a new Packard every two years. He had a turquoise blue 55 "400", (which was the two door model) and it was such a beautiful and thoughtfully designed car. He and my grandma came to visit us one weekend (a 5 hour drive) and that Friday afternoon, they pulled in driving a red 1956 "400", an equally beautiful car. My dad and I couldn't figure out why he now had a red car and a year newer. It hadn't been his year to trade. He explained that they had started the trip in the 55 car but developed some kind of mechanical problem along the way. He found a Packard dealer along the trip route and took the car in. The dealer explained how long it would take to repair it and my grandpa didn't want to wait that long. There was this brand new red 56 model sitting on the showroom floor, all serviced and ready to go. He just made a deal on it, wrote a check and off they went.
His 56 model still had the column gear selector instead of the push buttons. 1956 of course was the last year Packard made a great luxury car. They merged with Studebaker after that and became just a Studebaker with a Packard nameplate for two more years (then went out of business completely). My grandfather switched to Cadillacs after that but while they were great cars too, he sorely missed his Packards. It's such a shame that like so many other great parts of this country's past, the company is no longer with us.
Mike, thanks for sharing such a great story with us and the large group assembled here who appreciate Packards. The folding of the cards at the end of the Packard era is indeed a sad story. PakardBakers I recall and were Packard Badged Studabakers, Sadly at the end. At least we still have the cars here with us!
Don't leave the key on, it can burn the points.....😮
I grew up in Southern California not far from West LA. In my grandparents neighborhood most of the homes were two story Spanish style with long driveways. About 3 blocks away from their place was a beautiful home with an arch over the driveway that connected to the house. The owners of the home drove a ‘55 Packard Clipper. It was two tone blue and white with the ship’s wheel in the center of the grille. Just parked there with that massive Spanish style home it just looked so classy. That was around 1959 or so but I remember it clearly.
I have similar memories of cars parked at neighboring houses as well. I can still see them all sitting there as if it was no big deal. Thanks for sharing!
In 1970 I drove '55 Patrician in upstate NY that was in rough shape. It had the torsion ride, non-push button shifter and power windows. Someone had previously added aftermarket sanders! It had two open metal boxes in the trunk over the rear wheels. There was a control for them strapped to the steering column. I never used them so I don't know if they still worked. The electrical system is a 12 volt positive ground. I had temporarily installed an 8-tract tape player which is not 12 volt positive ground. I made and attached it to a metal shell to fit over the carpet on the floor hump to keep the tape player from shorting out. I connected the tape player hot wire to ground and the ground to a power source under the instrument panel. Yes it worked! The power brakes on this car are amazing. When you applied the brakes, it felt like the vacuum system was pulling the brake pedal to the floor with very little foot pressure. The torsion ride is hard to describe. It is so soft it's like you are riding on a mattress. I miss this car.
Wow. Especially love those headlight and tail lights. Just crazy to see a car that old, that original and still so nice.
Couldn't agree more! Thanks, Don.
When I was very young, I rode with my father to deliver a brand new 1956 Packard to an executive at the Smithfield Ham company in Virginia. It was one of the last Packards sold in central VA. My father was a longtime employee of the Packard dealership in Richmond, and he got the honor of making the delivery. It would be nice to see a full view of this beautiful car with no one in the way.
Thanks for sharing such a great story. Much more to come on the car. Subscribe and turn on notifications.
You'll have to give the "executive's" reaction to seeing the car, upon arrival!
I am in my late 50's, and have been a fan of Packards since I was 16 years old! I have always loved the 1955 and 1956 models the most. The 1956 has more refined styling over the 1955 and therefore is my favorite Packard of all. I just happened to see this video title right after watching something completely unrelated and couldn't wait to watch it!! I have seen a few nice survivor 1956 Patricians over the years, but this one is truly the best. I wish it had the three tone paint, but this paint scheme is much more uncommon!! If only it had power windows and power seat, it would have been my dream Packard. The 1956 models all came so diversely optioned. Some left the factory with every option available, some nearly fully optioned, and some with oddly chosen combinations of options. I believe that they just tried to empty out parts bins, since management knew the production line could be shut down at any time. The move to Studebaker's South Bend Indiana assembly line to produce the badge engineered 1957 "Packardbaker" was truly the end of one of the most illustrious automobile makes that America has ever known. I see from the comments that this beautiful Patrician has found a new owner already; from what was stated, the new owner sounds like the type of person who will be a great caretaker. I normally never ask what prices cars have brought when sold, but I am very curious if you could give a close range figure for what it did bring, if you don't mind sharing. Thank you so much for letting us see this true Time Capsule automobile!! I just subscribed to your channel and will look forward to future videos!!
@NYWF, "Mr. Owner speaking here. Thank you for your thoughts, which are a treat to read. While I like the iconic 50's tri-color paint combos as well, the beautiful Dover White on this Patrician was part of what made me reach for my checkbook. If you'll look at Doug's traveling shot down the side, beginning at 4:50, you'll pick up the depth of reflection that a tri-color would only fragment. It's as if someone just took a big jug of thick, rich cream, poured it all over the car, and then augmented it with shining chrome. As we say here in the South, Hubba Hubba!
