The Packard Super Eight is a 2-door coupé / 2-door Convertible (car) / convertible / 4-door Sedan (automobile) / sedan / 4-door station wagon from Packard, built from 1933 to 1951, when streamlining and independent suspension were arriving together. Under the bonnet: 384.4 cuin I8.
The background
The Packard Super Eight was 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. The 1933–1936 Packard Super Eight was a big classic. In 1937, it was reduced to a smaller and lighter design. Following the discontinuation of the Sixteenth Series Twelve after the 1939 model year, a new Custom Super Eight One-Eighty was derived from the Super Eight as the new top car range. The Super Eight was renamed the Super Eight One-Sixty starting a naming convention change in 1940.
These two models shared most mechanical components including the 160 HP straight Eight engine and continued to be regarded as the Senior Packard. 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. For 1948 the most senior Custom Super Eight One-Eighty became the Custom Super Eight, while its slightly lower-priced sibling, the Super Eight One-Sixty, once again became simply the Super Eight with the more modestly priced Eight with five body styles including the Packard Station Sedan. 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 the trunk lid on Supers. In 1949, a new Super Eight Deluxe was add
The engineering
Power comes from 384.4 cuin I8. It shifts through a 3-speed manual. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. The wheelbase is 127 in (1939) / 120 in (1946). These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Packard Eight; its successor was the Packard 300 / Cavalier; assembly was at Packard Automotive Plant, Detroit, Michigan, United States. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Bugatti Type 57, the Chevrolet Suburban, the Mercedes-Benz W21 — show what else the money bought that year. Its Packard stablemates include the Packard 160 and the Packard 180.
What it costs now
There is no federal ownership record for the Packard Super Eight — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.