Stephen Pellegrino posted this shot from 1989 at the Cohort, with this caption: “Junked Packard Request Prototype?”
The answer is:
No.
The actual Request has some significant differences from what appears to likely be someone’s home-brew attempt to create a Request-like car. Recreating the massive bumpers would have taxed anyone, so it appears that the black car is reusing bumper ends from another car, although its donor escapes me at the moment.
The Request was made at the request of Packard designer Dick Teague, who convinced president James Nance to build a special version of the newly-restyled 1955 models that paid tribute to the classic Packards of yore. After the 1955 car show circuit, the Request went back to the factory, but in 1956, when that closed, it went…somewhere. Some 20 years later, it was found sitting in a field in Washington State. In 1983, it made the rounds of the car show circuit again, fully restored.
FUGLY .
Glad it survived though .
-Nate
Those bumpers have a late Exner-era feel to them , but I can’t place the exact donor. The grille is from. a ’34 or ’35 Packard, I think. Cool find, and still wondering how the real Request made it to Washington state!
Note the vertical character bar down the center of the imitation, and as I noted elsewhere – the REAL Request’s grille had a chromed shell with a consistent width all around the grille…the imitation had that black bar, and the top of the radiator shell was black and looked more like one of those silly wax moustaches kids my age would get around Hallowe’en back in the 1960s. No consistency to the shape of the grille shell.
I’ll be the first to concede my OCDness, but when it comes to comparing details, photo to photo – I always beat Slylock Fox when I was a kid! 😮
Looks like 1959 Dodge bumper.
I was thinking ’60 DeSoto rear; the Dodge sticks out more at the corners.
I don’t care much for either one of them. The actual Request looks better only because there was undoubtedly more money and skill put to work on it. The black car looks . . . unfortunate. Those vertical design themes just did not make sense on the cars of the 1950s and beyond.
Had Packard made it into the 60s would it have gotten to the “classic grille” before Lincoln did? Even the Lincoln version of that grille was more horizontal than vertical. The others that got really strong vertical themes going in the front (the Edsel and the 68 and 69 big Pontiacs come to mind) were not that good of a look either.
You said it non pareil, JP. The vertical look on “longer, lower and wider” 1950s-’60s cars was jarring. Even worse, Edsel went out of their way to accentuate the vertical theme up front, and to accentuate the horizontal theme out back with those bat-wing taillights and the lack of any trim interruptions from fender cap to fender cap. Even the rear bumper seemed designed to emphasize the broadness of beam of the car, yet while keeping a narrow rear track. I used to get the vague impression of a backwards mid-1950s Nash Statesman or Ambassador. All it lacked was the full-skirted rear fenders.
Many moons ago, when I was in college, I didn’t know whether I was gonna continue working in food retail (I’d worked for A&P for four years by then, and store supervisors knew me by virtue of not having quit after six months as most high-school kids did, and with recommendations from several store managers the supervisors all were urging me to enter A&P’s management-training program) or to pursue a career in public administration – yep, a government-weenie-in-training lol – and I’d taken several courses in marketing. Every professor in those said courses used the Edsel and, remarkably enough, the Hudsons as prime examples of cars built by poll, both marques having omitted the one, $64 question…”Would you BUY one??”
HFII and Lee Iacocca both took note, and never made that mistake again. Ford recovered in the 1980s, as did Chrysler Corp. under Iacocca…A.E. Barit, Hudson president, signed away the future of Hudson in 1954 when AMC was created, and Hudson was history. (Pity…my grandfather and HIS father liked Hudsons, after Pierce-Arrow went into oblivion and Packard went downmarket.)
The Request (great name for a car), kind of reminds me of those old VW bugs that have had Rolls-Royce looking grilles added to them.
I wonder what it would have cost, over the price of a “regular” Packard, to add the special front end styling and turn the Request into a top of the range model?
Looking at production figures for Lincoln and Packard shows that they were fairly close in sales. Unfortunately, both were deeply buried by Cadillac.
Can somebody say ‘Edsel”?
Supposedly the vertical grille of the ’56 Packard Predictor show car influenced the Edsel.
The bumper looks like it’s off of a 61 Chrysler or DeSoto.
Those both are angled more. The Dodge shape fit the near mirror image upper trim that forms the grille housing. The ’59 Dodge also has the ridge on the upper side, which tore the ’62 Chrysler 300 that changed lanes into the front bumper of my ’59 Coronet Super D-500. It tore the sheet metal on 300 and only stripped the stainless steel bolt head cover on the Dodge.
LRF,
I think you are right.
My guess is…someone took one of those tacky 1970s-vintage fake Rolls-Royce grilles for a VW Bug, modified it to fit a Clipper, then modified the outside of the shell to mimic the Packard arch. Note the inside of the arch doesn’t follow the curve as that grille on the real Request did.
Furthermore, frankly…the lower grille inserts on that fake Request look like re-worked 1958 Edsel Citation or Mercury Monterrey grilles. Note, the real Request had NO lower grilles, just a bunch of chrome and two half-bumperettes with mini-Dagmars incorporated within the same.