As to the cost--well, discretion should be the better part of valor at this point, but I'll allow it was in the neighborhood of what a 2-3 year-old Buick Enclave might command. My grandfather drove a 1955 Buick Roadmaster Riviera, by the way. Those mid-50's luxury cars certainly wove a spell that continues to enchant nearly 70 years later."
@@classicperformanceThank you for responding to my comment! You are a very fortunate person to become the caretaker of this beautiful automobile! And the more I think about it, I truly do like the all Dover White exterior; it is a very elegant color! I hope you keep it just as it is and not do any restoration other than maybe some engine detailing. It amazes me that it is so original right down to the cardboard box holding the tire jack parts in the trunk! As I said before, it is a true time capsule! Enjoy!!
@NYWF, we are fortunate to have such nice examples in our shop to work on and do content with from some of the most discerning collectors. We appreciate your interest and support! CP
My neighbor had a tan/brown 1956 Patrician with about 60,000 miles on it. When he bought it the leveling system was broken from being put on a lift without turning it off, but he got it fixed. It was nearly this nice, but it had poorly blended paint touch-ups around the headlight bezels. I was sad for Larry when he had to stop driving. He sold all three of the cool classic cars he had in his garage and moved away to an assisted living facility.
Glad you had the experience. There is a switch just under the dash to disengage the leveling system. My preference is to use it to set ride height and leave it off while driving. It is just for leveling with loads and as you probabally know, does not have anything to do with active ride quality.
@@classicperformance I use to have a 1955 Patrician with the torsion ride option. I would leave it on all the time. When refueling the car it would kick on to level the car to the frame. Also if I wanted to inspect the exhaust or something under the rear of the car I would put all my weight on the rear bumper and wait for the leveling motor to run and kick off. I would get off the bumper and the rear of the car would rise up several inches. Because the system has a built in delay before turning back on I could turn the toggle switch off and then crawl under the rear of the car. The owners manual that you have for this car has information on how to use the push button shift. The amazing part that I remember is that I says not to shift into reverse if you are going faster the 30 MPH! I never tried this at even 5 MPH.
My personal thought is this classic Marque is one of the most beautiful cars of '56. Sure beats the Cadillac by far, in my opinion. Packard and Studebaker were so far ahead of their time in design and engineering the public couldn't keep up, sadly. I also love the Studebaker Hawks. Today, they are works of moving art. What a find this car was. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for your support!! More to come on this car.
I would proudly own AND drive this Car over ANY Car built today!💕
Could not agree more! She keeps right up with the crowded and fast interstate traffic of today even!!! However, she's mostly resigned to just Sunday afternoon drives and demonstrations when the neighbors come by and walk up to get a closer look.
@@classicperformance Cool to show to friends , Neighbors , Family !
One day, my wife & I started out about 5AM to visit the original owners family in far-away Coalport, PA, in our 56 "400". We then took the original owners son & grandson for a long ride. When we got home at about 1AM, our only regret was we had to stop driving. That was after 590 miles. Not the least bit fatigued. BTW, this was in 2014, after buying the car from them in January 1976, and drove it home in one of the three worst snowstorms of my lifetime. Family owned Hegarty Packard, Ford, the local bank & lumber yard. I think we're due for another trip back! The gas mileage is amazing on the road, due to the very "eager" engine and locking torque converter. The engine is so eager, that the car feels very, very light. (and we have a C7 Corvette & a 68 Caddy with 472 engine) So, if we lived in a less busy area, with horrible drivers, we could proudly use the car daily.out
I have my Uncle's 55 Clipper 4dr sedan. He was the cars second owner. He bought it the Ford Dealership in Kirksville Mo. in 1962. Picked it up on the cheap because it was a orphan car. It's got 78,000 miles on it now. It had 48,000 miles on it when I rescued it from going to the salvage yard. He was going to let them have it because it hadn't ran since my uncle died in 1965. It was parked in the basement garage of their home covered up in quilts and boxes. I got it to run and drive out of the garage under it's own power. I've rebuilt the engine, trans and rear end . Replaced the bushings ,hoses and brake lines. Gave it a repaint because the old paint had aged and it needed it. Still runs and drives like a new car. Super smooth ride and comfortable to drive.
Thank you for sharing this story. We love the rescued car stories. At only 48,000 miles, how did you determine the entire drivetrain needed rebuilding?
Setting to long and just worked it over for good measure. To insure it could be driven over long distances. Just love how it drives and enjoy it.
Thanks!!!
'56! What a high end car! I never knew anything in '56 was this well thought out and functional. No idea how that was kept in such perfect condition, but very grateful that it was and to see this perfectly preserved museum piece!
Thanks, FCAflyer! Could you imagine seeing this rolled out new in 1956 compared with the products current for that era. The car could be optioned up with dual quad carbs, power seats and windows, heated driver seat, and air conditioning, chrome rocker covers and a host of other smalls. Many of these options took another full decade or more to make it into other models.
