The Curbside motto is: “Every car has a story.” I only know parts of this car’s story, so you can use your imagination to fill in the rest. This ’54 Packard Clipper was recently pulled out of a garage in Whippany, NJ after sitting in there for decades.
It was last on the road in 1976, and . . .
. . . it has the oldest County College of Morris stickers I’ve ever seen!
I currently teach at CCM, and I was a student there in the mid-1980s.
It’s kind of odd to visualize this old Packard driving around campus and parking in our familiar parking spaces, but apparently it was.
Think about that–by the 1970s, this 1954 Packard Clipper had zero resale value as a used car. As “cheap wheels” it falls heavily between two stools: cheap to acquire, and potentially expensive to run and maintain. Were parts–and mechanics qualified to work on a Packard–hard to find in those days before collector interest and the internet? Also, this car burned premium gasoline and lots of it–a real handicap during the 1970s “Energy Crisis” period.
I’m trying to picture the mid-’70s community college student who drove to campus in this old fossil. I mean, what’s it feel like to drive back and forth to class in this tank, piloting that supremely smooth and silent Packard 327 straight eight, teamed with the unique characteristics of the Ultramatic transmission–holding that big steering wheel with chromium horn ring, and the Art Deco streamlined hood ornament leading the way–while everyone else is driving crappy, plasticy ’70s cars, like the Pinto and the Gremlin? Did he [I assume it’s a he, although there was a girl student at CCM who drove a dark red ’53 Chevy to campus, so who knows?] receive compliments or scorn for his peculiar automotive choice?
And who bought this car new? Nineteen fifty-four was a poor sales year for Packard. Offering a four-year-old body and a straight eight in the age of V-8s and jazzy New! New! NEW! was not going to appeal to most buyers. However, to me this 2-door sedan has a lot of appeal: The strong and whisper-quiet straight eight (free of bugs); the classical good looks of the body; the high quality of interior trim; the cushioned solidity of the Packard ride. Perhaps it was purchased new by a Packard loyalist who had a good relationship with the local dealer; someone who knew the name “Packard” still meant something.
According to the Standard Catalog of American Cars, this particular model, the Clipper Super 2-door Club Sedan is quite rare, with only 887 units produced. The unique Sportster (also a 2-door sedan, with “Hardtop Styling”) is only slightly less rare–1,336 of those were made. It seems strange that Sportsters would use the sedan rather than the hardtop body. (There was a 2-door hardtop in the Super series, romantically named the “Panama”.) Total 1954 production was 30,965 cars, down from nearly 90,000 the year before. Things ain’t lookin’ good for Packard!
The Clipper was towed to Kanter Restoration in Boonton and parked on the side with the parts cars. It has survived so long, but now it’s been removed from its home garage and is now out in the elements. It is now the futuristic year of 2021 A.D., and what happens from here is anyone’s guess.
It looks in fairly good condition someone should put it back on the road, Mid 70s my commuter was a 51 Humber ten 1200cc sidevalve four 4 speed reliable as the sun $100 is what I paid for it and drove it home then daily for 18 months, some of those old 50s junk heaps worth nothing were quite good cars.
Anyone know what the car next to it is?
This Packard looks smaller than our dearly departed ’56 Olds 88, but maybe that’s the restrained styling.
My great uncle and aunt kept it in an old chicken house and put 14,000 miles on it in 14 years with clear plastic seatcovers, so except for a rusty rear bumper from the exhaust, it was in great shape before another 14 years of sitting outside, commuting to the Pentagon and the other side of DC, and us 3 kids driving it to HS and after. By then, it had some dents (and a small crease from me), and my sister didn’t wax it like I did, so the paint was dull but still unrusted. It took months to find a new brake master cylinder, and the Olds dealer got a mechanic out of retirement to fix the transmission. Somehow it got back to my grandmother’s backyard in NC and sat until ’92, when Dad sold it for $50 to a teenager who saw it from the street.
