Rare first-year 1953 model
One of only 750 examples built
Pure American luxury in “Matador Maroon”
Extensive engine rebuild
If you were somebody in America in the early 1950s, you drove a Cadillac. At Packard, this was a development viewed with limited enthusiasm. After all, the marque itself had ranked among the great names in American luxury motoring for decades. With the Caribbean, Packard intended to show that it had by no means forgotten how it was done.
The direction had been set by the Pan American show car of 1952. A year later, Packard turned the idea into an exclusive convertible based on its regular production model. Exclusive, in this case, also meant elaborate. At Mitchell-Bentley, the standard bodies underwent extensive modification. Open rear wheelarches, a lower silhouette, plenty of chrome and the externally mounted spare wheel turned the stately Packard into a decidedly extravagant proposition. Restraint had gone rather out of fashion anyway.
Under the long bonnet, however, Packard initially remained faithful to tradition. There was no V8 yet, but the marque’s large 5.4-litre straight-eight. With 180 SAE horsepower, it ranked among Packard’s most powerful engines of the period, while power was usually transmitted through the company’s own Ultramatic automatic transmission. Beneath the new clothes, then, there was still plenty of old-school Packard engineering.
A Caribbean cost more than $5,000, putting it in the same league as the Cadillac Eldorado in 1953. Large, luxurious convertibles were the rolling calling cards of their manufacturers. Presumably, making money with them mattered rather less than making an impression.
Just 750 examples were built in that first year. Later Caribbeans became more colourful, more powerful and eventually received V8 engines. The 1953 model, by contrast, remained a fascinating transitional machine: American 1950s extravagance wrapped around the traditional Packard engineering on which the marque had built its reputation.
This Caribbean wears the particularly appropriate shade of “Matador Maroon”. From 1998, it was on the road in the US state of Massachusetts. From there, its journey took it first to Germany and eventually to Austria, where it received individual type approval in 2015.
More recently, the big straight-eight received the attention that an engine inevitably demands after more than seven decades. An extensive rebuild is documented by invoices totalling more than €15,000. And anyone genuinely searching for practical arguments in favour of an American convertible more than five metres long will even find one: the Packard is approved to carry six people. A family car, then. Just a particularly impressive one. Modesty, after all, was hardly an American virtue in 1953.