Yeah. In my very small town in Virginia, NOBODY had any money and everybody drove Plymouths, old, cheap Chevys and Fords or Ramblers. I never saw anyting like that! @@classicperformance
That Mobil sticker on the door jamb at 3:40 is incredible. Already 22 years old, when most cars would have already given up the ghost. Amazing originality.
Correct! Folks traded quite quickly back then. One of the biggest fail points was often the paint. When that happened, it was just another old car and the love ended and she was traded. As well, new designs came out every year or two unlike today. So, to the eye, cars "aged" faster. It is great that someone preserved this car and for some reasons we really don't know.
Bert has passed, but his Packard lives on :)
True. We will also pass one day and this Packard and all others will need new caretakers. Till then, we will appreciate and love them.
After watching your videos, I had to buy one. I am going tomorrow to buy it and drive it home (1-12-24). stored from 75 until 2010 !
Wow!!! Congratulations! And please post an update, soon!!!!!
Hope you post a video!!! All the best with it......and please.....Don't ruin it with HD shocks, that prevent the interacting suspension from functioning.
@@williamlegall2988 Being that the car only had 4,600 miles when we recently took delivery, the shocks are all originals. We did a rebound and dampening test on all of them and they perform as new. No plans to replace anything original unless it is a safety issue. The brake linings are all originals, but we did the wheel cyls and flex lines, but the master cyl is still the original.
What a beautiful garage.....elegant and stately......built with the highest quality materials.
The home is Circa 1915. We are unsure when the garage was built but suspect it was after that once modern cars came of age. Looking at the garage doors, to the left it also contains a wash bay with sloped floor to a large center drain.
Oh, what a beautiful car, amazing in every detail, please take good care of her.
Will do, she's in good hands now!
Love your car! 1955 and 1956 Packards have such friendly faces
Yes, they sure do! The '56 has the eyebrows which we like a little better. Check out the differences between '55 and '56 and let me know what you think! --they also bring out a lot of friendly faces when going down the road or parked at a show.
I've always liked the face of the '55 Clipper as well: gentle and sad at the same time.
yes, and very true Oliver. Thanks for your input and support!!!
@@classicperformance The '55 had a rounded trunk lid. The '56 had a flat lid. The eyebrows would eventually rust out.
@hdickinson4171 we also love the "hump" of the squared off trunk lid. What would cause the eyebrows to rust out... water and salt of course, but what is the structure area or design that promotes this?
Wow - what a Beauty! And such amazing contrasts of attention to detail from those minutely-crafted dashboard switches and details to the couldn't-give-a-toss, slap-it-all-over adhesive man. How strange to think that such a wonderfully over-the-top vehicle that must turn heads everywhere it goes today, would've seemed just another run-of-the-mill automobile back in 1956...I just love the way that motor purrs. many thanks for sharing...
Many thanks, Ted! Packard for a long time boasted and had a very large workforce of skilled craftsman and everything was done in-house at a "Manufacturing Plant". Today, cars are built at an "Assembly Plant", with most all parts and components coming in from outsourced contractors. Leer Seating comes to mind for many, especially BMW in North America along with GM, Ford, Stellantis, Diamlar, etc.
I drooled throughout this whole video. Absolutely gorgeous!
Thanks, Rick. The car was a great find and pretty easy to sort out and get back on the road. Still some fine tuning needed, but she's close.
How the Packard went from such beauty in 1956 to an abomination in 1957 was the result of merging with Studebaker. The ‘57 & ‘58 Packardbakers were to be placeholders until Studebaker had the money to produce a true Packard. But that failed to happen, and it was lights out for Packard after ‘58. An inglorious end to one of America’s truly great automobiles. Many thanks for sharing this Patrician with the world and being such a good steward!
Thanks! and you hit the nail on the head describing the end. Very unfortunate how it happened and has been a source of much study by many.
What a find! I know the new owner and believe this classic could not have found a better home. It will be cherished and cared for.
Most true, this car has the perfect home, caretaker and mechanic around.
Packard made awesome cars. My uncle was an auto, and aircraft mechanic in 40', and '50's. Hd felt that Packards were comparable in many ways to Cadillacs...idk about that first hand but i do believe they were really good cars. Too bad the company was apparently mismanaged. This car is a testament to the quality of engineering. Vision of designers, and the uniqueness of many features. Love the car. Not many cars that i recall that featured awesome tri color schemes...several years ago we were at the Packard grounds for a granddaughters wedding. There were a number of beautiful packards from different decades as well as the awesome Packard record setting speedboat on display.
James, I have studied the Packard Proving Grounds history, now event center! That must have been just a spectacular day in such a unique setting! I will visit one day. On the bucket list for sure. Congratulations!
When Packards were built, Cadillac was second best domestic make.
Hi James,
I don’t really know that Packard was mismanaged. I thought the real reason for their demise was that they had very limited resources compared to “The Big 3” (GM, Ford, Chrysler). Packard wasn’t the only car company to die in the 1950’s. Kaiser, Hudson, and others also went defunct. Nash had to merge with Rambler to survive. Studebaker barely survived the ‘50’s and limped into the early ‘60’s.
It was just tough for the smaller companies to compete against Detroit’s Big 3 with their big bucks advertising budgets.