I like it, though. Keeping in mind that the creator HAD to have had a sense of humor…this is aces!
Not a Clipper, that’s a 400. See the ‘vents’ behind the door.
Packard had a checkered history on design, no pun intended. From 1921 until, I think, 1928, they proudly advertised that their automobiles never changed in appearance; thus, an owner would not feel outdated driving one. However, he did feel outdated when sleeker automobiles were starting to be built. Packard woke up. Here is an ad touting their changes as not visible outside, only improvements to the machinery and comforts.
Another shot I took of the same car:
It appears to have 1953-54 Caribbean style stainless trim over the round front wheel openings.
Fred Kanter has the car now, THE Packard guy. Apparently some fella had it made special, I think when it was new, because he wanted to purchase the Request but Packard said no.
28 years later–it moved, but still exists…and is about 4 blocks from my house!
One other car has a very similar bumper, the 1958 Chevrolet, but the side shape still looks more Dodge.
Cool!
It still exist in the Kanter brothers collection in New Jersey. Bottom of the grille shell appears to be from a truck or tractor turned upside-down. The actual 1955 Request is in the Marano Collection also in New Jersey.
By 1955-’56, it was going to take a far more to save Packard than merely a return of the classic vertical grille. The Request show car generated interest in Packard at a time when the annual auto shows included futuristic show cars, to create what we call ‘buzz’ now. We’re fortunate that a high percentage of the Packard show cars of their last decade have survived and are restored.
Dick Teague made a Request in 1955 and a year later ended up with the Predictor?
Was James Nance one of the most hapless of CEOs ever to be inflicted on a car company? And then to be the ruinous leader of two storied automotive names.
(Yes, I know, they Studebaker and Packard were both on the ropes due to forces way beyond their own control…. and then the idiotic follow up by Roy Hurley … he was no great automotive leader, either… outside vinyl armrests indeed!)
The Predictor at least was fresh take on modern styling. Kind of cool in it’s own way.
Agreed. The Request reeks of desperation. The Predictor has charisma, though it’s not exactly a work of art. Nice to see an old marque go on a high. Oh wait, there were the Packabakers…
That rear three-quarter view – wow, after 6 years of fielding a car with a roof, beltline, and door handles that are too high for a modern car, they show a replacement that still has the same problems. Even if they had managed to secure the money to build a 1957 model that looked more or less like the Predictor, I can’t imagine this car would sell well against the ’59 Cadillacs. The best I can say about them is that they could have kept it reasonably fresh through about 1964 with modest facelifts, mainly replacing the fishbowl windshield with a conventional shape, replacing the trapezoidal backward-slanted rear roof line with a early-60s T-Bird look (a la Stude GT Hawk), and lop off the tailfins. Open up the wheelwells and you have a workable car for the first half of the ’60s.
Inquiring minds want to know: who besides Packard adopted the notched-corner radiator grille ? Who, that is, besides Aston Martin (see evolution from 1948 to 1957: http://www.astonmartin.com/en/heritage/past-models ) and Fisker Karma (though not the new Emotion) ?
Some Vauxhalls from the 1930s had notched-corner grilles, like this 1937 model.
Buick used a similar notched grill on their 1929- 1933 models. I’m sure there were others.
Chrysler Imperials of the 20’s also had them.
Wow. I’ve never been all that impressed with the Request to begin with, but that cheap imitation – just, no.
The original Request was restored by a man in Pasco (IIRC), WA, across the river from where I grew up. I remember reading an article about him restoring it in the Tri-City Herald back in the 1980s. As I recall from the article, he spent years (remember, this was pre-internet) scouring junkyards far and wide and miraculously found most of the missing grille pieces in some random junkyard.
Unfortunately, I have never seen the car in person.
Actually I rather like the black 1956 although clearly not well-thought out. The grill housing sticks out far too far and has no bumper protection so would be flattened in an accident. Also, how can anyone even open the hood by themselves with all that extra. weight to lift? If Kanter ever “restores” it, perhaps they can also tidy it up a bit!
We have owned the ’56 Packard 400 with the ’38 V12 grille and hood top panels for 40++ years. We purchased it from S. Mortimer Bloom of West Orange who had it built at a local body shop when he was unable top purchase the Request. The side trim/wheel opening moldings are from a ’55 iMPERIAL.
There was no neglect for grille protection when built as there was a hex stock chromed two level bumper between the two sections.
THE CAR WAS NEVER “JUNKED”, IT IS JUST SITTING IN OUTSIDE STORAGE.
It flabbergasts me that people will make any number of incorrect observations and comments instead of calling us and asking.
And to make things perfectly clear Rudolph Valentino did not use this car in his wedding because James Dean had it that weekend.
Fred Kanter
Kanter Auto Products
973-334-2400 x 308
“Request prototype” is silly; show cars and prototypes don’t have prototypes. “Significant differences” wouldn’t indicate anything; if two attempts were made at a Request it would be because the first came out ugly.
The proof that this didn’t predate the Request (besides the fact that this car’s history is known, of course) is in the 1956 front fenders.