All right, I’m really torn on this one. Maybe some of you can help me out…
For sale in Smithtown NY, a 1958 Packard 2-door hardtop in really fine, restored condition. As many of you know, the 1957-58 models were the last cars to bear the storied Packard name, and were based on existing Studebakers after the merger of Studebaker and Packard. Despite S-P’s best efforts, the cars sold very poorly, and the hardtop above is a rare specimen indeed, with only 675 copies produced.
When I first saw this car, I was intrigued by its added gold accents and other custom features. It occurred to me that if S-P had a little more time; money, and enthusiasm, this could have been an optional “Gold Package” that evokes certain custom-bodied luxury cars of the past, in keeping with the classic-era Packard tradition of elegance and custom coachwork.
Cab Calloway sang about a “diamond car with platinum wheels” in his famous song, Minnie the Moocher. In the postwar era, several special car models were fashioned in white and gold to emulate the rich, flashy style of the great prewar custom cars, but in the modern idiom. One of these was the Golden Sahara, a show car from the early ’50s, which today’s gilded Packard reminds me of:
There was also a Golden Sahara II:
The 1956 Plymouth Fury and the 1957 DeSoto Adventurer were examples of a special white car with gold trim presented as limited-edition, top-of-the-line luxury models with sumptuous upholstery:
This 1978 Lincoln Continental Mark V Diamond Jubilee Edition was another forceful proponent of the jewel-box æsthetic with its gold grille; gold bumper and side trim; gold and silver wheels, and wide whitewall tires. Not to mention beveled glass opera windows and gauges, as well as a simulated diamond in the opera window script!
Last (and perhaps least) was the 1985 Cadillac Cimarron D’Oro which attempted to revive the concept:
So there’s something about a gilded white super-luxury car that stirs the imagination.
Back to our featured Packard. The interior has been lushly re-upholstered in modern materials which closely match the originals. Optional power windows and power steering are included. So are power brakes (standard equipment on Packards):
Dashboard with original Packard gauges has been restored. The engine-turned speedometer face with golden needle evokes the grand tourers of the prewar era:
Complex sculpture of ’56 Clipper taillights—more gold trim, soaring fin on top:
So much here: dagmar bumpers; quad headlights in faux-aerodynamic pods; the PACKARD name in bold capital letters; traditional Packard ‘cusps’ in the hood; chrome spears atop the headlights; spinner wheelcovers with the red Packard hexagon on gold rims, a simulated air scoop accented with gold—it all looks so voluptuous:
So this Packard…I tend to be a purist, but I’m digging it. I like the idea of an over-the-top, late ’50s, super-rare, luxury-positioned 2-door coupe with a sumptuous custom interior and a few extra gold touches. And technically it’s a Packard, more like the way S-P should have built it–make it look extra-rich to further differentiate it from the lower-end Studebakers.
So is this a car with “Jewel Box Beauty” as S-P described it, or it is the automotive equivalent of:
Great photos. And while this Hardtop is a rare example of the last few Packards, the car upon which it is based, the Studebaker Golden Hawk, was a cleaner expression of the long-nose short-deck design that the Mustang would very successfully monetize.
The ’57 Golden Hawk had single headlights, a Ferrari-like grill, a cleaner taillight configuration, and a simpler, full-flat, but still machine-turned dashboard. I can’t help but feel that the Packard-hardtop was a late 50s design gone amok and, if you recall from my COAL series, I come from a “Packard Family” and I suppose I should express a bit more loyalty …
1957 was the height of the Gold/White Gold/Black coloration of many top of the line cars, including the Rambler Rebel. Your photo of the ’57 Desoto Adventurer stopped me cold this morning because in those hazy days of my youth, Adventurers were always some combination of gold, white, and/or black, and 100% unobtainable.
We settled for a white/blue Fireflite convertible and that was pretty good!
1958 Golden Hawk – restrained exuberance.
1958 Packard Hardtop – unrestrained exuberance.
Great find and post Mr. Pellegrino.