@@OldRustySteele It wasn't so much mismanagement as it was a bad business deal.
Packard was doing OK, but the management wanted to have a car for the middle class. Part of that was accomplished with the Clipper line, but they had their eye on Studebaker. Up until Packard merged with Studebaker, they had money and no debt. Studebaker was drowning in debt. After the merger, too many Studebaker front office people made their way into Packard's front office. They dragged Packard down with them.
One correction, though. Rambler was a model of Nash, not a car company at that time. Nash merged with Hudson to form American Motors, which lasted well into the end years of the 20th century - until they were bought by Chrysler.
@@jimgarofalo5479 Thanks for the info, Jim. I didn’t remember that Rambler was a Nash model. I remembered my old man talking about Nashes and Ramblers as if they were separate companies!
What a great piece of contemporary history!
Thank you! A living piece of history and art, still telling a story and telling it well. More to come on this example.
The details on this car are amazing, the exterior side marker lights for example! The Ultramatic push button transmission to right of the wheel was unique. The rear tail lights and exhaust design is beautifully done. Sadly though Packard could not compete with Cadillac and this was the final year.
Correct you are, Cliff. Sad ending to a beautiful story.
They could compete.. they just took too long to introduce a v8….
And they merged with Hudson… which hurt them….. then they merged with studebaker…. Which killed them …… sad because studie and packard were two of the oldest names in automobiles…
Packard never merged with Hudson!
@@woodruffokjulee5615 packard was part of the 1954 American motors merger
Involving Hudson and Nash that marked the beginning of the end…..
Hudson, Stude, Nash and Packard were all intended to be part of American motors….
@@matthewjames4334 Yes, originally that was the plan but after Nash's George Mason died in October 1954, the four way merger was dead in the water. New Nash (AMC) President decided to go it alone without Packard and Studebaker. The earlier posting that Packard merged with Hudson then Studebaker is flat out wrong.
The '56 Patricians fitted with the push button Twin Ultramatic Drive are also equipped with power door locks. The button to control the locks is under the instrument panel on the left side next to the button to control the Torsion Level suspension. Packard was the first to offer power door locks. Another industry first introduced by Packard with the '56 models is the Twin Traction limited slip differential.
@packard5687 Never considered such. That will be another great find. I suspect they are vacuum operated? There is a large vessel in the left front fender just ahead of the antenna motor. Seemed somewhat large for just the wiper motor. Might be storage for locks?
Yes - vacuum operated.
The vacuum storage tank on the left front fender is for the power brakes. There is a vacuum pump on the bottom of the oil pump to assist the vacuum wiper motor. The outless was located on the right side of the engine block. This pump caused problems over time in that the base plate was made out of potmetal and would distort allowing air to enter the oil pump causing a loss of oil pressure to the top of the motor. The power door locks were operated by an electric solenoid at each door latch, not vacuum operated. @@classicperformance
The last living Packard dealer owner was a man by the name of Shelby Wendell Hawkins. He said the Houston market where he sold his cars was doing great but Packard dealers weren't aggressive enough when it came to promoting the cars. He went on to say the dealers were owned by wealthy old men who were set in their ways and the turnover rate was low since the cars were kept for years by the buyer. One of the things he mentioned was during its last days the cars would sit unsold on lots so long that the valves would be stuck. He was probably the youngest dealer in the area and he only sold them for about two to three years and then the company was gone.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing this information.
Absolutely stunning! I love the showroom-new condition and the station-seeking radio. It's a shame it is not equipped with power windows; maybe the original owner didn't want the option. I love the side lights that go on when you open the front doors and the fact that rear seat passengers had their heat zoned by the driver! This car seemed ahead of its time for 1956! If you ever sell it, it will probably fetch near 100 grand. Thanks for posting.
Thanks for the interest! Back then, many folks were a bit scared of power windows and seats which could be optioned. As well, I believe a heated front driver seat was available. Honestly, we are glad it does not have those options. Most likely would be failure points after almost 70-years.
What a beautiful car Packard was a fine automobile 😊
It sure was. We have had quite a few over the years, and still today, drive and run better than most classics of the same era 70-80 years later.
The nicest looking dashboard since the Cord 810s. Awesome car, the penultimate Packard
We think so too. Going to work on a POV driving video on a short trip, so more dash views to come.
The Cord HAD to be the inspiration for the amazing dashboard. Ditto for the electric shift. However, Cord had the feature for a standard tranny, which (surprisingly) Packard didn't offer.
This car was the inspiration for the Soviet GAZ-13 Chaika. The two look quite similar, although the GAZ-13 was a longer, limo-like car, What an amazing specimen you have there!
Thanks for the info! I did know know that and will take a look! Appreciate your interest! Thank you.
@@classicperformance Thanks for the video!:)
Thanks for the good catch. I knew there was a Soviet knock-off, but didn't remember what it was. (I saw one at Red Square in Moscow 15 years ago.) And the Soviet Lada was a knock-off of a Fiat. Did they ever do any original design?
