'56 Packard Man

Robin Jones’ proposal for a ’53-’54 update of the Packard Patrician

PackardInfo.com has a thread going about proposed designs for Packard including sketches made by Robin Jones. The late Robert Neal had included the Robin Jones proposals in his article published in the third quarter 2013 issue of The Packard Cormorant, “Packard History As It Should Have Been.” At the time, I was not aware that Jones had actually worked for Packard in the early ’50s and that the renderings (below) were done by him then. Jones proposals include a return to Packard’s traditional vertical grille, ideas that surfaced again on Richard Teague’s Packard “Request” in 1955 and on William Schmidt’s Packard “Predictor” for 1956. The vertical grille would have been used on the planned but unbuilt 1957 Packards. After Packard folded, Jones went to work for Ford and worked in the Edsel Studio.

The Jones proposals shown here would have been updates to the new-for-1951 Packard designed largely by John Reinhart. John Reinhart’s fine design for the ’51 Packard Patrician

More Robin Jones proposals for updating the Reinhart design:

The above was a proposal for the ’53 Clipper

The 1955 Packard Request show car: the Robin Jones influence is clear in this design by Richard Teague. (above)

Bill Schmidt, who came from Ford and designed the Lincoln Futura show car (that George Barris later customized into the first Batmobile) did much of the work on the ’56 Packard Predictor show car. The Jones influence on the grille design appears again on this car.

Below is a rendering of the planned ’57 Packard convertible, again using the Jones-inspired grille idea.

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And now, on a humorous note, courtesy of “B-Squared”:

When Obama met Raul Castro