RESTORATION OF A 1953 PACKARD CLIPPER...

Here's the first car I ever restored.  It was a '53 Clipper, which made it about 25 years old at the time.  I was only 16 when I started on it, and 18 when I finished.  The 2 doors were fairly rare, as this car was one of only 6,370 produced that year.  Consider for a moment that Buick built a total of almost 480,000 cars the same year....

 
  Here's how we found her.  This photo was shot in 1979, probably a day or two after we brought her home....  It's the only photo I have of the car in "as found" condition.... What kind of funky hubcaps are those??? 
  During the summer of '79 I spent a lot of hours stripping both layers of paint with a mixture of Methylene Chloride and phenols....  It's a wonder I'm still alive...  You can see hints of the original Polaris Blue.
  A "before" shot of the engine... Here you can see the original color on the firewall.
  The fender wells and edges were repainted in the proper color before the fenders were remounted.
  Every piece of exterior trim was removed, even the door and window pieces.  The body work was done by a friend who later died in a plane crash around 1988... He was a great guy!  His name was Dave....  I've known several people over the years who've been in plane crashes.... Strange.... One of them even lived!
  Detail.... Nothing had to be rebuilt.  The car was super solid and only needed detailing!
  The engine was repainted and the frame was cleaned.  The undercarriage was also spruced up a little....
  The trunk lid came off before the final paint went on....
  New paint, ready for the trim....
  The chrome was all replated, and the car was almost as good as new.  (Chrome during the Korean War days was VERY thin, and didn't last long.  Especially pot metal...)
  One sunny day...
  I only showed this car a total of four times... Here it is at a local mall around 1981...
     

If you have found this page through a search engine, you may want to go to the home page for more unusual car stuff....

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