(first posted 4/17/2017) The tragic story of the downfall of Packard has been told many times. In this Forgotten Future installment, we look at the Packard future that almost came to pass.
In the early 1950s, Packard was facing multiple headwinds. The end of the post-World War II seller’s market led to a large price war in 1953 and 1954 which Packard, with its higher per-unit costs, was ill-equipped to compete. Simultaneously, the end of the Korean War meant the cancellation of many large military contracts, which were largely responsible for keeping Packard (and the rest of the independent automakers) afloat at the time. Packard’s limited engineering resources meant that they were always playing catch-up with the Big 3 on innovations like automatic transmissions, hardtop roofs, and V8 engines. And the lower-priced Clipper models were insufficiently differentiated from the senior Packard line, tarnishing the luster of the entire Packard brand.
By 1954, things were dire for all the independents. Hudson and Nash merged to form American Motors, and Studebaker soon merged with Packard in the same year. In 1955, the vehicle lineup from the Big 3 was almost entirely all-new, with the industry then on a 3-year product refresh cycle. Packard was still selling mildly warmed-over models from 1951. Jim Nance, president of Studebaker-Packard, was desperate to release all-new Packards in 1955, but couldn’t swing the estimated $25 million it would cost, so the redesign got pushed off to 1956.
Losses continued to mount at S-P in 1956, so the all-new Packards got pushed off to 1957. By mid-1956, Studebaker-Packard was facing liquidation, only to be saved by a last-minute “management agreement” with aircraft engine maker Curtiss-Wright (really a thinly veiled acquisition, but with no money changing hands).
At this point, rising red ink ceased all Packard production in Detroit, and the plants were slated to be sold. Packard assembly had shifted to South Bend, and the 1957 and 58 Packards ended up being mildly facelifted Studebakers. Not surprisingly, these “Packabakers,” which were created to fulfill contractual obligations with Packard dealers as much as anything else, flopped in the market.
1956 Packard Predictor Concept
But this is all well-trod ancient history. The Forgotten Future part of this story starts with the 1956 Packard Predictor, a concept built by Ghia, created to drum up some interest in the Packard brand (since there was little actual excitement in the showroom).
1956 Packard Predictor Concept
Packard never really had a proper logo, so the “Circle V” symbol on port hole windows was Dick Teague’s attempt to create a timeless symbol for Packard, like the three-pointed star was for Mercedes. The Predictor would prove to be very influential (just not for Packard), obviously influencing the design of future Edsel and Lincoln models.
1957 Packard Clipper Rendering
First up, the 1957 junior-line Clipper, which originally was to have been built on a facelifted version of the 1951 body. Notice the wide “fish mouth” grille, which eventually did find its way to the 1958 Studebaker-based Packards.
1957 Clipper clay model
Eventually, the decision to use the carryover platform for the Clipper was dropped, and it was decided that the Clipper would share the same all-new platform as the 1957 senior Packards. The clay model above shows what this Clipper might have looked like.
1957 Clipper styling buck
Work on the 1957 Clipper had made it all the way to the styling buck phase, as shown above. You can clearly see the family resemblance to the 1956 Clipper, with the hooded headlights and wide, horizontal barred grille with a large wheel in the center.
Here we see the 1957 Clipper being benchmarked against a 1956 Oldsmobile. While the Clipper appears to be lower and wider than the Olds, it certainly isn’t more attractive. Notice that the Clipper styling buck does not appear to have a steering wheel, or an interior.
Meanwhile, work continued afoot on the 1957 Senior Packards, shown in a sketch above. Packard tried to incorporate as many of the Predictor styling cues as they could, leaving out some of the more expensive features like the hidden headlights and T-top roof.
The main differentiators from the Clipper would have been the vertical grille section, quad headlights, fully skirted wheels, and the lack of leading front fender fins.
1957 Packard clay model
The clay model above shows how Dick Teague tried to blend some of the styling cues of the Predictor concept with a traditional-shaped Packard grille. Realize that Edsel was still under wraps at this point, so it is uncertain how aware Ford was of its styling, which ended up looking very similar.
1957 Packard clay model
This four-door clay looks a lot like the then-forthcoming 1958-60 Lincolns, especially in the roofline. I for one like the exaggerated “cathedral” taillights, and the way the grille lines continue around the side and back of the car.
Above is a scale model of the 1957 Packard 400, which gives you a pretty good idea of what a fully trimmed example would have looked like. The vertical grille in the middle wasn’t actually a grille at all, but a spring-loaded vertical bumper.
“Black Bess,” only known prototype 1957 Packard
Unlike the 57 Clipper, the 1957 Packard actually made it as far as a roadworthy car. One test mule was made, named “Black Bess” (because of its all-black paint and blackwall tires). The build quality of Black Bess was far too rough to be considered a proper prototype, but at this point it is safe to say that the look would have been locked in. I don’t even think the Packard engineers were very enthralled with their efforts: When the 1957 Packard program was shut down, Black Bess was cut up and destroyed.
So would these cars have saved Packard? Sadly, I think not. By the 1950s, Packard cars had developed a reputation for being somewhat stodgy, and these very conservative (by 1950s standards) designs would have done little to change that perception. The fact that the car that these Packard concepts most closely resembled (the 1958-60 Lincoln) also flopped in the market is a pretty good indicator that these would have seen the same fate.
Related Reading:
Curbside Classic: 1955 Packard Four Hundred – Bravely Facing Forward
Curbside Classic: 1956 Packard Patrician – Please Proceed to The Lifeboats
Curbside Classic: 1958 Packard Hardtop -The Last Gasp
References:
http://www.deansgarage.com/2012/last-days-in-the-packard-bunker-a-clay-modelers-memories/
https://www.hemmings.com/magazine/hcc/2012/10/Inside-Packard-Styling—1951-1956/3717551.html
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1957-and-1958-packard-concept-cars2.htm
It is not hard to find some 1964 Olds Ninety-Eight and Buick Electra in the rear 3/4 view of the 1957 Clay Model taken on the 19th.
