(first posted 2/15/2015) If the lowly Henney Junior Packard Professional car was too stubby for your taste, Henney also built something a bit more extravagant. But he didn’t find any takers except for the prototype.
1954 Packard Super Station Wagon – Yes, I Do Want One
– Posted on February 12, 2021
There’s a lot of keen car stuff at that site.
That is gorgeous. That split side rear window is a great way to break the oversized length of the car. Just been added to my looooong list of favourite cars. Wow.
And it has air conditioning too.Wow!
I’m impressed by the recessed beverage cabinet. “Completely fitted,” no less. I presume in ’54 this didn’t mean Red Bull, Dasani, and Starbucks.
Not to make you feel bad but the one and only ’54 Packard Henney Super Station Wagon met an unfortunate fate, it was found vandalized and burned in Port Chester, New York in 1963. This has been documented by the Packard Club for a long time.
But, take a close look at the way it was built: essentially its their long-wheelbase Senior Packard-based ambulance/hearse on the 156″ wb with the third window added and seats replacing the gurney/table equipment. Would love to see someone recreate this car as there are a number of unrestored ’54 Henney hearses still available.
Hello from Germany I do owne a 1954 Packard Ambulance straight with no rust matching numbers super condition motor and transm strong.for sale
Phone +49 162 71 999 71 Torsten
carshine4you@web.de
I think the part of being “the biggest maker of hearses” might have been less than ideal advertising. 21 foot long station wagon….CCCCOOOOOOOOLLLLLL!!!
Feldmann’s firm soon not doing so well (Jan. 1955):
Thanks; interesting.
Feldmann bought it in 1946, and closed less than ten years later. Not a good investment, I assume.
Henney had been under an exclusivity agreement with Packard since 1937s. At that time Packard had announced that they would stop supplying its commercial chassis to any builder that also built on a GM (or anyone else’s ) chassis. Henney was the only one that agreed to those terms and stopped building a cheaper line of Olds-based cars they offered along with the Packards.
The biggest factor in Henney’s demise was the lack of a commercial chassis for the new ’55 Packard. The Packard chassis was the one thing that differentiated Henney from the other builders and I’m assuming Feldmann felt they couldn’t compete with the likes of Superior, S&S and Miller-Meteor.
You’d think they’d have been able to build more than just one. I mean, how hard can it be to convert a hearse to a station wagon? It’s just more windows and seats where the coffin would normally go.
I would guess it’s just a victim of very bad timing. This was when Packard was going through what can only be described as the worst time in its history, what with the disastrous (for Packard) Studebaker merger just around the corner.
Part two of article (company history):
It doesn’t look so bad by 50s standards. Unfortunately, the forward mounted roof rack looks awkward.
That’s where serious roof racks belong, for weight distribution. The ones on the back may look better, but it’s the worst place to add more weight to a fully loaded wagon.
If you load it right, you can get that perfect 50/50 weight distribution for maximum cornering ability 😛
I think it’s located there for convenience. You can access the roofrack by standing on the door sills with the doors open. If it was mounted further back, it would probably be hard for many people to reach it to put items in/out and tie them down.
The Ford Excursion of the ’50s.
Awesome, just awesome. Thanks for all you do Paul. This site is cathartic after a crazy day in the real world! I would so rock that wagon on our trip to the Northwest this summer.
Leg room for the 2nd and 3rd row of this cool looking wagon looks a bit tight.
Brooklin, the English model maker of fine white metal vehicle reproductions has produced a 1/43 scale release of this car. Also the shortie.
I’ve been to Freeport many times when I owned BMW motorcycles and my dealer was there (C & D BMW). However they closed in the early ’90s and this was decades after Henney closed.
If anyone admires the Henney Packard wagon enough to want to learn more, research the Henney Renault electric car. Maybe it was called “Kilowatt” or something but it was simply a Dauphine with the engine removed and a motor plus batteries installed. The Packard wagon looked much better but Henney would build anything and the Renault/Volt may have been the last dying testament to this fine company.
Wow! That’s a big family truckster!
Inch-think turquoise wool chenille? Not even the Broughamiest of Broughams had anything that extravagent. Except maybe the Fleetwood Talisman.
And combined with a red exterior and upholstery, no less. I’m having trouble imagining the combination.
Maybe the same guy ordered that who factory-ordered the 1956 New Yorker 2-door hardtop I saw at the 1980 WPC Club national meet. It had the black/red/white exterior paint combination that was fairly common that year, with a turquoise and white interior. I say “factory-ordered” because I cannot believe that combination could have originated any other way.
Now that’s more like it. In fact this is what the regular ’51-54 Packard should have been. Imagine chopping off the fourth section of the greenhouse and rounding down the third section. A grand six-window sedan with all proportions correct.
Just the thing for you and 11 of your closest friends! Very cool indeed.
Never heard of this before, so wow! It is interesting that the super-high-end station wagon has never taken off. I would happily drive this. “Hey, you kids, stay the hell out of that bar!