Actually, this hardtop was based on the “regular” Studebaker, and not the Hawk, which was kind of a whole different thing. There was also a Packard Hawk in 1958 that sold in even smaller numbers (588). The 1958 Stude/Packard hardtop was a single-year design of a body style that should have been offered years earlier on the non-Hawk cars.
Thank you for the correction JPC.
I was wondering what happened to the Packard Hawk’s bottom feeding catfish front.
I much prefer the ’58 Studebaker President hardtop front end to the Packard’s fish mouth look. But the Packard’s interior is much better. In back, only Packards have Dick Teague’s “slipper” taillight so popular with customizers, which is a real ’56 Clipper part.
Definitely and interesting design and probably pretty rare now. I actually like it in this color combination.
Parents passed up opportunity to buy used 59 ADVENTURER two door. What a beauty! Also passed on laser 61 DeSoto (black) in our area. Then in summer of 62 traded our 55 DeSoto for new 62 Plymouth. One of the ugliest cars ever. Love my parents but hated that damn Plymouth!
Sorry, but those end of the line Packards were a pastiche of all that was wrong with the styling of mid-50’s American cars. Ughliest Packards ever built.
Jewel box for sure, but it’s costume jewelry. Wonderful example of a fabulous car that deserves to be preserved, but perhaps preserved as a warning to others.
Now, if somebody would only do the same thing to the four door sedan, which, of course, is the least desirable model.
I was both fascinated and horrified when I first saw the ’58 Packards at the Johnstown Auto Show as a child. Fast forward 65 years, and I’m now fascinated and amused, plus a bit ???????? that the design has actually grown on me over those years. I’d be curious to see what the seller is asking.
And I get the immediate fantasy of buying that car and putting it in the line with the other six Packards (5 models, ’30-’35, and a ’53 Caribbean) at last weekend’s AACA show. I’m certain it would have been as welcome as my Porsche 924S was in line with all the 911’s at the old fall European car meet the area hosted pre-COVID. I’d love doing it, of course.
I’m all in for this stepchild, driven by pure emotion and historical respect for a once proud nameplate, but can’t take those tacky J.C. Whitney dual headlight add-ons.
And tacked on lower bodywork in the front (the closeup shows the seams) and tacked on fins on fins. The equivalent Chrysler (where they stole the greenhouse design from) had five inches more shoulder room and 23 cubic feet more interior room. Buyers may have noticed, besides the fact that it was an obvious dead end costume jeweled Studebaker.
I wonder what would have happened if the Packardbakers did sell well, say 15-20,000 annually. Would there have been a Packard version of the ’59 Lark? Today the idea of an upscale small car is accepted – think Audi A3 or the entry-level BMWs. But in 1959, luxury cars were expected to be big, at least in Detroit boardrooms.
Regarding your proposal for a Packard version of the 1958 Studebaker Lark Cruiser, I am not sure that Studebaker-Packard would have gone that way. That said, back in the 1970s Special Interest (SI) magazine published some pictures of a clay proposal for a 1959 Studebaker based on the non-Lark 1958 body. I am not sure if a proposal was prepared for a 1959 Packard, but it was possible. However, I imagine it would have used the 1958 Packard Town Sedan as it’s starting point; not the Lark.
If this JEWEL takes your fancy, GRAB IT! 👍. As you said, it’s extremely rare. Likely there may be less than 100 of the 800 plus still surviving. This one apparently is truly in great condition. And the very last of PACKARDS long time reputation for Luxury vehicles. The dual headlight pods are a little awkward (as I recall bolted on) but the car is over all expression of 1950s exuberance, created out of determination to keep PACKARD name and quality afloat. Do not believe this is a GOLD edition. Rather just PACKARDS attempt to make their cars as upscale as possible to appeal to traditional PACKARD buyers. I have passed up or let go of many vehicles that I wish I now had. Top of list are 61 Imperial LEBARON, 78 Town Coupe, 89 RWD FLEETWOOD Brougham deElegance (both owned and foolishly let go) and 61 DeSoto (about as rare as this PACKARD). If you want it and can afford it, BUY IT. If you change your mind after purchase, you most likely can sell it easily. This appears to be a once in a lifetime opportunity. You asked for help. I am always happy to offer an OPINION 😉! Go get that PACKARD before someone else steals it!
