Packard Super Eight

Packard Super Eight
1937 Packard Super Eight
Overview
Manufacturer	Packard
Production	1939–1951
Assembly	Packard Automotive Plant, Detroit, Michigan, United States
Body and chassis
Body style	2-door coupé 2-door convertible 4-door sedan
Layout	Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive
Related	Packard Station Sedan
Dimensions
Wheelbase	127 in (3,226 mm) (1939) 120 in (3,048 mm) (1946) 127 in (3,226 mm) (1949)
Length	208 in (5,283 mm) (1946)
Chronology
Predecessor	Packard 180
Successor	Packard 400 Patrician

Packard Super Eight was the name given to the larger of the two eight-cylinder luxury automobiles produced by the Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan. It shared frames and some body types with the top model Packard Twelve. Following the discontinuation of the Seventeenth Series Packard Twelve after the 1939 model year, a new Super Eight One-Eighty was derived from the Super Eight as the new top car range. The Super Eight was renamed the Packard Super Eight One-Sixty. These two models shared most mechanical components including the 160 HP straight Eight engine.

After 1942, Packard concentrated on the new Clipper styling that was developed for an upper-class sedan the previous year. There were Super Clippers and Custom Super Clipper in the One-Sixty and One-Eighty tradition until 1947. After a heavy facelift, the name Clipper was dropped. The most senior Super Eight One-Eighty became the Custom Eight, while its slightly lower-priced sibling, the Super Eight One-Sixty, once again became simply the Super Eight. Clipper Custom Super Eights and Custom Eights were very close relatives to their respective Super models, distinguished outside by the lack of an eggcrate grille and small rear chrome trim moulding under t he trunk lid on Supers. In 1949, a new Super Eight Deluxe was added to the line. This car had also the Custom Eight's eggcrate grille, but not the rear trim.

The entire range of Packard's motorcars was renamed for the 1951 model year (twenty-fourth series), when the Super Eight was renamed 400.

In popular culture

A green 1939 Super Eight is the titular vehicle in Anton Myrer's 1978 novel The Last Convertible and its 1979 television miniseries adaptation.

A yellow 1949 convertible was used in the Back to the Future franchise as Doc Brown's car.

• 
  1937 Packard Fifteenth Series Super Eight 1502 Convertible Sedan, formerly belonging to Carol II of Romania
• 
  1937 Packard Fifteenth Series Super Eight 1502 Touring Limousine
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  1939 Packard Seventeenth Series Super Eight 1705 1270 Touring Limousine
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  1939 Packard Seventeenth Series Super Eight Touring Limousine
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  1940 Packard Eighteenth Series Super Eight One-Sixty 4-Door Touring Sedan
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  1948 Packard Super Eight Deluxe 4-Door Sedan
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  1949 Packard Super Eight Convertible