Packard vaporware
Several old brands have been "reborn" as fakes and vaporware. Emerson radios and Elgin clocks are rebranded cheap Chinese crap.

Packard has been tried a few times. The most recent attempt started about 20 years ago and seems to be still alive as a corporation. It made one serious try to build a new car, and currently sells just one repro part for real Packards. (Why not gear up and make more repros? Much less risky than betting on regulatory approval for a complete car.)

The website has some nice pix of the prototype, which was built in 1999 and sold to a private party in 2014.

The prototype had most of the usual modern shit expected in a luxury car, but peculiarly it missed Packard's unique modern tech.

In the '30s, Packard and several other luxury makes had adjustable suspensions, with a lever on the dash that made the ride stiffer or looser.

In 1956, just before it was killed by the Studie LBO, Packard developed a fully adaptive electronic suspension, which disappeared immediately and wasn't reborn until the '90s.

The prototype doesn't have any of those modern features. It has a transverse leaf spring like the Model T. This type of suspension is unfairly described as "primitive", even though it was later used by Tatra and some Corvettes. Still, it's less "advanced" than Packard's 1930 suspension.

Older is nearly always better than newer, but if you're going to use the Packard name you should use Packard's older, not Ford's older.

Vaporware companies rarely put in enough effort to make a full prototype. I'm familiar with another exception to the rule, Custer Channel Wing, which operated in Enid for at least 20 years, doing real research in aviation and building real flying prototypes, but never going into production. I had some sideways connections with Custer, and never truly decided whether it was a tax dodge, a rich man's toy, or a serious attempt that wasn't quite serious enough. This new Packard is mysterious in the same way.

Labels: Asked and badly answered

  ¶ 3:37 PM