The collector car market, in your inbox
Classic car news, hand-picked vehicles, and auction coverage. Choose what lands in your inbox.
Few cars wear the end of an era as sweetly as this one. Broad Arrow Auctions will offer a 1957 Packard Clipper Country Sedan as Lot 103 at The Audrain Auction 2026, a restored wagon finished in Lilac over Arctic White that represents one of the last cars to carry a nameplate Packard had used since 1899. Broad Arrow lists the estimate as available upon request, and the car comes from the Maine Motorland Collection.
A Packard Built In South Bend
When Packard bought Studebaker in 1954, the plan was a full-line independent that could stand up to Detroit's Big Three. By 1957 that plan had run out of road. Production was consolidated in South Bend, and the Clipper became, in practical terms, a Studebaker President wearing Packard jewelry: a fine-mesh grille, bumper guards with the famous Dagmar tips, and reworked rear quarters that carried Packard taillamps.
The lineup was tiny. Just two models were offered, and the Country Sedan wagon was the scarcer of the pair. Broad Arrow says only 869 were built, compared with 3,940 of the Town Sedan. It rides a 116.5-inch wheelbase and uses a 289-cubic-inch V8 with the three-speed Flight-O-Matic automatic. If you want the longer story of the marque's glory years, our look at a restored 1955 Packard Patrician and the 1947 Packard Custom Super Clipper shows how far the brand traveled from its prewar prestige.
The Car Itself
Chassis 57L3011 received a full rotisserie restoration in 2002 from Bob Schmidt, the postwar Packard specialist who curated the '57 Heaven Museum collection in Branson, Missouri. The car stayed in that collection until 2009. The color story is pure 1957: Lilac paint over Arctic White, with a linen tweed and lilac vinyl interior and a matching lilac steering wheel. Gold-finished Packard brightwork, a roof rack, full wheel covers, and wide whitewalls round out the look.
Broad Arrow describes it as a high-quality restoration, and the pitch is easy to follow. Few of these final wagons survive in any condition, and fewer still look like this. It is also a very different kind of Studebaker-Packard story from the sporty ones, like the 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk we featured earlier.
What The Market Says
Because this Clipper is a Studebaker underneath, it helps to check both families on Hagerty's Valuation Tools. For the 1957 Clipper, the Price Guide puts a #3 Good-condition example at roughly $13,000, with values up about 20 percent over the past year and nearly 29 percent over three years. Hagerty counts 12 public auction sales in the last three years, ranging from about $6,700 to a high of $74,250, and the most recent was a $13,500 sale on Bring a Trailer in March 2026. That spread shows how much a top-tier restoration, rare body style, and strong color can matter on a car this scarce. Hagerty's Clipper listing shows a supercharged 275-horsepower 289 option; the Broad Arrow catalog does not say whether this wagon has it.
The 1957 Studebaker President gives useful context. A #3 Good club sedan sits around $13,200, up about 10 percent over the year, yet the model's top auction result in three years was $69,300 for a Silver Hawk coupe at Barrett-Jackson in January 2026. Across 1955 to 1958 Presidents, Hagerty tracked 10 sales in the past 12 months at an average of roughly $32,500, and Speedster hardtops brought $47,250 and $65,100 this year. Station wagons are a different niche from those performance-minded coupes, so a wagon like this one is likely to be judged on rarity and presentation more than on what the Presidents are doing.
Why It Will Draw A Crowd
Broad Arrow has been a regular stop for interesting collections, as in the Retro Motors Collection at the Chattanooga Auction. Lot 103 fits that pattern: a low-production wagon, an unusual factory pairing of colors, and a nameplate whose story ended with this model year. Whether it sells near the Clipper averages or well past them, it should be one of the more talked-about cars at Audrain.
See the full photo gallery and catalog details for Lot 103 at Broad Arrow Auctions.
