1956 Packard 400 - Known History! Great Driving Car!

1956 Packard 400 400 Additional Info:

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1956 Packard 400 Offered as a buy-it-now. Make us an offer!

This very nice driving example has been well treated its entire life. Delivered new to Valley Service in Aztek, NM,- a Studebaker dealer since 1937-the car was retained by the Dealer, and then his son, for the first 17 years of the cars life. The car then passed to a local man -Bob Inskeep- who kept the car an additional 22 years and had the car repainted, the seat upholstery replaced (the headliner and door cards remain original), and the engine rebuilt during his ownership. Subsequently it passed to Alan Furman who had the brakes redone. The car then traveled to Oregon Packard Enthusiast Dave McCrady who had the transmission rebuilt, the Torsion suspension rebuilt, the Fuel System recommissioned, and the Exhaust System Replaced. For the last several years the car has resided in Indiana, and the current owner has been able to simply enjoy this great running car while having a new set of Diamondback Radials installed in late 2014.
The result of the cars long tenure in dry NewMexico is a very solid largely corrosion free example. Having always been in the hands of collectors and treated like it deserves, the car is fully sorted and completely operational including the clock which is accurate twice daily. This is literally a car one can drive home to wherever one lives. Sporting only the most minor of cosmetic flaws, this car is equally at home at a Car Show or Concours as it is on the open road.
Appreciation of these Milestone Packard's is rapidly moving up in the collector car marketplace. Now is the time to buy one of these sophisticated and elegant and quite rare cars.

We have many more photographs of this car, please click on any image to be taken to our full-size image list!
The Packard Motor Company produced the finest cars in the industry for over 50 years. The history of the companay and the many wonderful cars they produced is well covered on other pages on this site, so I will just cut to the history of this particular model and car.
For 1955 the Four Hundred name was re-employed by Packard and assigned to the automaker's senior model range two-door hardtop. Visual cues that helped to easily identify the 400 included a full color band along the lower portion of the car topped by a partial color band that truncated along the rear edge of the front doors. "The Four Hundred" in gold anodized script adorned the band between the front wheel well and door edge. Changes to the 1956 Four Hundred followed those changes to the entire senior Packard line as it attempted to further distance itself from the Clipper, which was now its own marque in 1956.
The Four Hundred shared its body and chassis with the more expensive, new-for-'56 Caribbean hardtop. Senior Packards received a new grille texture and multi-tone paint schemes. The cars also received an altered headlight housing, with a slightly longer hood stretching over the headlight, as well as a more distinctive egg-crate grille over 1955. All '56 senior Packards moved the Packard crest to the front of the hood. Power was increased as the new-for-1955 V8 was enlarged from 352 to 374 cubic inches, with a corresponding upgrade in horsepower ratings. A new electronic push-button control for the Ultramatic automatic transmission was offered as an option on the Four Hundred (and Patrician series, standard on Caribbean), the push-buttons located on a pod mounted via a stalk off the steering column. Although sophisticated, it proved troublesome. A simpler column-mounted selector was standard.
Packard was the first production car with torsion bar suspension. The torsion action is spread a combined length of over 26 feet. An electric motor would automatically level the car. A Packard engineer recalled: “The boys over at Lincoln and Cadillac were still using bed springs and barrel-staves, sometimes helped by a concertina”. In 1956, Studebaker-Packard’s financial position deteriorated to the point where the automaker could no longer afford the luxury of maintaining two distinct makes of cars produced in two distinct facilities. For 1957 Studebaker-Packard fielded a single model range, the Clipper. By the end of the 1958 model year the Packard name ceased as an automotive brand in the United States.
Production totals for 1955 came to 7,206 units for the Packard Four Hundred, and 3,224 units for 1956. Our Ebay Policies:
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