The gold trim thing was popular then, with even Chevrolet and Ford finding ways to add gold trim to top models in 1957.
I think the trick to appreciating this car is to look at it as the nicest “big” Studebaker you could buy in 1956-58. I really like these hardtops, but the interiors/dashboards of the 58 Studebaker versions was just grim (even in the top of the line President). The Packard interiors were pretty nice and this is the best dashboard in the whole series. This particular dash is one of many attempts I have seen to recreate the 57-58 Packard dash pad, all of which melted into shapeless blobs decades ago.
If I were to assemble one of these out of a series or wrecks, I would go with a 58 hardtop body, 1957 Packard exterior trim and the Packard interior.
Here’s the Studebaker President dash. Kind of a lot of flat painted metal. The reason for the long rounded trapezoid on the right seeming out of place with the very squared off instruments and binnacle is that it’s left over from the previous year when it matched the same shape on the driver’s side that had the instruments (other than weird little drum speedometer) in it. The Studebaker door cards are also sadly very plain for a top model in 1958.
If it had the 57 Packard nose, it would be a spiffy example of the era. The Stude, through accident rather than corporate planning, was a pleasantly modest car and the Packard trim perks it up to be a car I would take pleasure in owning.
The 58 Packard facelift, esp Stude’s tacked on headlight pods, is so horrific that it ruins the whole car as anything but a warning from history.
I have decided that there is one styling feature even worse than the dual headlight pods – it is shown in a profile shot like this. It is where the front fascia is attached under the headlight pods, and makes the character line over the front wheel droop down towards the ground in order to mate up with the low fish mouth front end. It makes the front of the car look like it melted a little. Ugh.
Agreed. Cars, like horses, shouldn’t be swaybacked. The postwar Chrysler had the same effect with overblown front fenders that dropped back toward the cowl.
Studie’s Scotsman sold well in ’58 despite being a stripper, partly because it retained the nice ’57 styling.
The bumper where it wraps around the side of the car is also slanted a bit, which sort of works with the droopy fiberglass on the Packard, but the Studebaker version doesn’t have those fiberglass parts and it just looks like you got in a 3mph collision and the bumper got displaced a bit.
I’m also bothered by the gold trim not continuing on the headlight pods and not even bothering to hide where the tack-on fins start below the rear side window (Studebakers and all finned Hawks disguised the add-on fin with chrome trim)
I agree with your assessment. Despite that fact, I like it. I love the 50’s DeSoto and it reminds of that although the DeSoto is much nicer looking, especially in those areas you describe. But I would be proud to drive it!
Ohh nohh!
Being a Studebaker fan, I’ve been in the presence of a couple of 1958 Packards, but have somehow never taken in all of the visual data at once… there’s a lot of it. What’s getting me is the gap between the headlamp pods and protruding front fascia. The tack-ons serve to amplify one another, and well, yeah… I know some of the other manufacturers tacked on quad headlamps in 1957-58, but the S-P setup is so bizarre! I like the hood, grille, bumper, the roofline, and love the double fins. Viewing the nose from this angle though…
Edit: I was going to add that, for how few of these cars were produced, and how little they were loved over the years, it’s surprising how many have survived. This is especially true with Packard Hawks- out of 588 originally produced, I think just under 200 are still extant. I have encountered three of those.
Agree on the 1957 Packard nose looking much better.
I love its looks, and if money were no object, I’d buy it myself.
“Oh BwunHILLLda, You’re so Wuhuvleee…” 🙂
So yeah, I kind of like it! I don’t have a tremendous amount invested in my thoughts about Packards or Studebakers (or combinations thereof), but there’s something about this 1958 that’s attractive to me. LIkewise, I’ve never been a fan of the gold trim thing, but it somehow works in this kind of over the top design. Even if the front end of this seems even more catfish-faced to me than a standard Studebaker.
And can I just say that the hood ornament on that Golden Sahara II is enormous? Good thing they decided to mount it on the trunk.
The side view of the GSII has a “which was does it go” look to it, even more with the “hood ornament”.