Black Bess looks Russian. No small irony as the Russians had been copying previous Packards.
In early 1955 Bill Schmidt – Lincoln Studio Head and Futura stylist – joined S-P. Schmidt worked with Teague and Stan Thorwaldsen on the Predictor, which probably explains the FoMoCo traces.
Inspired series Tom. More please.
Don, you are correct. The Packard Predictor’s thin, vertical grill was actually taken from the Edsel, which was under development at Ford. The Predictor debuted before the Edsel was released, forcing Roy Brown to change the Edsel grill design at the last moment to the horse collar that it ended up with.
The thin vertical grille at Ford goes all the way back to the Lincoln Cavalier in the very early 1950s (which I think never went past the model stage).
Yup. You are right. Brown had a similar grill on the Edsel when the Predictor came out.
Edsel’s grille was from Packard. Ford hired Packard’s designers as Packard was going broke. It was suggested that you couldn’t go anywhere at Ford unless you came from Packard.
Take away that vertical grille on the Predictor, and look at the front of the car. Maybe Chevy ‘borrowed’ it for the 63-67 Corvettes?
It is possible, although a lot of designers were working towards these more horizontal type designs around this time.
As far as the Edsel theft… that I know from interviewing one of the Edsel studio designers many years ago.
They went to Lincoln from Packard which explains the Packard styling influence on Lincoln and Mercury!
The drawings of the red and dark green 2 door hardtop look to me to be of cars based on an aborted idea for Packard to buy 1956 Lincoln bodies from Ford. Ford wasn’t interested and that was that.
The other cars seem to have been from the plan for a new 1957 structure that would serve both Studebaker and Packard. But without money for new models, that plan fizzled too.
I think these prototypes at least prove that new Packards were planned. The 57 and 58 production cars were considered temporarily placeholders until the new models could be built. But once Curtis Wright took over, there was no longer any realistic intention to invest in new models, but to “liberate” Studebaker’s defense business.
The more I have read about Studebaker Packard the more convinced I have become that James Nance (who had no prior experience in the auto industry) was completely out of his depth.
The Packard Predictor is alive and well at the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend. It is a running, driving car and is really impressive in person.
There is a great book that tells this story very well: https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Packard-Motor-Car-Company/dp/0804731659
Really, the fall of Packard is due to bad luck and poor timing as much as anything else. From the forced purchase of the Conner Avenue assembly plant when they could ill afford it (due to body supplier Briggs being bought by Chrysler) to the fact that Ike’s defense secretary was a former GM man who directed most of the defense contracts to GM, Packard really couldn’t get a break.
I just read that book recently, and if I have the time I might do a quick review/summary of it.
My take? Packard was mostly doomed from the end of the war. They completely missed the critical moment (1949) when everyone brought out all-new cars and right at the end of the seller’s market. The “bathtub” Packards were a huge failure, and mistake. They absolutely needed an all-new car in ’49, and boo-hoo if their ’41 dies weren’t yet amortized. That’s the kind of overly-conservative thinking rife at Packard and that will destroy a company. They were plenty flush after the war to be able to invest in an all-new body.
But that wasn’t all of it. Packard had moved too far to the middle of the market in the late 30s in order to compete with the mid-range brands, leaving the top of the market for Cadillac to gobble up. Which they did, quite happily.
From that point on (1949), Packard was utterly doomed. Everything that happened thereafter is just watching a slow-motion train wreck, even though Packard’s conservative finances meant they weren’t yet a true financial disaster.
I agree with Jim that Nance was a bad choice. Dynamic, yes. But too much learning curve. They should have hired the best GM executive they could steal.
Packard’s image was already very damaged from the war on, and they only sold to their ever dwindling base of loyal followers. Resale values were bad, which turned conquest buyers off, as well as the iffy styling, no V8, etc…
I always hear these comments about poor Packard getting screwed by merging with Studebaker and not realizing what an actual mess Studebaker was. But this book had me convinced that it was rather the other way around. Packard was absolutely a dead brand (barely) walking at the time of the merger, whereas Studebaker still had some potential in it, as was shown during the Lark’s early years. never mind the whole Connor Road fiasco.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m utterly convinced that both these companies were destined to fail, but Packard’s failure was even more inevitable and obvious. What did Studebaker get from the merger? Very little, except the defense business, which is what C-W was interested in mostly anyway.
By 1956 Curtiss Wright was doomed as well. What a combination. CW dominated the large piston aircraft engine market while Pratt and Whitney had moved on to jets. CW powered Constellation and DC-7 production would be replaced by P&W powered 707 and DC-8 jetliners in just a couple of years. The military had already moved on.
“Curtiss-Wright emerged from World War II in a sound economic state, but its leaders were unsure of the direction the corporation should take. The new jet-engine technology was quickly supplanting the internal combustion reciprocating engines Curtiss-Wright had been producing during the war. An internal battle erupted between weak and indecisive managers who favored the use of profits to expand engine research and development versus aggressive stockholders who wanted a dividend. The victory of the stockholders effectively put Curtiss-Wright on the path to decline.”
-Curtiss-Wright: Greatness and Decline. By Louis R. Eltscher and Edward M. Young
For some odd reason I got that book from the library and read it too. What it missed was the design angle. The “bathtub” Packards were prewar designs with the front and rear fenders blended together. Not nearly up to postwar style. The only one I remember was one I looked at closely as a little kid, owned by the parish priest. Even then I saw that it was a bizarre huge balloon of a car. In fact, the predicted closed wheels rounded bathtub designs seen in lots of futurist 1940 era drawings did not fly. Nash and Hudson were also victims of this kind of prewar futurism. And you can see it continuing in the pictured Packard designs.
