1952 Packard Pinin Farina Coupe

Packard's first post-war automobiles entered the market in October 1945 using pre-war designs with mild updating. Despite labor unrest and material shortages, the company managed to sell nearly 31,000 Twenty-First Series (1941) models. Design updates that followed over the next few years used traditional elegance with streamlined bodies, while many other manufacturers used bold, modern, jet-inspired themes. Packard's inline eights had the largest displacement on the market, but they lacked the power of the modern, overhead valve engines that were taking the industry by storm.

As the 1940s were coming to a close, Packard continued its efforts to keep pace with the rapidly changing market while incorporating traditional design cues and elegance. To this end, a number of one-off designs were created by some of the most talented coachbuilders in the industry. In the late 1940s, a Packard chassis was clothed by Alfredo Vignale's firm in Turin with convertible coachwork. It had a hood that could be opened from either end and beautifully blended sheet metal that wrapped completely around the undersides of the car to form belly pans. In the back were Fiat model taillights which greatly added to its European flair.

In the early 1950s, the Henney Motor Company built a one-off business coupe design for the Packard 200 series. Throughout the early 1950s, it was updated with various Packard trim. In 1952, Henney's president Charles Russell Feldman struck a deal with Packard president Hugh Ferry to build Packard's newest show car, the Pan American. Henney's craftsmen built the coachwork to a design by Richard Arbib, taking a mere six weeks to complete. The show car was displayed at the 1952 International Motor Sports Show in New York where its design was much admired, resulting in an additional five examples built by Henney.

Several American companies turned to European coachbuilders for design inspiration, including Chrysler who worked with Ghia for design inspiration. Pininfarina would also create coachwork for several American chassis, including Packard. They built a two-door, five-passenger body design intended for limited production. It was the perfect blend of traditional Packard elegance with a modern and European flair. The Achilles heel proved to be its price tag, which exceeded $10,000, bringing the project to an end.

by Daniel Vaughan | Aug 2020