That car’s been off the road about as long as I’ve been legal to drive. So that’s something. One really wants to know the story behind its resurrection.
Or at least the part of the resurrection that’s about pulling it out of the garage or barn or warehouse. I fear that there’s too much patina on the parts of the car you can see, and it’s obviously been in contact with the ground (flat tires), so the floors likely no longer exist. This one’s not going to roll again as a complete car. On the other hand, lots of good parts there for someone with a more restorable candidate.
When I was attending college here in Ontario in 1981 one of the daily commuters in the student lot was a silver 63 sting ray. They were rare even in their heyday, so to see one almost 20 years in being used as a student driver was quite the site. Ànd it was there rain,snow and shine every single day
In the late ’80s somebody at my local Community College was driving a 1960 Ford. I always enjoyed seeing it in the parking garage.
A few years later a ’64 Chevy sat for months in the lot at the Amtrak station. I don’t know for sure that it was a student’s car, but the odds were good.
To play the perspective game, this Packard on campus in 1976 would be comparable to seeing a ’99 model anything now. However, I am fully aware of the differences in durability, etc.
Like some of the others, I do wonder about the future of this Packard. Sadly, things don’t look promising.
Very good point of perspective Jason. I think that the styling differences between something from the 50s and cars of the 70s/80s are dramatic to the point where a car like this Packard looks much older to our eyes than it in fact was (in 1977).
It’s like the reactions my son got when he drove the ’76 Volvo to high school for 2 years several years ago. He reported that among those fellow students who even noticed cars (and frankly, that’s a minority of kids in our current American culture), many had a hard time even “believing” that the Volvo was an actual production vehicle…it just looked so entirely other-worldly relative to almost anything in their 2020 perspective on what a vehicle looked like.
Kids….
At that time the prewar Packards were highly valuable and had an active collector club and magazine. Parts and skills were traded and swapped by the club.
Postwar, especially those drab ’51 to ’54 models, were $75 cars. No better than a ’52 Chevy.
Considering the current condition of this one, I’d say it was an exception to the rule. It must have been stored for most of its early life. It was probably ‘like new’ in the ’70s, not needing much repair. Maybe the student inherited it from Grandpa, replaced the tires, and had fun.
I suppose a 1954 car was in an odd place in the mid-1970s.
Most examples of cars like this Packard were likely considered to be old beaters capable of giving a year or two of service before they fell apart. My guess is that such a car would have had a retail value of about $200 at the time.
On the other hand, examples in excellent shape would probably have been considered antiques, and priced maybe around $1,000. (I’m just guessing at the prices.)
It’s a safe bet that this car fell into the former category, and I wouldn’t be surprised if its then-student owner used it for a while, but then garaged it when it developed some sort of significant problem, thinking “I’ll work on it later.” And later never came.
Oh, and aside from the relic of the CCM parking sticker, the faded Bahamas sticker next to it is also interesting, since it features the Union Jack, placing it before Bahamas’ 1973 independence.
“Oh, my folks drove it up here from the Bahamas”
Hmmm, is that a Dead Milkmen “Bitchin’ Camaro” reference, Eric?
Good eye, BTW. I noticed the faded Union Jack, but had to scroll back to do a double-take to see that sticker was from the Bahamas.
I hope this car can be saved, but I have my doubts. The condition of the bumper in that parking sticker picture would indicate there is a lot more rust here than initially meets the eye.
