---- you wrote:
> I've put up a Web page with images so you can see what I'm talking
> about.
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~rapilje/cars.html
>
> This talk about the Plymouth Belmont and Dodge Granada got me to
> wondering again about an article title "Packard Maps Sensational
> Comeback" in ans issue of CARS Magazine I have that was published in May
> of 1953.
>
> There's a sketch of a car on the first page of the article (see Web
> page) that's labeled "Sketch from design section reveals lines along
> which Packard is thinking." The second I saw that sketch I thought,
> "that isn't a Packard, that's the Plymouth Belmont!" which, of course,
> was introduced the following year, in 1954.
I have to agree with that. Obviously the Packard cusped
grille is different, but the body lines and those deep
Belmontesque headlights support your thesis well.
> That Briggs, as "mopar2ya@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" wrote, and not Ghia produced
> this car in their Advanced Design facilities when they were supplying
> bodies to Packard and Hudson before Chrysler took over
leads me to
> wonder again whether the car was produced for Packard, who was beginning
> to suffer badly at that point, and who might not have been able to
> couldn't afford the finished product, leading Briggs to offer it to
> Chrysler, who accepted it and displayed it (and the Granada -- it never
> occurred to me until you pointed it out how much that car looks like the
> Panthers) as a Plymouth concept car.
It's also possible that Chrysler simply preempted the
Belmont project when they bought Briggs...
I believe the Granada was done by Creative Industries,
who also did the Panther. Dick Teague has always been
credited with the Panther (and I'm sure rightly so) but
in many ways Maury Baldwin's '55 Plymouth design could
be said to look more like a smaller '55 Packard/Clipper
than, say, a smaller '55 Windsor... ...at the very least
Teague, Baldwin, and whoever did the '55 Mercury (Bill
Schmidt?) shared similar visions of the future...
> The sketch in the magazine, to me at least, looks amazingly like the
> Belmont. And both the Belmont and Granada would have looked very
> comfortable sporting Packard-type grilles.
Unquestionably.
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