1955 Packard Caribbean - Jay Leno’s Garage

i can tell this got to be one of the smoothest riding cars of the 50s you know this torsion bar suspension just works so well you go over railroad tracks no crackity cl i mean it remains level well another episode of jaylon's garage pandemic edition uh the car featuring today my favorite my favorite category original and restored this is a 1955 packard caribbean now a lot of people say caribbean i like caribbean both are acceptable all right let's leave it at that this was a swan song for packard they were just about out of business the thing that killed this company they were the premier luxury builder in america for the probably the first 35 40 years of the last century packards were presidential cars they were ambassadors i mean movie stars everybody had a packard duesenberg was faster other cars the cadillac v16 was impressive but packard was quiet and reliable and uh impeccable build quality what happened was they made a lot of contracts during the war and when the war ended they couldn't get the steel and general motors came out with a v8 and that electric window they just fell behind they hung on to the flathead straight eight cylinder engine for too long when cadillac again as i said had overhead valves and chrysler had the hemi packard still had their traditional nine main bearing eight cylinder flathead engine and a beautiful engine it was quiet reliable easy to work on it was just old-fashioned and that was the problem so they tried to fix that in 1955 by coming out with this this was their first v8 352 cubic inches came came from the factory with two four barrels 275 horsepower very powerful five more horsepower than cadillac five more foot pounds of torque but the most impressive thing about this packard was the suspension system uh torsion bar level control you have nine foot torsion bars that run from the front of the car on each side diagonally forming a v let me show you what happens i'm going to sit on the rear fender here okay all right see how the car sinks down and wait about two seconds and begins to level out the car will always remain level no matter how many dead bodies you have in the trunk or bags of cement or whatever i was born in new york city we'd go into parking garages and try to find packards and sit on them and just ride them up and down you know and then you'd run through the front and that was and then it would come and eventually you'd kill the battery and gotta go back car be dead because the kids are sitting on the fenders all the time now watch what happens when they get off it goes up now the front will compensate and come back up see that you can hear the compensator it's like some uh like some dinosaur you know coming out of the tarpon thing just raises up you know because a lot of times i'll be in the garage here by myself and i hear the packard start to move around so a lot of guys put the battery disconnect switch on so he didn't just didn't kill the battery but it was a pretty cool feature and it rides amazingly smooth it's amazing how well this torsion bar suspension worked packard didn't last much longer they built 500 of these the company was broke this is a latch sort of ditch effort they just smarten up an old body style they put these cathedral tail lights on it and that that front hood has more lead in it because they sort of they put those dual scoops on there the non-functional there's there's just we didn't use bondo these actual lead so the car is pretty heavy just to kind of style it and sculpt it a little bit differently i think the three-tone paint well in my case two-tone but you could get you know different color all the way through leather interior ultramatic transmission it was an automatic transmission it's a great car you had dual antennas uh both are functional and both both are wired a lot of cars for the period have dual antennas because that was just the rage and only one really worked but this one had two so radio reception is actually quite good you got the wraparound windshield the 56 packard caribbean had this interesting idea see this is full leather interior but it had there you go then it's starting to level up that had cushions like in the summer like it could be leather on one side then when you went to the beach you'd turn around and be sort of a fabric on the other side the only trouble was when you hit the brakes all the cushions would fly forward it looked like it looked like a pillow fight going on in the car but that's okay that's okay uh brakes are not brakes are okay brakes are good standard drum brakes of the period for the first time in my life when i ever experienced brake fade it was in this car it was i've had this car 35 years i was on mulholland drive i was flying around you know hitting the brakes and gas hitting the brakes and i see a stop sign hit the brake and i went just sailing through that stuff blah blah people like hey i break went right that was the first time i experienced absolute brake fade and i thought what happened here and i i realized i had boiled the fluid you know it just got so hot because i was hitting the brakes so much so you have to uh you have to drive these things carefully if you're really old and have a good memory on my tv show the tonight show this car was featured i would always pull up every night and this would be shown in the opening credits as you can see this is not a show car by any standard it's pretty much all original paint you know when i bought it it was just a fun old car that was a convertible people thought it was