@@williamdonahue6617 The original Lada was not just a knock-off. It was fully based on the FIAT 124 (albeit modified for the Russian market), since FIAT had set up the production facility in Togliatti as part of a deal with the USSR govt. Yes, there were original designs, most notably the ZIL limo series and the (still produced) Lada Niva.
Along,with the chaika which translates to seagull,the top the line zil limousine had the same 1956 style bodywork.maurice kelly wrote a good book on Russian limousines called Russian limousines 1936/2003.
Solex and Herculite are trademarks of PPG (Pittsburgh Plate Glass) Solex is the tinting and Herculie is a high strength tempered glass line. Cool video!
Hey, thanks Vince for clearing that up!! Interesting. I think the side glass is not PPG. Don't see the logo as front and rear do.
A Masterpiece of legendary craftsmanship. R.R.
and the company boasted they employed craftsman too, which they did! upwards of 40,000 workers at its peak.
SIDENOTE: your garage looks fantastic!!! I love how it looks. The perfect home for such a marvelous piece of machinery!
That Packard is absolutely amazing!!! I never realized how much similar a Packard dash is to that of an Austin Healy, in its design looks. That dash practically sells the car on its own!
Thanks so much! We've enjoyed this car tremendously!! Love the Healeys too. Have had a couple over the years. BJ7 & BJ8.
Just Beautiful ❤before i was hatch(born) mom drove a 1938 Packard 120 series 4dr. 🥰
Frank, thanks for sharing. We too have a soft spot for the Packard 120. Check out our previous uploads to see our 120! Here's a link to get you started.
ruclips.net/video/4H7QG5maFBc/видео.html
What a stunner! So much thought clearly went into its design. Packard deserved to survive. So tragic they couldn't.
It really was a shame. This car even today after all these years, is still perfection in the way it has held up, how it looks, drives, runs and rides. We'll have a driving video coming out very soon so stay tuned! Thanks for your interest, Hugh. CP
Thank you for posting this video. I love everything about the interior of this vehicle! The quality and attention to detail stand out, even after all these years.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for your interest, James!
Gorgeous and very well built machine! Love this Packard.
Thanks, John!! She's solid as a rock!!
I love the Packard and this one is magnificent.
Appreciate your compliment on the car. The vehicle brings joy to many, as you can tell.
--------------------ASTONISHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
------THANKS........!!!!
Beautiful car... a few years ago I was lucky enough to ride in a very old 1928 Packard.
Wow, a 1928!!! Thanks for sharing!!!
Cool,did it have a good about 10 ft. Long?I seen one on display that was completely covered in copper pennies.magnifacent automobiles.
Very cool! My boss has one with even lower miles - a pink and white '56 Executive with only 1861 miles (with an oil change sticker from 1973 showing 1715). I had the pleasure of driving a '56 Patrician once and the torsion bar suspension made it ride soooo nice...
Wow!!! Is the Excutive featured anywhere so that we can have a look?
Ultra-low mileage cars are head-scratchers to me. Why would someone spend a fortune on a new car and then not drive it?
William, it happens and quite often. The original owner had an older Packard which he kept and continued to drive while this '56 was reserved for special occasions only. Then, it was put away in storage. You might recall the last Cadillac convertable produced in '76? People snapped them up and put them away, same thing happened with the limited edition 1978 Corvette Indy pace car editions, Grand National Buicks in 1987, and many others that still exist with no miles on them.
@@classicperformanceThanks for the info. I didn't know, but I"m glad it happens. So nice to see near-mint condition classics.
Thank you for your support.
Thanks for the great story!!! Upstate, NY and surrounding areas are tough on cars. Those "positive earth" electrical systems famous on older British cars gave a lot of inspecting owners much unfortunate trouble. And yes, correct, that tape player chassis would not be able to come in contact with any metal structure of the car or would ignite something!
Amazing classic vehicle. Thank you for sharing this video.. classy looking vehicle. God bless 🙏
Thank You! Stay tuned to the channel, we have more coming including a demonstration and explanation of the leveling system. May you be blessed too. 🙌
Absolutely stunning vehicle!! Thank you for this video!
Our pleasure! Glad you enjoyed it, Glenn.
This is gorgeous car . Too bad they don’t make them like this anymore and the styling is superb.
We agree! Thanks for watching.
Very beautiful car! Want one!
William, thank you. Take a look around, there are nice cared for examples out there for reasonable proces especially considering where the prices of classics have gone lately.
Absolutely stunning car. I have always been a Packard fan. We visited the Packard museum in Ohio this past May and I have been wanting one ever since!
Thanks, Charles. The are some exceptional values out there on Packards depending on what model you look at. They are in reach unlike vintage Ferraris and Porsches and the like. --and they ride a lot better too.
I've always thought Packard and Studebaker were ahead of their time and were often victims of their own engineering success as a result.
We'd have to agree with you! Appreciate your interest and insight. CP
Such a beautiful car with style and history. Thank you for the video.
Thanks for your nice comment. The Patrician was a true style icon of the time.
Beautiful ultra low mileage original. Thanks for posting.
Thanks for watching!!
Always liked all Packards , My uncle drove them in the 1950 ' s & as a kid I thought they were special ! Still like seeing them at Classic Car Shows here in the Mpls , MN. Area ! ! !
