1928 Packard Custom Car Prestige Brochure - A very rare piece!
From the brochure:
OLD AS ANTIQUITY and hence inherent to that discerning class who can best appreciate the finest things of life, is the custom-body idea. The first carriages of which the world has authentic information—the chariots of the Egyptians and their neighbors — differed essentially from the primitive carts only in the delicacy and ornamentation of the carriage body.
Down through the ages the custom-built carriage has continued to denote position, taste, good breeding. In the Sixteenth Century the titled class of England, jealous of their privileges as gentry and noblemen, passed edicts which penalized those not of gentle birth who were found riding in coaches.
The same prestige with which history has surrounded the coach still lives in the fine motor car's custom body of today. Even now as in the Washingtonian era, the selection of the new family coach is rather a momentous event. In its modern custom car form it affords the satisfaction of eliminating comparison, for your custom Packard may be yours alone, comparable to no other because none is necessarily similar.
Twenty years ago Packard first began a custom-body service for the select clientele which has inherited the desire for individuality of personal transportation. Today that demand has increased the custom-body offering to more than a score of beautiful creations executed by the leading custom-body builders of this country.
Designed in the studios of body experts and built in their own shops are these rich examples of coachwork. Quantity production methods hold no sway in the plants where custom bodies for Packard chassis are custom-built in the strictest sense of the word.
Here, the heritage of ancient hand craftsmanship lives—in the carving of body pillars, the shaping of metal panels, the painting and trimming with a skill which does full justice to the rich colors and fabrics employed, without and within.
In the shops of one custom-body builder for Packard, the village smithy still stands with its bellows and forge of a Longfellow period. Another has been a family tradition, father to son, for four generations. Still a third grew up with Packard in its custom-body practice, filling the first factory-given order for custom bodies more than a decade ago.
The following pages show offerings in the extended line of Packard custom cars. They suggest an all-inclusive beauty of appearance and appointment; but only a visit to your Packard showroom where fabric samples, color harmonies and even some of the bodies are on view, can best afford the advantages of personal selection— the true pleasure of custom-car ownership.
For its painting, only a giant palette could hold all the colors from which one may select. Anything in the realm of fine fabrics is at command as upholstery and trimming material. Thus, those who thrill in the possession of a Gainsborough, Romney or Rembrandt, a choice bit of Lalique, or the mysteries of the Orient imperishably woven into undying beauty, will find equal joy in owning a Packard custom car.
On the Packard chassis your individual custom-body choice provides an incomparable combination. Because of the grace and charm of Packard design, body experts delight in creating for it veritable gems of custom coachwork. The distinctive slender lines of its radiator and hood provide these artists, as on no other car, the keynote for such rich reproductions of sweeping yachtlike beauty.
So, with your own good taste expressed in fabric and finish, with the unchanging lines of Packard design, with superb coachwork, your Packard custom-car choice is insured permanent in distinction, lasting in beauty, enduring in comfort.
Content
- A Portfolio of Twenty Luxurious Body Styles
- two by Rollston
- nine by Dietrich
- six by Holbrook
- two by Judkins
- one by Le Baron
Reprint
- High Quality Reprint
- Full Color
- 28 Pages
- Dimensions 11.8” x 11.6”
- Paper Weight 169 lbs
- Hardbound
Costs
145$ plus Shipping
For requests please send an email to sales@packard-reprints.com