The real postwar Packards also had a design problem of having a high belt line and being tall overall. Plus they continued a rear fender shape that was over with a few years earlier in 1949 with the Ford “shoebox” design. Some really good designers and really good management might have made things work, but they didn’t have that. Plus all the defense contract and steel rationing and just being smaller so investments in a V8 or whatever were spread over far fewer cars etc.
But if everything lined up for them and they demonstrated clear advantages over every other middle/upper price cars maybe they could have grown and succeeded. Didn’t happen.
Now I guess I have to go to the Packard Museum I just read about somewhere. http://www.packardmuseum.org/
The proposed 1957 models looked like 1955.
Packard’s two biggest mistakes made were made before the war. The first was focusing its energy on the medium-price market, and treating the “senior” cars as an after-thought. Management forgot that the One-Twenty and One-Ten sold because of prestige of the senior cars.
The second big mistake was completely out-sourcing its body business to Briggs in the early 1940s. That was a disaster with a long fuse.
Nance came along and, even with his limited auto industry experience, realized that these were two huge mistakes. Unfortunately, solving these two problems would have taxed the talents of even the most experienced executive. On top of addressing these problems, he had to come up with the money for an all-new new V-8 engine.
A couple good points that I’ll address here rather than in a long catchall post:
The first was focusing its energy on the medium-price market, and treating the “senior” cars as an after-thought. Management forgot that the One-Twenty and One-Ten sold because of prestige of the senior cars.
In the 30s, the luxury brands that survived had a cheap line. Cadillac had LaSalle, Lincoln had Zephyr. It was a matter of survival for Packard to have a cheap line, at that time.
The second big mistake was completely out-sourcing its body business to Briggs in the early 1940s. That was a disaster with a long fuse.
The Clipper used some very large stampings. In the back of my mind is the thought that Packard had a choice, either invest heavily in new stamping equipment, or subcontract to Briggs. Packard transferred most of it’s bodybuilding equipment to Briggs as part of the deal, so I figure Max Gilman outsourced the bodies because it was the lowest cost way to go, and that lower cost may have been the only way they could afford to get the Clipper into production.
iirc George Christopher came from Buick and always viewed Buick as the competition , not Cadillac. When Gilman was fired and Christopher became President, the focus shifted to the mid-market. The tooling for the senior Packards came up missing at the war’s end. There are stories the tooling was sold to the Russians (pretty well debunked) or that the dies were not properly stored during the war and had rusted. My thought is Christopher sold the senior tooling for scrap during the war to make sure there would be no seniors after the war to interfere with his plan to compete with Buick.
Unfortunately, solving these two problems would have taxed the talents of even the most experienced executive.
The Ward book talks about Nance setting two strategic objectives soon after taking over at Packard in 52:
-Bring bodybuilding in house. Briggs was not doing them any favors in quality or price and Walter Grant was figuring Packard could save millions per year by producing bodies in house….but Packard never had the capital to build it’s own body plant.
-Establish a stand alone mid-market brand, so the Packard brand could be moved up market without giving up the volume the company was getting from the mid-market. Tried this with Clipper, which was never accepted by the market.
The solution to both of these objectives was sitting at the corner of Jefferson and Conner.
Walter Briggs died in late 52. Word must have been on the street by spring of 53 that the Briggs heirs were shopping the company. Meanwhile, Ed Barett was realizing the Hudson Jet was a failure, Hudson had zero product development money left and the only solution to keep the brand alive was a merger with someone.
Hudson was an established mid-market brand, and Hudson owned a body plant, solving both of Nance’s objectives in one stroke: move the Packard body tooling to the Hudson body plant. Close Jefferson and the cars we know as Clippers would have been sold as Hudsons.
Reportedly, Ed Baritt did approach Packard about a merger, and was brushed off. I figure Nance should have seen the opportunity and should not have even waited for Baritt’s approach. Bottom line was that Baritt and Mason signed a letter of intent to merge in June 53, so it was Mason who was dictating merger terms to Packard. Terms which Packard rejected.
Briggs and WW2 were my take as the two biggest factors in Packard’s inevitable demise, as well. Packard was just gearing up with their new 1942 models when the war hit and they had to switch over to defense production. This ensured that after the war was over, their new cars would automatically look old. They compounded the problem after the war with the decision to concentrate on building the less profitable Clipper for the car-starved American consumer when they should have built more of the senior cars to make more money.
The other huge failing was having their car bodies built by Briggs. It was a costly mistake from the start and they had nowhere near enough money to ever be able to rectify the situation.
As Paul accurately put it, Packard was a dead brand walking from 1949 forward. They might have been more solvent than Studebaker, but Studebaker definitely had more survival potential.
Packard’s mistake wasn’t in bringing out the One-Twenty (although the One-Ten WAS a bridge too far). It was allowing the senior models to fade away as the company became an independent version of Buick or Chrysler (Division).
Management forgot that the One-Twenty initially sold because of the glamor and prestige of the senior models.
Imagine if Mercedes-Benz discontinued everything above the E-Class today…it would quickly lose its luster.
Yes, Steve, those luxury brands which survived the Depression were the ones that condescended to sell mid-priced cars. But by World War II, Cadillac dropped the junior cars, Lincoln dropped the senior cars, and Chrysler and Packard continued to sell both. Chrysler, the only one of the four to originate in the mid-price field, did well in that field–so much the better for giving buyers hope that their Windsor might be mistaken for an Imperial. But Cadillac emerged with the prestige market to itself, and except for certain imports, owned it ever since.