Yes, I recall always seeing them at shows too years ago. I don't recall ever having a family member or neighbor with one. Of course I grew up in the working class area of town which was not Cadillac or Packard parts of town.
when i was 18,my dad had one of these.loved that car.his was.yellow with black top.
Larry, I bet that combo was stunning!
I have a patrician still not sure if it’s a 55 or 56…..
it’s mostly original but it has had a very bad respiratory done since I’ve been working on it. I’ve found jb weld, duct tape electrical tape etc all in places they shouldn’t be…. However my car is an award winner it one second place at a packard show in 82 and was at the centennial auto show in Houston in 86 I was amazed after sitting for around 20 years or so that everything still worked… it sat with the left side rocker arm removed and pushrods out for god knows how long ….I put it back together with 3 nos pushrods filled it with marvel oil and diesel and started baring it over by hand then tried the starter…. Eventually pumped the lifters back up cleaned the points checked the timing and firing order and it fired right up…..
after that almost everything came to life…. Radio, head lights, tail light, courtesy, and clearance lights… horn
Still needs the levelride suspension fixed… needs a water pump and I list of other things…. But I love my Patrician…….. don’t love trying to take the gauges out, but I love the car
Thanks for sharing the story about your car! Best of luck! and, you can easily tell the '55 from the '56, as the '56 has the eyebrows over the headlights. CP
Thank you for sharing this Special car with us.
Most welcome, Chris. We'll do more with it soon, so stay tuned.
Beautiful! I have a '55 Clipper, I'm the second owner, and a '58 Studebaker Silver Hawk, also second owner.
Great cars, Matt!! Let's keep them on the road and share with others. They will always need caretakers even after we are gone.
I remember back in the late 80's when I was in highschool auto mechanics class one of our instructors Mr. Renfro was always talkng about Packards. Hell most of us kids had never even seen one but He sure loved them.
'ol Mr Renfro. Our auto shop teacher in that period was Mr. Medcalf. He had a cool black '68 short bed chevy stepside lowered with wide period turbine wheels and Belted TA RWL 60 series tires, might have even been 50's. The shop class cut the roof and made T-tops for it, installed bucket seats and a console among other things. He was a Chevy guy. Everyone thought that truck was the coolest thing ever including me. Thanks for your interest and reference to the old auto shop teachers. My guess today if they still have auto shop, it's all import tuner stuff and software. ??
@@classicperformance Yeah I think in about 1992 they no longer offered Auto Mechanics in school here.
@@ericbivins8014 Sorry to hear that. I figured as much.
My kind great uncle WW1 veteran lived on the other side of the country from my family, had been an executive in a big industrial company and was pretty well off, certainly compared to my poor young parents. He had a pristine older, late 30’s Packard and a new 56 Patrician that was a salmon and white two-tone. Those were just his daily use cars, what he and my aunt drove around. It had air conditioning with these clear plastic vent things that came up from the rear window deck. I seem to remember that the side and back glass, and over the top of the windshield was very lightly colored sort of light blue green. I could be mistaken about that. But the way the windows and bodywork were integrated in the design is something that affected my sensibilities permanently. Nobody had a/c then and, together with the push button drive, the thing was sort of a mystical presence in our infrequent visits. It was a beautiful thing, sort of magic for a kid. The older late ‘30s car was classically stately in a way that didn’t seem to want the world to change and, in a different way, the 56 was classic too, but in a reluctantly, still only the best, but ok here is the modern-world way. A totally different world than the one I lived in. One summer, probably 1957, we were visiting and he opened up the giant trunk to reveal a brand new red schwinn tornado bike. I remember his tall-waisted pants with a skinny belt, rumpled pressed shirt and tie, jacket and fedora - on a hot summer day and he was retired! - while he took the bike out of the trunk (it was carpeted with a cream colored wool-looking carpet) and put it on the kick stand behind the car in the driveway. It was too much to have imagined even thinking of asking for such a thing at the time. Over the next week all I did was figure out how to ride a bike dawn to dusk on the long, looping road to his house. He died in, I think, 1960 or 1961. He quit buying cars when they quit making big Packards, 56 was it for him, so my aunt still had those two pristine examples until she passed many years later. These memories are imprinted with the Packard car sensibilities that I didn’t even really have any explicit sense or awareness of. It’s not nostalgia, more of an incredibly intricate collection of things that got remembered, out of all the things that got forgotten, partially because of the unusual setting that now is kind of “pegged” to those Packard-provided background shapes, sounds and smells. The car you show here is a real gem and time capsule.
Appreciate you sharing such a great story and you are absolutely correct about the location of the AC ducts on the '56 Patrician. Under hood was the compressor, which looked like an old 2-cyl shop air compressor in a "V" piston configuration. The refrigerant lines routed back to the trunk where the evap coil, and air box was located. The vents blew forward from the package shelf in front of the back glass. The refrigerant was R-12. Packard was the first automaker to provide conditioned are inside the car in the 1940s.
What a beauty!
Thanks!!! Appreciated
What a beautiful machine 🤩🤩🤩🤩
We thank you! Appreciate your interest!
