Packard hardly ever constructed a pickup truck — if they had, probably they’d be in business right now — but that didn’t dissuade the enterprising folks at Speedwell Garage in Parkton, Maryland. The final result is this custom made-bodied conversion established from a 1956 Packard Patrician sedan, and it credibly imagines what may well have been.
Today, the strategy of a luxury pickup is firmly recognized as a aspect-laden variation of a common pickup, but in the 1950s, the budding notion of a premium hauler was distinctive. Automakers believed the way to do so was to combine the journey and comfort of a passenger-vehicle human body with the cargo-hauling capacity presented by a pickup mattress — imagine 1957 Ford Ranchero and 1959 Chevrolet El Camino. This El Packard-ero can take that very same tack.
What retains the challenge firmly in interval is that its creators resisted the urge to resto-mod this Packard. Granted, they snuck in a backup digicam and a Vintage Air procedure, but this pickup otherwise appears to be just as ’56 Packard pickup could have, had the manufacturing unit turned them out.
The pickup mattress, with a polished wood flooring, slips neatly in between the sedan’s rear fenders, and the factory taillights and bumper-exiting twin exhaust shops are preserved. The sedan’s rear doors also are retained, and they nevertheless open, furnishing accessibility to storage beneath the cargo mattress. The two-tone copper-and-cream shade plan is absolutely fittingly Fifties.
Underneath the hood, is a Packard 374-cubic-inch V8 paired with the company’s two-pace, pushbutton-push Twin-Ultramatic transmission. Even the wheels show up to not deviate from stock, coloration-matched steelies with entire-confront chrome wheel covers wrapped with wide-whitewall tires.
This Packard pickup has been stated at Motor Metropolis Typical Autos at an inquiring rate of $68,500 but is now scheduled to cross the block at Mecum’s Kissimmee, Florida, auction this coming weekend. The 1956 design yr marked the past of the “accurate” Packards, as the ’57 and ’58 types ended up grotesquely restyled Studebakers, soon after which the model was euthanized. It was an unlucky conclude to the brand’s story, to which this Packard pickup provides an exciting, albeit fictional, chapter.