a little strange it was it wasn't that old when i got it i've had it 35 years so back around 85 it's a 50 okay so there it's 30 years old now so it was just an old car that was kind of cool it's been pretty dependable i've had a lot of fun with actually when i got it had a torque flight transmission out of the chrysler which is a common thing they used to do these ultramatics were a little finicky uh i found an original transmission and we put that in my friend robert escalenti at packards international he uh he uh helped me with that you know the packard club is great his guys are just swear by these things they only built 500 in 1955. uh this was an expensive car close to six thousand dollars i think yeah that's that's pretty much the story massive bumpers the chrome energies everything is actually okay uh i got it from a guy one of these old guys who was a collector who he bypassed the oil filter because they didn't believe in filters and you know yes it's just there's all kinds of crazy rumors and things that people used to do in the old days and i've pretty much put it back to the way it should be let's open the hood and i'll show you the motor excuse me the engine a motor is electric i know you'll tell me that in the okay in fact this is so heavy you've got to have a rod here okay pretty much stock under here modern battery because i like to ride ride drive it rather and a more modern alternator this would have had a generator you know back in the day when the alternator came out you go i haven't you just threw the generator away and you put on an alternator because it's much more efficient and reliable and but you know originality wasn't that big a deal you just wanted a running car um fortunate still has this the famous batwing dual air cleaner let's try and find one of those that'll cost you 1500 bucks two thousand dollars on ebay if you can find one of them uh and it's just hilarious to me this came with two four-barrel carburetors i put oil filter back on it as you can see it's not real clean under here because this is a working driving usable car it's just a fun car to go to luncheon or take to the beach or do whatever you want not that i spent a lot of time at the beach actually i wouldn't take at the beach because i'd be sitting on the beach somebody's touching my car so i'd go i take my wife's fee at 500 to the beach and leave us at home so no i don't go there i drive past the beach i'll go past the beach waving people on the beach that's about it you can't go to the beach now because of this corona fire but never mind yeah that's pretty much it pretty much standard america i think this is the first year of 12 volts for packard i'm not sure it might be it might be a little earlier i i would have to check that out so i'm sorry i don't know that off hand uh as you can see the engine is stain engine numbers stamp right in the right in the body here but this torsion bar suspension is really fascinating we're going to put it up in the lift in a little bit and i'll show you how the torsion bars work uh you can you can shut that off if you're changing a tire or you're being towed or something let's put this down but this is this has so much lead in it all this here was done at the factory just let's come down that's why they put the rod in this hit you in the head you're a dead man all right here we are at the rear of the vehicle these these are the famous cathedral tail lights that i spoke of earlier that was i is it i think teague designed this i'm not sure and uh you notice how it comes through the bumpers i'm fortunate these all rusted out from the lead and the gas and you know from years of of just uh exhaust eating through the the metal if that's not proof of pollution i don't know what is but actually they're still pretty good in this thing you know i just kind of come over here and pick a car to do and i chose this one today i haven't looked in this trunk i'm not even sure what's in here but let's see i'll just give you an idea what the trunk looks like oh okay full-size set of tools extra fluids oh i got a little extra bit of leather here um i did have a couple of cracks in the upholstery when we repaired that this is an armrest uh yeah this is some of the leather we pulled out when we replaced it you've got a jack and it's a full-size trunk i know the top works i haven't put the top up or down in 20 years i always i park it indoors so but to me the suspension is what makes it really interesting and here i'm going to do this for you again just because it's it's just fun comes all the way to the ground what's cooler than that i mean that alone isn't the entertainment value is because little kids go whoa come on let's go over the inside of the car i'll show you the dashboard and the gauges and and then we'll take it next door and put it up on the left okay uh here we are in the interior of the car a pretty comprehensive dashboard actually quite quite attractive i think you've got your temperature gauge here you've got your oil speedometer odometer tripometer your generator light your fuel uh your lighter l-i-t-e-r or litter i don't quite get that that's what it is just put your top up and down that your ignition key fan and you've got heaters under the seats that blow up which is pretty cool you got to have ashtrays got ash trays in each corner you know i happened to mention in one of these videos that uh you have a lot of ashtrays because everybody smoked in the 50s i got a letter from a guy damn sloane my parents did not smoke and they grew up in the 50s so you're assertion that