This is the 1948 Packard Super Eight “Yacht” designed for Louis Réard, the inventor of the bikini swimsuit. The car toured France and much of Europe with bikini-clad models in the back to promote the controversial new swimwear design.
This became one of the most famous custom cars in France during the late-1940s and into the 1950s, and Réard would keep it in his private collection until 1976. It’s now being offered for sale for only the third time in its life.
Fast Facts – Louis Réard’s Packard Super Eight “Yacht”
- This 1948 Packard Super Eight “Land Yacht” was designed for Louis Réard, the inventor of the bikini, to promote the controversial swimwear across Europe. Created by coachbuilder Henri Chapron, it featured nautical-themed design elements, such as portholes, navigation lights, and a rear deck for models to showcase the bikini.
- Louis Réard’s marketing brilliance included using the Packard Land Yacht to attract attention and solidify the bikini’s place in fashion history. He famously claimed a bikini wasn’t genuine unless it could pass through a wedding ring, ensuring its iconic status and overshadowing rival Jacques Heim’s similar swimwear designs.
- Originally based on a 1937 Packard Super Eight with a straight-eight engine, the car’s transformation into the “Land Yacht” included elaborate customizations like a bow-shaped front and a luxurious rear deck. Réard personally oversaw its design, drawing on his own background as an automotive engineer turned fashion innovator.
- The Land Yacht remained in Réard’s personal collection until 1976 and has since had only two other owners. Now well-preserved, the car is set to be auctioned by Artcurial in Paris with an estimated value of €250,000–€350,000 ($257,000–$360,000 USD). It remains a unique piece of fashion and automotive history.
How Did The Bikini Get Its Name ?
The modern bikini made its debut in 1946, named after the Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific where nuclear weapons testing was happening. The bikini swimsuit would be no less explosive in its impact, fundamentally shocking many in Europe at the time.
This is a famous image of Louis Réard, the designer of the bikini swimsuit, next to his most famous creation. Image courtesy of the Louis Réard Family Archive.
The choice of name would be a stroke of marketing genius by Louis Réard, who was at that time embroiled in a battle with fellow French designer Jacques Heim who was also producing bikini-style swimwear.
Ultimately it would be Réard who would win out, and it was largely due to his innate ability to attract a great deal of national and international attention on what was actually a rather modest marketing budget.
When Heim hired a skywriter to emblazon “the world’s smallest bathing suit” above the wealthy beach resorts of Saint Tropez, Réard fired back by hiring his own skywriter to place his comeback line “smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world” above the resorts of the French Riviera.
Micheline Bernardini And The Piscine Molitor
Initially, no models would wear the bikini in public and so Réard hired a 19-year-old nude dancer named Micheline Bernardini from the Casino de Paris to debut the design on the 5th of July 1946 at the Piscine Molitor, a fashionable public pool in Paris at the time.
This debut attracted much media attention and no small amount of controversy. Réard realized that people needed to see the bikini for themselves, in person, so he commissioned the famous French coachbuilder Henri Chapron to build him a “Land Yacht” that would allow him to send a team of women in bikinis on the road across France – initially following the world famous Tour de France.
The Louis Réard Land Yacht became so famous that models were made of it, these original models are now highly collectible.
Louis Réard And His Packard Land Yacht
An inline-six cylinder Hotchkiss was going to be used, however it soon became clear that it would lack sufficient power for the considerable mass of the newly modified bodywork. As a result, the two men agreed that a straight-eight powered 1937 Packard Super Eight would be used.
Louis Réard took a great deal of interest in the redesign of the car, perhaps unsurprisingly as he had originally been an automotive engineer himself until 1940. At that point he would take over his mother’s successful lingerie business in Folies Bergère in Paris, and become a successful clothing designer in his own right.
Henri Chapron and his team did a remarkable job on the Packard Super Eight, turning it into an imposing luxury yacht on wheels with a bow up front, portholes down the side, flags, navigation lights, a boat-like stern, and perhaps most importantly, an open deck area in the rear where the bikini-clad models would wave as the vehicle passed by.
Réard’s Land Yacht became well-known in France and was featured in period newspapers and magazines extensively. It was around this time that he came up with what was probably his most famous advertising slogan, insisting that a two-piece swimsuit wasn’t a genuine bikini “unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring.”
Today, very few outside of the fashion industry have ever heard of Jacques Heim or his swimsuit, but almost everyone in the world knows what a bikini is, and for decades in France Louis Réard was a household name.
The Louis Réard Bikini Land Yacht: Now For Sale
The 1948 Packard Super Eight “Land Yacht” envisaged by Louis Réard and made a reality by Henri Chapron is now being offered up for public sale.
That rear open deck is where one or more bikini-clad models would wave to spectators as the car passed by.
Réard would keep this unusual car in his personal collection for decades, right the way through until 1976 when it was bought by Jacques Vincent, a famous collector. He would keep the car until 2023 and it remains in remarkably well-preserved condition.
The car is now due to roll across the auction block with Artcurial in Paris in early February. It has a price guide of €250,000 – €350,000 or approximately $257,000 – $360,000 USD. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Artcurial
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
