1946 Packard Custom Super Clipper Eight Club Sedan - Model 1625 🇮🇹

“America’s No. 1 Glamour Car!”,  the advertising headline read as the first post-war Packards entered the market. Packard was keen to capture back their luxury customers. The cars that would carry Packard into this new era were the pre-war “Clippers”. Gone were the old standard names of One-Twenty, Super Eight, One-Sixty or One-Eighty. The soft rounded bodies that appeared just before the war and dubbed Clipper would become the entire product line in 1946.

The base line Clipper Six was followed by the Clipper Standard and Deluxe Eight, then a step up to the Super Clipper Eight and finally at the top of the line the Custom Super Clipper Eight. This dizzying array of models didn’t all hit the market at once. Packard got all the baseline cars in production by April 1946 followed by the Super Eights in May and the rest of the offerings in June. The Super Clipper and Custom Super Clipper rolled down the same assembly line sharing the same 127 inch chassis, the same bodies and the same outside dimensions. The only difference was in the badging and the plushiness of the interior.

Super and Custom Super each got the exceptional 356 cubic inch inline-eight cylinder engine, another carryover from pre-war. Packard had yet to offer an automatic transmission, unlike their major rival Cadillac.

Packard and Cadillac ran neck-and-neck in the sales race in 1946. Packard edged out their crosstown competitor by just 1,579 cars to claim 14th in the industry rankings.