ClassicCar

At best, trying to estimate the worth of an antique car is a crap shoot. Especially when one has a skimpy description of it.



You might want to look on Ebay to see if there are any similar ones for sale, then follow the auction to see what's actually paid for it, in the end. If the Ebay car's in better shape than yours, you can mentally deduct from the total....and vice versa. Another way would be to go to a magazine like Hemmings Motor News that's printed for old-car enthusiasts (online at www.Hemmings.com) to see if there's anything for sale of "your" era, and see what's being asked for it. Yet another way would be to type "for sale 1940 Packard" in your search engine (like Google) to find any ads out there on the internet, and to see what these folks are asking. Remember, of course, that some of these cars will be in "mint" condition so they might bring $20,000, whereas yours might be more in the $2,000 range.



Cars of that era aren't bought and sold every day like modern-day cars, so it is very hard to discover any sort of pricing pattern for them. It all depends on the condition, and how many people are looking to buy that particular make, year, model and body style. (You didn't mention body style; if it's a 4-door sedan of the "basic" model, it would be worth less than if it's a convertible coupe of the premium model, for example.)

If you could give a better description of the car (2-door? 4-door?), maybe the serial number, and maybe post a photo here (or tell us where on the internet we might see one), possibly someone could give you a ballpark estimate. If your dad paid that much and called it a "steal", then possibly you have a rare one. But right now, all we know is that it's a 1940 Packard of some sort, with some chipped paint, that won't run!