The transmission selector pod was an option
in 1956 on the Patrician and Executive,
with the traditional column shift as standard.
Thank you, Jerry! Appreciate the infor.ation.
There were no Packards in my lower-middle class neighborhood (north St Louis) growing up in the late ‘50’s, and I didn’t see many elsewhere around the city. When I went to college in 1972, one of the old semi-retired professors in my engineering department had a ‘55 Packard Clipper. My school was in a relatively small town, so he was easy to spot puttering around town.
He died a few years later and I always wondered what happened to that car. It would have been a good one to restore since they rarely salted the roads in that town.
Thanks for sharing the story. Packards were rarely ever seen in my town either. I suspect they were pretty salt tolerant too as robust as the bodies were and the undercoating of the day.
That is just a gorgeous car! If I could afford it, I would buy it in a heartbeat! Fabulous video, too! Thank you very much!
Our pleasure! Stay tuned, more content to come on this beauty. Weather dependent, we'll be shooting a driving video on a short trip this week.
NOW THAT IS A REAL CAR !
Thanks, Ray. Haven't found any plastic parts or fake chrome on it yet!
I've seen a lot of classic cars all my life, and this is definitely in the top three time capsules! And I'm pretty sure that this makes the "55 or "56 Packard the first car to have entry / curb lights... 👏
Marko, thanks for the compliment. Interesting point you made about the side curb courtesy lights. We'll have to look into that. Take a look at our other three videos on this car.
That is an absolutely KILLER car! It's a real shame that Packard disappeared, and far inferior brands took over the luxury market.
Thank you. And indeed, it is killer!!! Completely smooth and quiet driver too and manages modern highway speeds with ease. Thanks!
I love that hood ornament that doubles as a pedestrian harpoon
I once hurt myself running into the pointed top trim of the rear light on a Chrysler Saratoga.
What a beautiful car! Made to last!
We agree! and made to last has been proven over time with this example, being everything works including items you would expect to break over a reasonable period of time. -leveling system which includes sensors and a timed delay, self seeking radio, power antenna, vacuum system and wiper motor, to think of the immediate ones.
These 1956 Packards were the last ones made in Detroit, MI. 1957/58 production was completed in South Bend at the Studebaker facility.
Yes, and thank you for adding in this information and your interest. '56 was it for the last of the real Packards, sadly.
Did the radio actually work when you got the car, or did you have it worked on?
If the radio was never touched, it's a real miracle after all the years.
Thanks. loved the video!
Thanks for your interest @beeenn649 yes, the radio works perfectly as does the station seek and power antenna. Honestly, everything works on the car just as new. You might want to check out our other videos in the series. Quite an interesting find. A battery, fuel pump rebuild and 4 wheel cyls and flex lines was about all it took to get her back going after almost 50 years.
Hah! I am in Spokane on business. The Mobil sticker from 1978 at 3:56 says 508 West Third. I am in a hotel less than a half mile from that right now. These days there is a bank there....
Fantastic!! Thanks for sharing. We heard the gas station is no longer. Appreciate you!!!
They don't make 'em like they used to... beautiful car - 👍👍
Absolutly correct. It wasn't all about mass production, planned obsolescence, and company profits. It was about craftsman, workmanship and quality. Automotove manufacturing plants vs. today, where they are referred to as assembly plants.
Neighbor Wally drove a black on white '55 Packard from '65 thru '70.
He was older than ourselves, but he and his pals would take us "yungun's" (10, 11, 12), out to the lakes here in B.C., Canada.
Logging roads were especially fun while that ol' 4dr kept making its way up, down and all around switchbacks and countryside during those fun summers.
Wally went off to college and we grew to appreciate what a good car was all about.
Muscle cars became the next fad.
A near new, forest green, 289 Cougar became my daily driver for most of the next decade.
Wally came back from college with a '65 VW and a Honda 50 motorcycle (he was economically ahead of the times).
The rest?
Various power combos well into the '80's until family and good sense prevailed
History, long gone ...
Thanks for sharing the story, Daniel. I could see that car on the switchback logging roads sucking up every bump! 289 Cougar, cool!!! Loved the hide-away headlights and slick sequential tailights.
Have a 1955 clipper all original with 3300 miles. It was a family Sunday car in Detroit! Great video
Cameron, wow, 3,300 miles. Sounds like a great Clipper. Thanks for sharing and your interest!!!
If they only built new cars today like they use to. I would add Seat Belts to the Packard. Had a cousin who worked making Packard Cars. Early 1960's he went to Full time farming until he died. Great to see this car. I bought a 1957 Nash & totally restored it in the 1980's.
Thanks for the story and the info!!! Safety is important. As used to we are in wearing seat belts, it is odd not to have them.
Theres a guy who drives his early 50s Packard 400 past my work on nice days, beautiful car, but I keep trying to flag him down so I can ask him for first right of refusal when he decides to sell it. Such great cars!
Nice!!! Keep after that 400!!! We love that story!!!
In the mid-80’s, I bought a 1952 Chrysler New Yorker from the former head barber at Leavenworth Fed Prison.