I think that when big luxury wagons were available from the ’50s through the ’70s that people thought a proper luxury car was a sedan. The fact that Cadillac and Lincoln were deemed too high-end to even offer a wagon probably helped cement that idea in place. Things did start to firm up in the early ’70s with Buick, Olds, Chrysler and Mercury all at least fielding high end offerings, but they mostly struggled to find volume sales.
If you regard the big SUV as a wagon, luxury wagons have become the luxury car of choice since the death of the (truly) big sedan.
This Henney Packard was 40 years ahead of its time.
And, I’m sure the kids would never sniff the contents of the decanter.
What’s particularly interesting is that high-end wagons never took off in those days despite the majority of wagon buyers (including Ford, Chevy and Plymouth) being upper income. It wasn’t until the late ’50s/early ’60s as the boomer kids grew older and greater in number that wagons went “downmarket” as the symbol of working/middle class suburbia.
I wouldn`t exactly call the big Mercury Colony Parks, Pontiac Bonneville,Olds Vista Cruisers or Chrysler New Yorker station wagons “down market”. These were fairly high end models.
Those wagons certainly weren’t downmarket. I used the term to describe how the wagon market in general evolved during the ’50s and ’60s.
Prior to the Baby Boom wagons were almost always purchased by either fleets or the very wealthy. They were the “mom’s car” of choice from Greenwich to Grosse Pointe. As incomes and especially as the number of Boomer-era kids grew, wagons had become a necessity for many working and middle class families.
There’s a reason the Brits use the term “estate car” to describe even the smallest and most inexpensive wagon.
Now I want one of these, except mounted on the chassis of my Cummins. I don’t know where I’d find load range E tires with wide whitewalls though.
The tires are no sweat , Diamond Back Tires in NC made me a set of E rated Radial LT tires with 4″ white walls for my old ’49 Chevy pickup , they looked great and wore like iron .
This Wagon is great ! .
Henny made fine Funeral Coaches , I remember two ’54s (I think) brought up from Mexico in the late 1970’s , they junkyard couldn’t sell them for $800 the pair , one was cherry , the other had a broken taillight lens and poor upholstery…
-Nate
Monstrous. Or monstrosity. Not sure which is more applicable.
Does remind one a bit of the very similar Cadillacs that were built at about the same time.
Put me down for I want one, too. Really!. Didn’t say I could afford one, though. Hard to imagine people seeing that and not saying “we’ve got to get one.” That baby is nice!
My first thought was ‘ holy mother of God ! that sucker is _TOO_LONG_ ! ‘ ~
Then I thought : it sure is beautiful .
-Nate
Hello from Germany. I do owne a 1954 Packard Station Wagon 8 Zyl Hemi at 1class condition for sale. They told me the car was a Texas Ambulance If you intrestet please mail me carshine4you@web.de and make a offer. Sorry for my english. Thanks Torsten carshine4you@web.de
In response to Mark P’s comment as to Henney having to close because of the V8 Packard’s new Torsion Level suspension, is not accurate. The real reasons are a lot more complicated, and here is a short list:
1. Henney was in deep financial straits, and was basically broke. They were not even able to make payroll to complete the 1954 Packard limousines under contract for Packard. Packard ended up advancing money just to get the cars made, as they had sales orders from Packard dealers for both the limo and LWB sedans.
2. Based on #1 above, The 1955 Packards had major external body & trim changes, including a new wrap-around windshield. Henney had no money to re-tool their dies.
3. Packard continued to offer the regular suspension on the base Clipper models, so Henney could have continued using the standard coil & leaf suspension. However due to the financial condition at Henney, Packard was not prepared to continue to build the 156″ wheelbase chassis.
4. By early 1954, Packard’s senior corporate execs had basically decided to stop using Henney, and cut them off once their 1954 contractual obligations were completed.
As stuck as I am on small cars, from mini to simply “compact”, this tank is singing its song to me very clearly. Okay: first, it’s a PACKARD, which neither I nor any known of my family has ever owned. For the most part my Packard obsession stops at the separate-fender 1941 cars, partly because I’m a ’41 model myself and partly because Darrin’s ’41s were to my eyes the pinnacle of his Packard work. And if I DID have one of these I would use it for one thing only: my twice-yearly (plague years excepted) treks to some wooded meadow to camp out and eat too much and drink much beer with a gang of my fellows … and I don’t have any parking problems in meadows! They would of course need to be nice DRY ones – I wd not want to have to pull this out of mud!
Not that I’ll ever get the chance, really, but dreaming is free!
There was one of these lwb hearses rust free and with a parts sedan in Oklahoma for sale for a couple of years. I thought, I dreamed, I watched the price drift down. It was obvious the hobbyist owner really wanted all that space opened up in his shop building. Finally decided I just had to do it. So looked for it and it was gone. It was my one chance and I blew it.
Don’t think anyone has mentioned that the original design art for these long wheelbase Henney products was by noted stylist Richard Arbib. He was a bit of a “wild child” with his ideas. But then, great designers often are!