I've put up a Web page with images so you can see what I'm talking
about.
http://home.earthlink.net/~rapilje/cars.html
This talk about the Plymouth Belmont and Dodge Granada got me to
wondering again about an article title "Packard Maps Sensational
Comeback" in ans issue of CARS Magazine I have that was published in May
of 1953.
There's a sketch of a car on the first page of the article (see Web
page) that's labeled "Sketch from design section reveals lines along
which Packard is thinking." The second I saw that sketch I thought,
"that isn't a Packard, that's the Plymouth Belmont!" which, of course,
was introduced the following year, in 1954.
That Briggs, as "brians@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" wrote, and not Ghia produced
this car in their Advanced Design facilities when they were supplying
bodies to Packard and Hudson before Chrysler took over leads me to
wonder again whether the car was produced for Packard, who was beginning
to suffer badly at that point, and who might not have been able to
couldn't afford the finished product, leading Briggs to offer it to
Chrysler, who accepted it and displayed it (and the Granada -- it never
occurred to me until you pointed it out how much that car looks like the
Panthers) as a Plymouth concept car.
The sketch in the magazine, to me at least, looks amazingly like the
Belmont. And both the Belmont and Granada would have looked very
comfortable sporting Packard-type grilles.
What do all of you think?
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