What a shame this interior, dashboard and powertrain was not available on the 1953 Studebaker Starliner body.
If S-P had had the funds to do the add-ons in steel, and redesign the front fender to smooth off the headlight pods, this would have been a sharp car in its era. it would have looked like a more modest Chrysler of the era, or not a bad Plymouth. I can see how the fad of applying the face of a B-52 twin engine pod to various lamp openings might make this idea seem somewhat less of a stretch than it really is (Example: ’58 Chevy and ’59 Caddy parking light nacelles). For my part, I was 8 when these Studes came out, and the first time I saw one, I recognized it as a mistake. Now, of course, they are funky-insteresting, and the backstory is fascinating.
Yeah, I know that the registration says that it is a Packard, but this is not what people think of when they think of a Packard. Speaking of jewel boxes Zsa Zsa Gabor had a pretty impressive one that she was known for. I would liken this Packard, not to her jewel box, but more to her Kleenex box. They were both meant to be used and discarded, hopefully without much embarrassment.
There is way too much ugly here. The pods are awful, the lower front clip is awful, the double fin is awful, that gold line breaks up and disappears under the horrible headlight pods. The car is just bad. Yes – it is the best car produced in South Bend in 1958, but it is so ugly.
Everytime I look at one of these, I perserverate on these ugly glued-on tumors and if I actually owned one, I’d keep it covered so I could avoid seeing it.
I have, at times, thought some of your criticisms rather harsh, but I’ll co-sign this one.
LOOK AT THIS – Can you believe that in 1958, Studebaker had those awful headlight pods and even if you didn’t get the dual headlight set up – you got stuck with the pods AND the nasty single headlight inserts? WOW.
WHY didn’t South Bend use a stacked headlight design to avoid the POD? They didn’t need to do that, did they?
Yeah, those were just too bizarre for words. All I can think is that they desperately wanted something that looked new and different, cheaper-looking than a President but not as downscale as a Scotsman. This car is RWD too, think all of those were built in the Hamilton plant.
RHD not RWD, though it’s that too.
Historic CC Effect, I’ve actually seen that very Studebaker in person, albeit back in 1989 (!). It was new Zealand-new on 25 June 1958, and when I saw it in a museum in Queenstown, NZ. It’s a well-known car in NZ due to its extraordinarily low mileage. It was bought new by a plumber as a wedding present, but the wedding didn’t eventuate, and he kept it unused until 1984 when he sold it with a grand total of 74 miles on the odometer. Changing hands a couple of times, its last recorded mileage was 108 miles in July 2016. More details here if anyone’s interested. Oh, and yes, and although I was only 15 at the time, those pods looked weird in person…!
Stude was flat broke and out of time.
Stacked headlights. I’ve had that same idea for years about the ’58 Studes and Packards. It worked for others, would’ve worked for them.
Like all late-period Studebakers or Packards, you have to squint a bit or pretend not to notice a few things for it to look good, and with this one you have to squint more than most. do like the 1958-only hardtop roofline though.
They did a reasonably good job at making the interior look like a ’55-56 Packard, even using 1955-56 Clipper gauges and turn signal indicators. It looks like the speedometer on this car was from a senior Packard though, as those had shiny gold faces rather than black.
That is a very nice looking dash indeed!
I say go for it. this is a rare car and actually quite an attractive one now. Back in the day I would have passed over it as a new car, but now it’s definitely pretty special. Keep us posted on your decision.
If, like most of us, one knows about Packard’s fabled past, and about the decline and Studebaker-ization and eventual demise of the company, this seems sad and a bit tacky. But taken in more of a vacuum, it’s really pretty nice. Sure, a few details are slapped on, but the overall proportions aren’t bad and the size is nice as a counterpoint to the huge Chryslers and Cadillacs of the time, and the growing Fords and Chevies. To me, 1958 was a low point for GM styling and Ford wasn’t much better, so if I set aside my historical biases, I actually like it. Gold and all.
That car is just a beauty!!
For a 1958 model year car, this looks pretty good to me! The gold isn’t overdone as on some of the other examples you’ve shown, and I love the hardtop styling and the interior, especially the dashboard.