It had less than 2k miles on it, because he just used it locally.
This makes me wish I had held on to that car (among many others lol) 🥺
Wow!!! These stories are amazing and nice to hear.
Sweet Packard. I love it!
thanks!! We love it too! more to come on it.
Beautiful car! I noticed the "Dagmars" on the fron bumper-did Cadillac take that from Packard? I believe the brown substance on the door s was "cosmolene"-an anti-rust compound used in the 1940s-50s.I'd love a car like this today!
I would think the opposite, that Packard took the "Dagmars" from GM. Cadillac with the Eldorado had them long before the '55-'56 Packards did. --as you know, they were nicknamed "Dagmars" after a well-endowed female television personality Virginia Ruth "Jennie" Lewis, known professionally as Dagmar, was an American actress, model, and television personality. In the 1950s she became one of the first major female stars of television, receiving much press coverage... and there is no wonder why.
Fabulous.
Thank you!!
My father owned a 1955 Packard 400 which he bought used in 1958. I learned to drive on it. Another little feature I haven't seen mentioned was that it had a foot switch to the left of the brake pedal which caused the radio to seek the next available station...like the seek bar on the radio.
Peter, Thank you for your interest and this interesting bit of information. We will have to look at the Patrician a bit more and see if the signal seek foot button is there. The seek function does work nicely from the in-dash radio controls.
Thanks for sharing!❤
Thanks for watching!
A friend of mine told me one thing about the ride levelling. It was on all the time, so any prankster could bounce on the bumper when parked and watch the sensors go nuts trying to keep up.
This one seems to have about a 7 second delay so as not to keep activating while driving over curious terrain. Jay Leno does a demonstration on his and it also has a delayed action. Stay tuned, we'll do a demonstration video. It also has an off switch under the dash.
That's why they all had a toggle switch, to shut it off. That didn't help with all the scratches, from kids standing on the bumper.
What a beauty! Greetings!
Thanks for visiting! Appreciate your support.
My experience with cars of this era is that the Solex tinted glass was usually only on cars with the air conditioning option.
I had wondered the same. Most often in the 60's it was mandatory with AC as in the GM Soft Ray glass.
Thank you, nice overviews….of Patrician…..Interestingly,reminds me of my 1965 Car purchase: 1956;FORD 4 Door/Thunderbird Engine, Dual Exha,etc /auto: FORD White (?) ext.// BABY Blue FABRIC INTERIOR,, *cream puff,LOW mileage: I did not get pictures before totalled in Freak Accident in few weeks( just started planning build up & Keeper)…
@@opera93 Ouch! sorry to hear that.
The OHV V8 was late to the party, but an excellent piece. The bore-center spacing is a full 5 inches, unmatched until the 1968 Cadillacs, which adopted the same dimension.
I have always understood the Ultramatic transmission to have two speeds, not three, with strengthening for 1956 after poor reliability in 1955.
I was not aware a Patrician could be had with manual windows.
Correct. It is often said Packard was so committed to developing its own automatic transmission, and did, it delayed the OHV V8. But so true, great motor, but just too late to the party. Thanks for the information!
Beautiful old machine! Classy, too! Cheers!😁🤟👍🛠️
Thanks, Billy! The car has been a lot of fun! More to come soon. Appreciate your interest!
The Soviet Chaika was a "Me, too" to this car. They made theirs look like a cross between a Packard and a Buick.
Wow, what a beauty! You mention not being sure of proper use of the transmission. Just wonder if the owner's manual you have addresses the subject. Packard had such a great record of automotive engineering firsts, not to mention their WWII production of the Rolls-Merlin 1650 V12 aircraft engine. Their disappearance in the post-war era remains a real tragedy.
True! These fine automobiles are still around and operating as designed today due to such high quality components and build quality.
Thanks for your response....I LOVED that Packard 400...was sorry when my father sold it although I had just left home by then...at the age of 18. I had discovered the floor switch but didn't know where the cable went...discovered that by lying underneath the dash with a flashlight and found the socket for the cable on the back of the radio....worked as soon as I plugged it in....I thought that feature was very 'cool'. When my father sold the Packard (boo hoo), he bought a '62 Buick Wildcat Coupe which I occasionally borrowed and I liked it but it certainly wasn't the Packard! Pm
That wildcat Coupe could be a pretty sporty car if it had buckets, center console with shifter and tack. They were pretty quick too with the 425 cid!
My Uncle who owned and restored antique cars during the 60’s bought a Caribbean. It was apparently all original but needed some cleaning and maintenance . I never knew what he ended up doing with it. It was parked in Grandma’s garage
Wow, a Caribbean. That's one that is on our list.
Maybe if you read the owner's manual you'll discover what the H and D buttons do. Beautiful vehicle !
Ya know, Wesley, That is an excellent idea. Duh! 😊. Exactly what I will do! You know how us guys are, or at least me. That's a last resort! Appreciate your interest, comment and the view!!
I was thinking the same thing. I'd read the owners manual just for the novelty of it. Bet it's a hoot to read.
@neils5539 I'll have a look and report back.
Beautiful!
Thank you! Cheers!