Packard Museum

[TBOU]

I visited the Packard museum recently with my girlfriend and her father. Well, it's more like I brought them to this museum as I've been there many times and have a friend that used to run it. I thought I would share some pictures...

[dave]

I only just read about the Packard Hawk in the Hemmings news or something....

Known as "Packardbakers" due to their Studebaker badge-engineered heritage or something??

Cheers for the share!


Dave

[TBOU]

The middle one is a Packardbaker, I believe. It's actually a prototype convertible, the production version only came in hardtop:

http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/tag/packardbaker/

Not a 'bad' looking car for America's 1950s, not a good one either. It looks like a fish, but not a good looking fish. I'm not sure who designed it, they probably don't want credit anyway, the design it originated from was Raymond Loewy's Studebaker Hawk:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker_Golden_Hawk

But I would hope Loewy wouldn't design that thing, most of his stuff was good; perhaps he was experimenting with acid at that time and this is the result?

[Farmer]

If theres one thing you fellas can do its styling! Some beautiful vehicles there, and there is even a 'beauty' in the ugliness of those extreme design experiments. There is a '58 Packard sedan in the family, and its all add-on fibreglassy bits & extended fins. Ug-lee, but beautiful. The height of ostentatious!

Thanks for showing,
Matt.