I could overlook the tacked on headlight pods and the fins-on-top-of-fins, as well as the droopy front character line that JPC pointed out.
The nice thing about a (sort of) factory stock example in fine original condition, is that one can actually see what the stylists and manufacturer were going for. All too often, cars like this one are worn out or modified, which makes the styling look all that much worse.
While I can’t really make an argument that this is an overall fine looking design, I can see what the stylists were getting at, given what they were given to work with. A for effort, C for result, in my estimation.
Who were the few courageous souls who walked into dealerships and plunked down significant money for one of these? Were they diehard Packard loyalists who wouldn’t be caught dead in a Cadillac or a Chrysler? Did they negotiate irresistible bargain prices from dealers desperate to unload inventory to someone, anyone? Everyone had to know that Packard was circling the drain. People had watched the demise of other brands like Nash, Hudson, and Kaiser, and must have known the resale value would plummet as soon as the make became an orphan.
At this point in time, you’d have to be 60+ to have ever seen a brand-new Studebaker, and over 65 to have seen a brand-new Packard. I’m not saying there aren’t fans of either marque who are younger than that, but how many?
I was born in the period between the closing of the South Bend factory and the total demise of Studebaker, and I have no historical or emotional attachment to either brand. I mean, this is an interesting post about an interesting car, but I haven’t the slightest desire to actually own it.
I’d bet there are still active fans of both cars, but their numbers have got to be shrinking. I’m legitimately curious about the current and future market of cars like this.
I’m 44, born a bit over 12 years after Studebaker closed up shop in Canada, and I’ve gradually grown into a big Studebaker fan in my lifetime. None of my close family owned one back when, so it was an interest sprouted of my own accord.
What was still kicking around when I was growing up were a few Larks and the occasional Champ pickup. A few more bullet noses were sitting in back yards, and the owner of the one closest to home sang praises about his once proud 1950 or ’51 and hung on to it like grim death until his death. Not sure where it went after that point. By and by, I became aware of the many flavors of Hawk, the Avanti, and the rather fetching 1949-59 pickups. This one kid a year or two ahead of me in high school drove a V8 1962 Lark, which had no difficulty outrunning about 90 percent of the dreck most of us were stuck driving in 1995, so it became a bit of a hero car (Stop laughing! My 98hp Honda Accord couldn’t eep a tire on wet concrete!).
As I’ve continued to mature, I am finding myself liking more and different cars from the ones I grew up with. I know I’m not a typical case, but occasionally one of us slips out of the box.
Like the style or not ,this is a historic vehicle because it marks the end of Packard. If not for anything else, it can be a footnote in the Packard story, or a poor example of ‘badge engineering’, trying to pass off an automotive example of a silk purse made from a sow`s ear.
Maybe this is where AMT got the inspiration for the “Styline” customizing bits for their model kits back in the day?
Seriously, though-this one has to be the nicest 1958 Packard hardtop in existence.
The interior looks phenomenal! (The anti-Scotsman…..)
I wouldn’t kick this one out of my garage (if I had a garage…)
The 58 Packard is not without its charms, which you do a very good job here in highlighting. You were more than fair with the red headed stepchild of Packards.
Personally I just can’t forgive the unforgivably ugly fronts of these cars, though I will allow the grille is not quite as bad as the Packard Hawk’s widemouth bass grille. Still, if cost and garage space were no object I wouldn’t mind owning this car just for its uniqueness and significance. It would be fun to take to shows.
As a cheap used car in the 60s, it would have had appeal. A lot of car for the money and smaller and lighter than most with good power.
The gauges are useless: how could anyone read them with all the glare? I always thought the taillights were hideous – but I confess to never having seen one of these in person.
The head light pods are like fake boobs. They bulge out a lot but the proportions just ain’t right.
Beautiful ride. Those ‘fuzzy dice” gotta go! They’re not for this car.
I’m not sure you can legally remove those. Besides, they are directly tied into the cars ignition system. Remove those and it will not start.
that is one fugly car. It deserved to fail!