More to the point, they could sell every car Henry Kaiser allotted them enough steel to make after the war. If you can sell anything you can build, why refuse to build products with a high profit margin in favor of products with a lower profit margin? Even without considering the polishing of one’s reputation, in what universe is that a sound business decision?
As for Hudson, I agree wholeheartedly. I understand Mason and Nance had plans to form AMC which Romney (bless his pea-pickin’ little heart) scuttled. But I never understood why they thought the wise preliminary mergers were Nash-Hudson and Packard-Studebaker. Packard and Hudson were both in Detroit, had wheelbases within three inches of each other, required engines of over five liters, and needed to develop upscale features. Hudson needed a high-torque automatic and Packard needed unit construction techniques. Nash and Studebaker, meanwhile, were west of Detroit, had wheelbases within two inches if each other, needed engines of less than five liters, and needed to develop cost-saving manufacturing techniques to compete. Nash needed a V-8 and Studebaker needed unit construction.
I hate to use the buzzword, but the ‘synergies’ were clear, and the mergers that actually happened ran completely counter to them.
I think J P Cavanaugh is correct – I’ve seen that picture elsewhere in articles about Nance’s proposal to use the 56 Lincoln body as the basis for a new senior Packard. In my view, the senior Packard looks good – elegant and somewhat restrained, especially compared to the era’s wild Lincolns and Cadillacs. They probably would have done reasonably well in the market, but not enough to save the marque.
The proposed Clipper is just ugly.
And other commenters are correct – the idea at the time was to use a common center body on all Studebaker, Clipper, and Packard cars.
I agree that James Nance was a total mistake for Packard.
I was very impressed visiting the Studebaker museum in South Bend. I have seen many pictures of the Predictor in magazines and online, but it was really cool to see it in person. I highly recommend visiting the museum.
It’s just me, I guess, but these prototypes/styling sketches look like what designers at Ford would have come up with if the Edsel was being proposed as a “bridge” between Mercury and Lincoln.
The comparison shot of the Oldsmobile and Packard looks like a shot of a “tame” version of the 59 Mercury, back before the go-ahead for quad headlights became law.
I suppose the only thing I could add to this, is that it looks like a very stylish Edsel.
Overall, a pretty clean design.
Lots of Edsel and Lincoln styling cues mentioned above.
Looking at the situation 60 years later – yet realizing that today’s speculation has way too many assumptions – I had to daydream a bit about how things would’ve turned out had Packard ended up in the Ford fold at some time around ’53 or ’54. Instead of Ford spending a fortune on the Continental and Edsel divisions, they could’ve simply slotted Packard and Clipper above and below Lincoln.
Nah, probably just crazy thinking on my part…politically and financially, I’m not sure that Henry Ford II, William Clay Ford and the Whiz Kids would’ve ever gone for it.
Packard would have been an even better fit at Chrysler around the time Chrysler bought Briggs.
And Chrysler wouldn’t have the need to make Imperial a separate division.
Or if James Nance had decided to swallow his pride, accepted to be George Romney second fiddle and decided instead then Packard goes with Nash to be in American Motors? It could be another interesting scenario to follow for some “alternate history”. Who knows if James Nance after years of learning under George Romney, became head of AMC after George Romney became Governor of Michigan instead of Roy Abernathy.
Or if James Nance had decided to swallow his pride, accepted to be George Romney second fiddle and decided instead then Packard goes with Nash to be in American Motors?
At the time all this was going on, John Conde was working at the Nash HQ on Plymouth Rd. He was tasked with creating the flip charts for Mason’s merger presentation to Packard. Originally, the merger was only Nash and Packard, then he was told to work Hudson into the presentation.
The plan as he was directed to illustrate had Packards being nothing but retrimmed Nash Ambassadors. That would have been the end of Packard.
The 1957 Packard front end looks great to me, what the Edsel could have been. For fun once I did a simple edit of the Edsel front end that turned out similar to this Packard. The “horse collar” insert was Edsel’s big styling mistake.
The 1957 Clipper prototype looks pretty bad. Surprisingly close to the Edsel without a vertical grille at all.
Take it off a ’59 and you have something that, aside from windshield doglegs, could pass for a ’62-63 car.
Looks like a ’62 Fairlane…
Excellent! I knew nlpnt’s picture looked familiar, but I kept looking at Mercurys.
It looks like a Checker ! Would’ve made a great taxi. Very bland. Ho hum.
Given the reception the Edsel got I doubt the senior Packards would’ve recouped their development costs. Clipper’s a bit more of a tossup.
Except for the vertical grill ” Black Bess” looks competitive in styling with the same-year (1957) Cadillac. But that grill…all it would have done was to send Edsel designers scrambling to come up with something else “new.”
The classic Packard grille made its first reappearance in the 1955 “The Request” that Teague did as part of the effort to revitalize the brand with some of its pre-war cachet.
The rendering of the convertible, most likely a Carribean is a beautiful looking car.Can`t say the same about the proposed `57 Clippers. Just plain ugly from bumper to bumper.Probably better that they never made production. Maybe it would have been better for Packard to have a more dignified death and just call it quits after the `56 year, but history is history.A sad end for one of America`s finest auto makes.
Sales of the 1955 Packards were initially strong, and the dealers were asking for more cars. The main problem was that production tie-ups at the Conner body plant seriously hindered production, and the quality of the vehicles that did make it out the door was subpar. But, for a brief moment in 1955, it looked as though the company might actually make it.
There was talk about using the Facel Vega Excellence as the basis for a next-generation. It seems the idea didn’t get very far, and the Facel had issues of its own, particularly body stiffness problems which led to the car sagging in the center.
The most likely issue that killed the Facel-Vega Packard: By that point, the Studebaker-Packard Corporation served as the distributor of Mercedes-Benz vehicles in the United States. From what I’ve read, there were concerns over how the relationship with Daimler-Benz would have been affected, had S-P introduced a European-designed luxury automobile into the same dealer showrooms.
