Let us completely forget the stereotype that Packard only built boring cars for wealthy bankers and politicians.
In the early fifties the executives at Packard were sweating bullets. Chevrolet had just shocked the entire automotive world with the fiberglass Corvette. Packard was bleeding cash and losing their audience. They desperately needed a halo car to prove they were not a dead brand walking.
So they hired the Mitchell Bentley Corporation to build this absolute masterpiece.
They molded the body entirely out of fiberglass just like the Corvette. It was incredibly low and sleek with a one piece windshield that looked like it came off a fighter plane.
But the true madness of the Panther is what hides under that long sloping hood.
They did not use a lightweight modern V8 engine. Instead the mad scientists at Packard took their heaviest and most archaic engine design which was a massive three hundred fifty nine cubic inch flathead straight eight. It was a literal cast iron dinosaur. But to make it run like a modern race car they bolted a screaming McCulloch centrifugal supercharger directly to it.
They took this bizarre combination of pre war iron and space age fiberglass down to the beaches of Florida. They held the throttle wide open and clocked the car at an unbelievable one hundred thirty one miles per hour on wet sand. It was so fast they officially added Daytona to the name.
Tragically the company was going broke so fast that they could never put the Panther into mass production. They only built exactly four of these cars. It is a gorgeous bittersweet reminder of an American luxury giant going out swinging.
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