A while back Tom Taylor owned two Packards: a 1953 300 convertible and a 1954 Pacific two-door hardtop. A four-door sedan would complete his early ‘50s collection--all body styles represented. But how to find a sedan in the same league as a convertible and a hardtop, both concours-level winners? Tom pulled it off, acquiring this super-rare, 1954 Packard Patrician.

“I found it through an ad in one of the Packard Club magazines,” said Tom. “I wouldn’t say it’s been totally restored, but it’s been repainted and had a lot of things done to it, so it’s in good shape. What really caught my eye, though, was the serial number. It’s the number one car. It’s the first car built in ’54. It’s 001. And it has every option they offered.

“We know it came off the assembly line with a Pacific and a Caribbean and the three cars were shipped to New York for a photo shoot in Times Square for the brochure.”

When Tom bought the car it was still on the East Coast and, coincidentally, had been owned for a time by Dwight Heinmuller of Heinmuller Packard Parts in Maryland, who provided some of the car’s history.

“Heinmuller read an ad by someone offering a ’53 Packard Executive, a seven passenger, which was fairly rare. He went to look and actually bought it. The seller then said, ‘I’ve got this Patrician too; do you want to look at it?’ What attracted him to this car was that it had factory air, which he had never seen before. They negotiated, Heinmuller took it home, and then discovered it was the number one car.”

The early air conditioning units were mounted in the trunk, with clear plastic vent tubes projecting up to the car’s roof; air inlets were mounted on the top of the rear fenders.

And the driver’s controls mounted just above the steering column, an apparent afterthought.

This Patrician has been restored to the point that it is very much like a new car. The interior has been reupholstered using the correct material, but Tom noticed the color doesn’t exactly match the brochure photo.

“It’s just like the original, except it is now gray instead of blue,” said Tom. “Most of the ‘54 Patricians had interiors with a different type of cloth, but this is the material they used in ’53. The parts book lists this material for ’54 also, but I don’t think very many of them were made that way, maybe just the early ‘54s.”

The Patrician’s copper-colored 359 cubic inch engine is a descendant of 1948’s 327 which was installed in Packard’s 22nd Series Super Eight. Its aluminum alloy cylinder head supplied a compression ration of 8.7:1 the highest in the industry. At 212 horsepower, the L-head motor was reasonably competitive, just behind the Chrysler Newport Deluxe (235 hp) and Cadillac (230 hp) but ahead of Lincoln (205 hp).

Tom’s favorite times with the Patrician have been taking it to car shows with his other Packards. Although the 300 convertible draws its share of attention, people really stop and take notice when they see all three “Chrome Era” Packards shown together.