Well I wasn’t present for the 1956 year but it was an interesting year. Lincoln and Continental were separate makes and interestingly enough the Clipper (a model of Packard) tried ‘independence’ on for size. Oh…and there were some very cool show cars.
The finished out with Chevy and Ford way out in front with 1,567,117 and 1,408,487 – respectively. They were followed over 500,oo behind, were Buick with 573,024, Plymouth with 571,634 and Oldsmobile with 485,458. The rest of the field looked like this:
Pontiac – 405,730
Mercury – 327,943
Dodge – 240,686
Cadillac – 154, 577
Chrysler – 128,322
DeSoto – 109,442
Nash – 83,420
Studebaker – 69,593
Lincoln – 50,322
Hudson – 22,588
Clipper – 18,482 (out paced Packard by nearly 8,000 cars)
Imperial – 10,684
Packard – 10,353
Metropolitan – 9,0868
Continental – 2,550
Here is an ad for a 1956 Clippard Super…Looks alot like…>>>
…this 1955 Packard Clipper…doesn’t it?
1956 Show Cars were really hot looking.
1956 Centurion by Buick. Come on!!! Warp speed Mr. Sulu!!
Pontiac was in the game with their 1956 Pontiac Club de Mer show car. I like it!!!
What? A Parkard you say?!!!! Yup this was the Predictor (name only would have killed this model). But just think how cool that would have been!!!!
A few other things were happening in 1956 like:
– Studebaker’s Goldenhawk was given Packard’s 352 cid V8
– American Motors developed a 200 pound air-cooled V4 engine
– Plymouth ran a gas-turbine car from New Your to L.A.
It’s ugly!!!
Thanks for reading.
Tim