Kanter’s (https://www.kanter.com/packard/) is one of the two major vendors of Packard parts, along with Max Merritt (https://packardparts.com) in Indiana. So if the car as a whole is not saved, the parts will go towards keeping the remaining 1951-54’s running. This one, as a 1954, is the last year of the straight-8, and also could have had a “Gear-Start” Ultramatic, where the Ultramatic shifted by itself between low and high range – the earlier Ultramatic’s, like the Dynaflow, were designed to be started in high and left there, low was selected manually and only for special situations like climbing hills. John Z Delorean was part of the team that developed the self-shifting feature, and the subsequent “Twin Ultramatic” and it’s final 1956 aluminum-case, push-button version (https://packardprovinggrounds.org/2021/02/18/john-delorean-and-the-fantastic-ultramatic-drive/)
…while everyone else is driving crappy, plasticy ’70s cars…
Maybe at four-year schools in which Mommy & Daddy had the bucks to buy Junior a new or newer car. I went to a CC in the 1980s and the students were mostly working stiffs trying to get ahead. Cars newer than ten years old were a rarity. As I recall the average age of the student cars was more like 20 years.
Cool old Packard. The body doesn’t look to be rotted from the few photos. It should be saved, if even as a low-budget rat rod.
This car was left unregistered in 1976, which looks about the year of that Buick it is sitting facing. What a find though. We can’t see the interior, and I hope it is not in too bad shape.
I believe this car would need a full up resto, brakes, lines, gaskets, fluids, to say nothing of the shape of the engine and body rot. Unless the Packard museum is in need of this model, I can’t see anyone making the investment in this one.
Nice shots of an old beauty in a bad place.
The Buick is a ’79 Electra coupe.
I really feel old when I see “historic” plates on a car like that Pinto.
The guy who owned the corner grocery next block from where I lived had a 1954 Packard that he used to park on the side street where he could see it from the store window. Kept it nice. Meridian Blue. Even had a proper Cormorant, unlike my father’s ’52 that only had accessory “bottle caps”. Jack and Fannie ran the store every day mostly by themselves and had since the late 1920’s when my father was a kid. The kids who passed their grades got a free candy was the story my father told me. I think it was the Cavalier model 4 door. Could tell by the sharp upper corners of the windshield that it was a 1954.
!953 models had the sharp corners too.
Looks to be a worthy candidate for restoration. Rae in numbers built. Rare as in the end of the line for the straight eight. Most important, unlike many others of the same age pulled out, it has all it’s difficult to replace/source trim still on the car.
The only way that this car is going to be restored is if someone’s parents used it for their honeymoon and conceived their first child in it, and when that child was of age they lost their virginity in it, and their first born was born in it and they won the Megabucks and now they just have to have to restore it. Look at the listings in Hemings Motor News. The value of this car doesn’t justify a restoration.
I got my license in ’83 and was driving a ’66 6cyl Bel Air 4 door to school. Once in a while I remember seeing a nice Studebaker GT Hawk in the lot. For my senior year I drove a ’47 Studebaker truck. I would have driven that Packard in a heartbeat.
In 1976 I would have been three years out of h.s. attending Merritt Junior college in Oakland. In the years before I graduated from San Jose State in 1980 (finally!) I had been driving a ’66 Mustang, ’64 Cadillac convertible, ’66 Lincoln, ’70 Coupe de Ville, and a ’57 Sedan de Ville. Those seven years after h.s. were some of the best of my life, working full time, attending school part time, and riding motorcycles and driving interesting cars. Too bad I never found a Packard like this one.
I’d take the Packard over the Pinto any day. The Packard with a straight 8 would pull a Pinto away without breaking a sweat. I’ve seen a few Clippers, including one at a used car lot here in Toronto back in the early 2000’s. They had a lot of classics, but the Packard was the first Clipper I’d seen. Hopefully that ‘54 gets either restored or parted out. Even in its rough condition there’s still plenty of good parts on it, and they might even be able to nurse that straight 8 back to life. Good luck to them.
Looks like a great restoration candidate if it ran when parked, but you don’t even need to “restore” it, just get it running and it’s an instant classic. I hate to see it out in the elements because they often have water intrusion issues that ruin the door upholstery. At least throw a tarp over it…
It needs 10 times the work than it will be worth afterwards.
Fred Kanter, Kanter Restoration