GOD, how I love this. Who says there’s no good news anymore?
1930s Luxury Vehicle Going Into Production Again?
Packard Motors, an American luxury automobile company that first produced automobiles in 1899, is on the verge of manufacturing vehicles in Ohio.One of the “Three Ps” – alongside Peerless Motor Company and Pierce-Arrow – the Packard Motor Car Company gained a reputation for building high-quality luxury automobiles pre-WWII.
“Owning a Packard was considered prestigious, and surviving examples are found in museums, car shows, and automobile collections,” Wikipedia writes.
“Packard vehicles featured innovations, including the modern steering wheel, air-conditioning in a passenger car, and one of the first production 12-cylinder engines, adapted from developing the Liberty L-12 engine used during World War I to power warplanes,” it added.
“The handmade vehicles were exported in record numbers to Europe and competed successfully with Rolls Royce and Mercedes Benz,” Cleveland.com states.
“After surviving two world wars and the swings of the auto market, the last true Packard rolled off the assembly line on June 25, 1956. The company closed in 1958 after a failed strategic takeover of Studebaker Corporation,” Packard Motors writes.
Now, a 1934-style convertible could bring the company back to life.
If I could just live long enough to see one of these beautiful beasts rolling down the highway, I could die a happy man. Further details here, including several pics. This is pretty danged cool too:
Andrews collaborated with his friend, Steve Constantino, on the prospect of building new versions of 1930s Packards.
“They found a company in Nebraska that makes all the parts for those particular vehicles. Andrews researched and now owns the legal rights to the Packard brands, patents and trademarks, which was a major step in moving forward,” Cleveland.com writes.
Lastly but by no means leastly:
Packard Motors gets ready to build its new ‘old’ cars to order https://t.co/1d4jtv6VJA pic.twitter.com/mMsJaHO6Ts
— Nordonia Hills News (@NHillsNews)
Of course the new Packard will be far, far out of my pitiful price range, but who cares? Such a vision of loveliness is its own reward, even when the beauty is beheld from afar.
Creepy AF update! And within mere minutes of posting the above, what should arrive in my email inbox but an ad from eBay headlined thusly: Under the hood: An ice-making Land Cruiser and Cadillac Woody, offering all kinds of car paraphernalia for sale, from the aforementioned 56 Cadillac View Master resto to chrome mags to race-driving gear to you name it. Why, if I didn’t know better I’d think I was being watched by somebody or something.
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“Why, if I didn’t know better I’d think I was being watched by somebody or something.”
LOL, you know, I know, and everyone else knows, “they” are watching us…
Regarding the Packard, pretty neat. I love most of the old cars, especially the pre WW2 cars. I’m guessing that one’s going to be for the billionaire class…
Very cool!
Now if someone would just start reproducing new 65-66 Ford and Chevy pickups, maybe even some 62 Ford Falcons and Rancheros.
Simple, reliable and hard to kill.
I love it, but it really shows what we’ve lost in beauty and grace.
Back in the 1980s, Gibbon Fiberglass of Gibbon, NE, built very nice 1934 Packard replicas. I don’t know that they sold many, but I’d bet those are the molds. Gibbon itself is now a hot rod builder and sold their hot rod body molds and tooling to a company out of SD, but they don’t list the Packard bodies.
Pretty cool that the guy actually acquired all of the trademarks. That’s the right way to do it.
Offer the bulletproof option, and they’ll fly off the line.
🙂
But will they survive an EMP like the old Models?
No better than the new ones I suspect, as the plan is for modern drive trains.