AFAIK the Facel/Packard connection is a red herring dreamed up long after the death of both marques. It makes little sense any way you look at it. Facel introduced the Excellence in late 1956, but production only started in early 1958. Facel had no means to make these in quantities that U.S. automakers would have demanded. They were.handbuilt cars.
Plus, though this alleged Packard connection seems to have a fair amount of currency in the U.S., I can assure.you that folks in France have no idea about it. And Facel’s CEO Jean Daninos himself said it was a complete fabrication….
Packard had one classic American business problem that guaranteed ultimate failure…lack of capital/size. Playing in a league with Ford and GM, in a ’50s market which demanded more and quicker investment in V8s, annual styling, new gadgets and more dealers, no matter what Packard did, they were doomed to fail, the only question was when. If the ’57s came out, then the ’58 recession would have gotten them. If they merged with Hudson, the combined cost of revamping both obsolete car lines would have set them up for a final knockout.
In the auto industry, capital rules and Packard just didn’t have enough to continue.
If they merged with Hudson, the combined cost of revamping both obsolete car lines would have set them up for a final knockout.
A merger with Hudson would have resulted in the old stepdown Hudson being abandoned and the Hudson nameplate put on the decontented, short wheelbase Packards we know today as Clippers. The Hudson assembly plant on Jefferson would be closed and the Hudson badged cars would be built at E Grand.
Here is a concept for a 55 Clipper that completely abandons the Packard grill shape. That split in the grill looks tailor made for a Hudson triangle to me.
And this Clipper side treatment looks like a tribute to the stepdown Hudson’s profile.
Reminds me of a giant Nash Metropolitan. Very cumbersome. Has a “tugboat ” air to it.
It was well past time to abandon the suggestion of a rear fender though.
Here is a diagram that was prepared to show how Packard intended to mix and match body parts to produce a Studebaker, Packard and Clipper off a common platform,
This idea of platform sharing was touted by the investment bankers who made fees off the merger to project massive savings from such a program, however, it neglected a few facts:
-Packard and Studebaker’s market segments were far apart. Nothing in the Packard parts bin was cheap enough to build a Studebaker and nothing in the Studebaker parts bin was nice enough to build a Packard. The shared platform would require an entirely new platform, which would require two things S-P did not have: time and money.
-For the shared platform to be competitive as a Packard, the body would need to be at least as wide as the current Packard, a good 6” wider that the current Studebakers. A wider body would not fit through the Studebaker body plant without millions in modifications to the paint booths and ovens, millions that Studebaker did not have, especially if they had already committed millions to the new platform.
-The merger started with two widely separated plants, both running well below their break even volumes. Without a firm commitment to consolidate facilities, the bleeding would continue at a rate that would render the new platform a pipe dream, because the company would not have the funds.
-Consolidating facilities was a pipe dream because by the time merger negotiations got serious, Packard had already committed to installing the V8 line in Utica, leased the Conner body plant and committed millions to upgrades to the Conner plant. The Ward book talks about how the Studebaker and Packard factions on the BoD could not even agree to close one proving ground, so the company, hemorrhaging cash at an alarming rate, continued to pay to operate both the South Bend and Utica proving grounds.
Very interesting – I’ve never seen that diagram before. The Ward book makes references to a number of feasibility studies and analyses that Packard produced that I’m sure would make interesting reads.
Does anyone know how to find these?
The Ward book makes references to a number of feasibility studies and analyses that Packard produced that I’m sure would make interesting reads.
Nance was constantly ordering studies from outside management consultants. He said openly that the only reason he took the job at Packard was so he could do a big merger. He would never have taken the job just to run Packard. He ordered studies of every other independent automaker, even Kaiser, as a potential merger partner. Studebaker kept coming out on top as the largest independent and Studie had the virtue of Vance and Hoffman both being willing to step aside and let Nance be the big dog.
Investment bankers….a textbook case of pretending to know a real business to con it out of millions.
I would like a plastic model kit with all those mix-and-match parts.
Alternate reality: If Packard had wanted the Studebaker merger to work, it would have needed to be done a year earlier.
If the S-P merger had closed in October 53, instead of 54, then:
-the Packard V8 castings could have been made in South Bend, instead of contracting to Lakey Foundry in Muskegon.
-the Packard V8 and automatic transmission lines could have been installed in South Bend, rather than Utica.
-Studebaker truck production, by then greatly reduced compared to when the 2R came out, could have been moved out of Chippewa, then a modern body assembly and paint shop installed in Chippewa next to the existing final assembly line.
-Then break Champion off as a stand alone low priced line, using the existing Studebaker platform and the old downtown plant.
-Return the Studebaker brand to it’s pre-WWII mid-market position. What we know today as the 55-56 Clippers would instead by the Studebaker Commander and President.
-Close and sell E Grand and consolidate Packard and Studebaker production at Chippewa.
-Sell the Utica plant and proving grounds…I’m thinking Kelsey Hayes would have been a good prospect as Kelsey did move to the ‘burbs in 59 and they probably would have liked to have their own proving grounds.
But it wouldn’t happen in 53 because:
-Studebaker management wasn’t desperate enough to merge on someone else’s terms in 53
-Studebaker workers weren’t desperate enough in 53 to agree to the pay cuts they took in 54,
-I doubt Packard management would be willing to leave the bustling metropolis of Detroit for what they probably saw as a hick town in Indiana.
Excellent points, all. By the time the merger was done, there were virtually zero synergies between the two companies with the exception of product lines that did not compete with one another.
I have seen that diagram several times. A shared platform like that would have made either an expensive version of the Packardbaker, an uncompetitively large and expensive Studebaker, or probably both.