everybody smokes in the face didn't actually mean everybody but many people let's just go with that okay there's your radio right there and padded dash which was uh interesting that was just sort of the beginning of the safety things actually pioneered by lee iacocca he had a demonstration where he would drop an egg on the padded dashboard and it wouldn't break and people were wow that's pretty good imagine your head doesn't break an egg and of course what lee didn't tell you was they were hard-boiled eggs just old salesmans trick just kind of made me laugh uh here's your big glove compartment and here you go now this is a 1956 packard owner's manual i couldn't find a 55 and again this is a pretty comprehensive as well tells you everything you need to know um here's make a big deal the 12 volt negative ground electrical system oh 12 volts that's pretty good uh let me show you okay here's i will put it up on the lift and show this to you in just a minute okay here are your torsion bars that run the length of the car see here forming a v towards the front here is your torsion bar there's your that's the thing that the compensator that twists the torsion bars to to level it out and these are all the various points to lubricate this is when owner's manuals were really owner's manuals uh see mine has got a traditional park neutral but then he came out with push button in 56 everybody wanted that ford had it in the center chrysler had it off to the side uh heating air conditioning all the different things um various cushions and front seats everything is electric on this car which is you know it's hard to imagine it's hard to imagine how luxurious this car seem now because even basic cars have electric windows and stuff now but back in the day uh you know the fact you control that window from over here oh my god that was very impressive i love the steering wheel it's got these see it's got this knurled area here leather i've replaced sections of this not all of it i've tried to keep it original this is when i bought this car when i really couldn't afford to restore it just constantly maintain it change the oil lubrication and that's what i do i just drive it and use it and you know you're constantly sitting on the fenders to show off how the compensator works and how the level of work so you're always getting little scratches but uh i think it's time to start it up take it next door and i'll put it up on the left look at that huh that's a packard son okay here we are under the packard caribbean or caribbean okay this is all pretty much stock as you can see we added new mufflers notice there are no springs we've got shocks obviously but there are no sleeve springs there are no coil springs just torsion bars okay you have nine foot torsion bars that run the length of the car and form a v up front i'm going to show you how those work in just a minute okay where is our motor up here here okay there's the compensator motor okay that twists the torsion bar which raises or lowers it where's your automatic leveler it's up here okay here's your torsion bar right here this is what i've got my hand on right here now that twist raising either the front or the back same thing in front here notice there's no just the shock it's over and of course me here's your torsion bar here portion bar on this side okay here's the torsion bottom following it's nine feet long it goes all the way down here all the way to this end of the car what i'm gonna do here i'm gonna okay here's a tarshin bar torsion bar i'm gonna try and pull this card down so as to uh you'll feel you'll see this twist let's see can i do that okay there it goes see it move do you see it move okay i'm gonna i'm gonna hang on the back again here it's hard to do let me go up front i'll do the same thing up there well you saw the torsion bar twist that sounds like some bad dance from the 50s but okay let me pull this down a little bit give it two seconds here i'm hanging on it okay see car rising okay i don't know it's hard to demonstrate this by myself but uh you get the idea they run nine feet long once again there's the torsion bar and it twists back and forward to help level the car keep it smooth it's the emergency brake right there but it's a brilliant brilliant idea see that was moving before let me see if i can get this to come down again okay okay all right well i hope that gives you a basic idea of how the system works you can look it up on google and i'm sure there are better explanations it's just um it's a little tricky to do this by yourself well come on we'll take a ride and we'll show you how it handles i can tell this got to be one of the smoothest riding cars of the 50s you know this torsion bar suspension just works so well when you hit the brakes the front if it begins to dive it'll pull itself back out of it it'll straighten out a bit you go over railroad tracks no crackity cli i mean it's it remains level you know it's so busy showing you the torsion bar suspension and the cars up in the lift i forgot to show you the extra bracing they put in the frame to make the car a little more structurally sound those four-door lincolns you park them on a railroad track or ornika and you can't get the doors open sometimes because the thing flexes so much that doesn't happen with this right where this car is parked in the garage i have a poster of an ad see america's most glamorous sports car they actually call it a sports car like you're like what are you got an mg yeah you know i got a sports car packard caribbean oh really yeah we should have a