Packard

'Ask the man who owns one' — Packard's slogan captured its standing as America's aristocrat, the marque that outsold and often out-engineered Cadillac through the classic era. The Twelve of the 1930s crowned its range with a silken 7.3-litre V12 beneath coachwork from Dietrich and LeBaron at their finest, and senior pre-war Packards remain CCCA Full Classics and concours mainstays. The postwar slide into the 1958 marque's death only sharpened the pathos — but the great Twelves and Super Eights keep Packard permanently in the front rank of American collecting.