But you have to wonder what the Packard 374 would have done in the Golden Hawk. 🙂
A shared platform like that would have made either an expensive version of the Packardbaker, an uncompetitively large and expensive Studebaker, or probably both.
Studebakers, by the mid 50s, were uncompetitively small and narrow. You have probably seen this pic of the parking lot at Niagara Falls, with a 53-55 Studebaker hardtop coupe parked next to a 55 Plymouth. Look at how much larger and, especially, wider, the Plymouth is than the Studebaker. People in the Plymouth had 3″ more hip room and 2″ more leg room in the front seat and in the rear, 3.8″ more hip room and 3.5″ more leg room than a President sedan, and 5.5″ more leg room than in a Commander or Champion sedan. That width matters when you want to sit three across. Looking at the interior room specs for the 55s, Studebaker had the narrowest interiors in the industry, even narrower than the little Rambler.
A bigger, wider, body was exactly what Studebaker needed. Moving the Studebaker brand back into the mid-market would also have the virtue of taking them away from competing with Ford and Chevy, a war they were losing. Meanwhile, take a Sawzall to the Champion, returning it to being a compact, would keep the 170/185 viable and take it out of competition with Ford and Chevy.
Packard beating Ford to the draw of building an Edsel may have saved Ford millions in development costs but still sunk Packard, Was there even a market for Packard that late in the scheme of things?
Was there even a market for Packard that late in the scheme of things?
There was in 55. Between the undated styling, the new suspension and the new V8, there was a lot of interest in the cars.
Thing was, the car wasn’t ready from prime time. The new V8 had an oil aeration problem that Packard never solved. The updated Ultramatic had not been beefed up enough to take the torque of the V8 and they started smoking their high gear clutches. The load leveler had some exposed electrical connections on the underside of the car that caused a lot of trouble.
The honchos leaned on the crew at Conner, hard, to get more cars out the door, so no time and space was allowed for post-assembly repair. Cars were shipped out with red tags left for the dealers to correct. The dealers stripped the service parts system clean correcting issues the plant had ignored. There were cases of dealers cannibalizing cars in stock for parts to get one running well enough to deliver to a customer.
By the time the transmission and load leveler problems had been addressed in 56, the cars had such a vile reputation that people stayed away. Sources say that the build quality in 56 was much improved due to debottlenecking at the plant. I suspect the improved build quality was due to a lower production rate because the cars weren’t selling.
I have a 56 Nash sales training film. Nash had used the Packard V8 and Ultramatic in 55 and 56. In the training film, Nash admits that the V8 powertrain had had a lot of issues in 55, but insisted “it’s all fixed now”. In spite of the problems supposedly having been addressed, the Nash film continues that the price of the Packard powertrain was so high that salesmen were told that if they think their customer would go for an Ambassador with the old 6, don’t try to sell them up to the V8, because they’ll probably lose the sale over the cost.
Digging through my archives, a few more pix of 57 proposals.
Clippers
Then there is the old alternative reality what if – a four way merger of Packard, Studebaker, Hudson and Nash. Supposedly it was a real plan orchestrated by James Mason. The Packard & Studebaker and the Hudson & Nash mergers were just the first step in this plan, the ultimate goal was merging all four. It would be a mini GM with truck and defense divisions, Packard to battle Cadillac, Hudson & Nash to battle Buick-Olds-Pontiac and Studebaker vs Chevrolet. It made a lot of sense on paper, would it have really worked-who knows? Amid trying to integrate various management and worker personal and deciding which plants to keep would have been a challenge to say the least. They would have had a full product line But this was all washed away by the death of Mason and the hatred between Nance and Romney. In hindsight AMC did a lot better job of merging than S-P lasting 29 years vs 12 years for S-P. I kind of wonder what a 2017 Packard would look like.
The Packard & Studebaker and the Hudson & Nash mergers were just the first step in this plan, the ultimate goal was merging all four.
As of January 54, Mason was negotiating in secret with Barett, while preparing for his merger presentation to Packard. Studebaker was not in the mix at that time.
The first time Richard Langworth ever heard of the “grand plan” for a four way merger was while interviewing Nance in the early 70s. At that time, Romney declined to sit for an interview with Langworth to confirm or deny Nance’s story.
In the early 80s, Romney did sit for an interview, which was published in SIA. Romney confirmed that Mason had a vision of a “grand plan” roughly along the lines of what Nance had said a decade earlier, but he said the plan died with Mason. Nance’s pique at Romney may be justified.
Additionally, when George Christopher was fired, Hugh Ferry became acting President of Packard, a position he did not want. By 52 Ferry was desperate to recruit someone to take the President’s job and may have embellished Mason’s plan more than a bit while recruiting Nance. What may have been a notion or a back of the envelope doodle by Mason, could have been presented to Nance as a done deal, if Nance could bring Studebaker into it.
As the Nash/Hudson/Packard merger was laid out in early 54, the Hudsons and Packards would all be retrimmed Nashes. supposedly the bodies would be built in the Hudson body plant and final assembly at E Grand. I doubt that as E Grand was set up for body on frame construction, so millions would have needed to be spent to reconfigure it for the Nash unibody. What would more likely have happened is E Grand would have been abandoned, along with the Hudson facilities and everything consolidated in Kenosha, with the Hudson and Packard brands being extinguished in a few years.
Ah yes, the old Packard coulda-woulda-shoulda. It’s both endlessly fascinating and frustrating at the same time!
I don’t have access to it, but if memory serves me correctly, Ward’s book states that Mason’s plan was to be presented to Packard’s board, but the board refused to even look at or discuss it. Whether that was Jim Nance’s doing, who knows?
Speaking of Nance, I think (as does Ward) that he gets WAY too much blame for Packard’s woes. PMCC was looking for some fresh blood to run the company and shake things up. That’s what they got.