rally or something with both sports why this would be a sports car and of course he's got real sports car clothing and uh hilarious the new packet cara why struggle against temptation look at that very funny very funny i just i i love this ad the first time i saw it it's just so over the top really really a sports car really but there you go there it is right there okay you know whether you like cars from this period the 1950s or not there's no denying they just had great colors they're really lively looking you know all sorts of oranges and greens and blues i get so bored with modern cars everything is slate gray or black or white or you know off-white i mean this is sort of fun it's it makes you smile this one's only got three colors a lot of these had i had two colors a lot of these had three colors which is really cool as i said before breaks are not great but on par with just about everything else from the 50s yeah as i mentioned before they only built 500 of these i think that's because the writing was kind of on the wall people knew packer was going under they were just getting into a partnership with studebaker so it'll be the studebaker packard corporation it's it's hard to imagine how big general motors was in the 50s and 60s in fact it was so big at one point the government wanted to break it up because they had too uh bigger percentage of the automobile market like 55 percent or something like that uh and of course then the japanese cars came in and the european cars and that was pretty much the end of that so if you're a free market person you need to go but a lot of engineering went into this see i just went over a huge bump you didn't even feel it in this thing that's what they used to do when they took people out for a road test they'd find a terrible stretch of road you know and they'd go in the customer's car and here drive the packet over the same stretch of road and that sold this torsion bar suspension system in fact they used that on all packards of the late 50s after 55 except the base model the clipper i think uh i think the base model still had coils and whatnot but this thing is fabulous smiling i think just makes me smile it literally floats along but you know it's not it's not that body floaty feeling you get like a lot of cars in the 50s because the torsion bars really uh really work really keep the car planted and level see when i hit the brake you'll see the front end start to go down and then hold its position and then come up a half an inch or so like right here there you go and it's pretty fast for the 50s i mean two four-barrel carburetors was impressive well still is but just loves the gasoline i don't know if it's conveying how smoothly it rides but it really is it's just it's amazing people get in this car and they can't believe it the caribbean of 55 was only available as a convertible they did make a caribbean hard top for 56 and that was pretty much the end of it by 57 it was the studebaker packard hall it was all over the place this is the last year but but for 50 some odd years one of the greatest cars ever built and you can you could get four in this front seat easily and four in the back and remain level i think this car's got 128 000 miles on it meets the perfect california car and if you like buying your cars by the pound this baby's the way to go what'd i pay for this thing uh i paid about uh three bucks a pound for this car i think i paid 18 000 for it back in the 80s it was a collector car even then but they really haven't gone up the way other cars have i mean i think the best one in the world is probably still under 100 000 which is a lot of money i'm not i don't mean it that way i just mean compared to duesenbergs cabo lagos you know all other cars other cars like that i'm guessing most of you have never heard of this kind of torsion bar suspension so i thought it might be interesting to point it out to you i hope i did a good job explaining it you can look it up google it and it'll explain a little bit better but it's fascinating you know it's just interesting to find some technical innovation like this which seemed so brilliant at the time it didn't catch on with a lot of other car companies you know california is kind of a pain to live in because of the taxes and it's so expensive and the price of gas but when you got a nice convertible like this in a beautiful california day kind of makes it all worthwhile so anyway i hope you enjoyed this little look at a piece of uh technology that i think has been lost to the generations it was brilliant when it came out it's still brilliant today still works perfectly well you know it's uh it's just an amazing car and this torture bar suspension was really just a fascinating innovation i'm surprised more people didn't license it or try to buy it but anyway thanks for uh thanks for coming on this little ride along i know it's a pain doing these things during the pandemic and we're trying to keep them coming every week so every day i go in the garage and i grab something and we kind of shoot off the top of her head so if i got some of my facts wrong i apologize but i thought you'd just like to see it so see you guys next week [Music] uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 696,482

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, Packard, Caribbean, 50s cars, convertible, California car, American made, made in America, made in USA, land yachts, classic cars, big car, cathedral tail lights

Id: twiqImVwNBE

Length: 27min 26sec (1646 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020