Yes, he did get in over his depth (and I’ll NEVER understand a corporate merger done without even reviewing the other company’s books!). But let’s not forget that after his time was over with Packard, Ford hired him for the Lincoln-Mercury-Edsel division for a short time. And he went on to have a successful career running a bank in Cleveland, Ohio after that.
Corporate mergers are often a bumpy ride on an uncharted road with an unknown destination. Paring two hobbled companies like Packard and Studebaker was like an old drunk watching for pedestrians while his drunk buddy drove. The likelihood of a good outcome just wasn’t probable.
Packard Museum. You have to give them credit for symbolic architecture. I have no idea what’s inside.
Someone theorized the possibility that Ford saw the Predictor and altered the Edsel’s front end to the disastrous horse-collar because of it. If correct, it could be said that Packard was indirectly responsible for the Edsel fiasco, as most agree that the horse-collar front end was the car’s biggest failing.
It’s not a theory, it’s a fact. I interviewed a designer who was in the Edsel studio when they learned of the Predictor and changed the Edsel’s grill to the horse collar.
A quick side note while Packard is front N center?
…Is there any definitive information on what became of the huge investment in the V-8 tooling?
Did the engine reincarnate elsewhere?
Or was the tooling mothballed a little too long and technology’s steady march made it obsolete?
I’ve heard the Russian truck V-8 rumor, is there anything to that?
…Is there any definitive information on what became of the huge investment in the V-8 tooling?
Did the engine reincarnate elsewhere?
All the V8 and Ultramatic production equipment was quickly uprooted from Utica as C-W had a fat DoD contract for jet engines and wanted to get cracking. The Packard equipment was hauled back to E Grand for temporary storage.
One source I read said the V8 and Ultramatic equipment was sold for scrap.
Another source said the Packard V8 head machining line was moved to South Bend and used to produce the OHV head for the 170, but there was a several year lag between liquidation of Detroit operations and introduction of the OHV 170, so retaining the head machining line in 56 would be an unprecedented bit of foresight by Studebaker management.
Here’s a pic of the V8 machining line in Utica from the 55 Annual Report.
While we are on the topic of Utica, C-W lost all it’s DoD jet engine contracts in the early 60s and sold the Utica plant to Ford. Ford handed the plant to Visteon. The plant was closed and torn down a few years ago.
This pic is looking toward the southwest. The nearer building was originally built as Packard’s service parts warehouse. The larger building was built as a jet engine plant for a DoD contract to make J-47s. the curved road on the left edge of the pic is the high speed track of the Packard proving grounds, which had been there since the 1920s.
26 and one half million dollars is a lot of money to throw away.
26 and one half million dollars is a lot of money to throw away.
Ultramatic production was already set up at E Grand. Why did they pack everything up and move it to Utica? Better workflow, or because Nance was geeked on the idea of having a “Powertrain” plant?
Rear axle production was already set up at E Grand. They packed that up and moved it to Utica too. A year later, they stopped making their own axles and switched to Dana axles.
They occupied the Conner plant on a 5 year lease. They spent $13M making improvements in the plant. If the company had survived to the end of the lease, and they couldn’t raise the money to buy the place and Chrysler raised the rent to the stratosphere, how many millions would it have cost them to take their equipment out and relocate it all again. (moving final assembly into Conner was another of Walter Grant’s ideas. He figured it would be more cost effective than trucking the bodies over to E Grand.)
From the 54 annual report
Workers at E Grand pulling up the final assembly line for transportation to Conner, right behind the last 54 built.
Another factor in Packard’s facilities decisions could have been Ray Powers. Powers came over from Ford and reportedly was a true believer in the superiority of an all ground floor plant. He could have heavily influenced Nance to make poor decisions based on his bias.
Cadillac on Clark Street, Dodge Main and Chrysler on Jefferson, multi-story plants that had been built either before WWI or in the early 20s all operated into the 1980s, while Packard was burning money trying to create single story plants.
Nance was a good marketing person. He quickly figured out the mistakes that previous management had made in emphasizing the medium-price models while neglecting the true luxury models. He also correctly figured out that Packard’s delay in bringing out a modern ohv V-8 had reinforced the company’s “has been” image.
He was in over his head, however, in other areas, such as the decision to move production to the Conner plant (although he had nothing to do with the original decision to give the body business away completely to Briggs). He shouldn’t have been in charge of the entire company, but apparently there weren’t any top managers from other automobile manufacturers willing to take a chance at turning around Packard.
Minor Packard V-8 trivia…it was a Packard V-8 that was mounted in the first rail (dragster) to reach 150 MPH. The car was owned (maybe driven by?) California rodder Lou Senter.
Thanks for the production backstories, Steve, very interesting.
The 1957 “true” Packard/Clipper proposals shown in this post are truly hideous. Reinforces my belief that the 1957 production Packard was a rather nice looking, well finished car by comparison. The front end was an attractive update of the excellent 55-56 styling. Problem was, I’m sure it felt like driving a Studebaker rather than a traditional Packard or Clipper, and only about 4,000 people decided to buy one.
It also had the wide front-to-back trim strip along the side from one of the prototypes, a rather lush interior, and I think about the same HP and length as the ’56 Clipper!
It also had the wide front-to-back trim strip along the side from one of the prototypes, a rather lush interior, and I think about the same HP and length as the ’56 Clipper!
The taillights were from the 56 Clipper parts bin and the instruments also look like 56 Clipper gear. The 57s had a supercharged 289, which was close to equal in output to a 56 352. The supercharger was troublesome however and was dropped from the Clipper sedans for 58.
Yes, an attractive Studebaker, but still a Studebaker.
What a bunch of “what if’s”. You folks are outstanding at denying the obvious. A business model I call the “Packard Disease”. Steadily reduce quality, steadily reduce engineering, “off-site” ( as in “off-shore” production) steadily milk the company so the executives and stockholders can take more money – to hell with the product. By the late 1940’s Packard had become an industry joke for bad quality. Sure the “120” series was a hit with the public, who could buy them and pretend they had a “real” Packard. Had they continue to put money into both the “120” series, and the “Senior” line, PERHAPS they would have retained the car buyer public confidence. Anyone who has actually worked on cars of the 40’s and ’50’s knows the truth – Packard products became an industry joke. That “Ultramatic” fiasco turned Packards so equipped from nice performers into “slugs”. Packard worked hard to self-destruct. To be fair, it didn’t start with Nance in the 50’s – it started in the late 1930’s. By the early 1950’s, even a Chevrolet performed better than a Packard with Ultramatic. THe “Packard Disease” spread…has now killed off most of our American industry. Good riddance !
Very contrary to what has been stated here, a few points:
1.) To state that there was “little excitement in Packard showrooms” during the 1955 and 1956 period is quite untrue. The only issues that were negative in those showrooms were the rumors of Packard’s labor troubles and uncertainties of what the new company would look like with Studebaker now a family member. I was there and it just wasn’t like this at all. Packard was the talk of the industry with the beautiful new look and features. And the electronic Torsion-Level suspension was miles and miles ahead of anything anyone else had. It took all the way into the 1980s before car manufacturers were even getting close to the ballpark of what the Packard suspension could do:
• Anti-dive
• Anti-squat
• Anti-roll
• Automatic leveling
• Interface with braking system
• Load weight distribution
AND then pushbutton electronic automatic Ultramatic transmission
• Gears selected by electronic pushbuttons.
• Safety selection of all gear ranges.
• World’s first anti-theft immobilizer (a feature barely understood at the time known as “Automatic Park”) incorporated in electronic Ultramatic.
• An actual “Park” position in the gear selector (people forget that several automatics of the era had no “Park” position).
• Fully aluminum automatic transmission WITH lock-up torque converter for direct power like a manual in high gear. Another feature copied decades later by the industry.
AND …
• Full side marker lights with side courtesy and “puddle lamps” (industry caught up on side markers in the late 1960s… exterior puddle lamps only in last 10 years or so).
• Reversible leather/cloth upholstery with “floating” backrests on aluminum supports.
• Packard was first with air conditioning in 1939 and they were one of the first to configure factory A/C in a front-to-rear theater format with electronic rheostat and blend air evaporator chamber instead of the primitive rear A/C/ systems most brands were offering at the time.
• Limited-slip differential
These cars were considered wonders of those years.
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2.) Regarding a need for logos in 1955-1956… Packard very, very well always had logos that were extremely well known and recognized nearly everywhere–worldwide. The “circle & vee” of 1955 and 1956 Packards and the Predictor was merely a logo of Packard V-8s, not of Packard itself. And certainly not anything that was lacking over Packard’s long history. What were Packard’s time-honored logos?
• The red hexagon symbol (almost) always on the wheel hubs, wheel covers and other parts of the cars over most years of the company. I dare say this logo/symbol was certainly as well known (if not better known) as the Mercedes 3-point star… at least back when Packard was in business. Even the Russians and many European and Asian countries well knew what the red hexagon stood for.
• The Packard family crest/coat of arms which was also very prominently featured on Packard for most of the life of the company. Again, this was a very well-known symbol, even if forgotten today. There was a time when people knew and easily recognized this symbol.
• The “Packard” script logo was every bit as recognized and known as the Ford script logo.
In addition to these well-known and time honored logos was also the radiator/grille top with cusps that again was a symbol of Packard for many, many decades. Even when the last years of Packards were made with wide grilles, the tops of those grilles always included the traditional Packard cusps. But apparently all this has been forgotten. All of which reveals today when people discuss Packard or even attempt to design revivals, they usually miss most or all of the original Packard hallmarks that once were very, very well known–and integral to the design and marketing. The years have flown by… and with the years have gone many of the memories of the way Packard was really seen on the streets in those times.
3.) Incidentally, Packards always had vertical grilles until a few years after World War II. And frankly, the 1948-50 Packards featured a vertical grilled section. So despite all of the references to Edsel, most Packards ever built had vertical grilles and would have returned to them in 1957, had Jim Nance’s Detroit-built Packards been allowed to be built. Edsel or no Edsel.
Finally… Predictor’s “vertical grille” really wasn’t actually a grille at all, except in tribute to the notion. It was actually a spring-loaded vertical bumper. When impacted, it could retract into the body and spring back into position. And yes, this really did predict the “safety bumpers” that would follow decades later.
4.) RE: Conner Avenue… As for Jim Nance moving the assembly line to Conner Avenue (the former Briggs Body plant)… what were the other great choices he had? This was not a willy-nilly-silly decision made out of inexperience or on a whim. Briggs was sold to Chrysler. Period. At that point, they suddenly announced to Packard that they would no longer be supplying bodies to Packard. Period. This event took place at the worst possible time. Packard was in the midst of a merger with Studebaker (only to discover the horrors awaiting in their money figures) and while Nance was ready to launch technology-laden, newly redesigned Packards and Clippers only to have all this additional nightmare dumped on his shoulders. What miracle was he supposed to pull out of a hat on top of the miracles he was already attempting?
It was either a matter of moving all of the body manufacturing operations over to the meandering facilities at East Grand Blvd. (no small feat). OR move the rest of the line over to Conner where the bodies were already being made anyway (and pay Chrysler very generous fees). Either way, the two operations were going to be married–no matter what and no matter who was running things. Continuing with body operations being alone over at Conner with the full overhead of that plant (and there was a LOT of it) on Packard’s shoulders would have been sure suicide. At least what happened bought some time in an admittedly panic situation. There were no great options for Jim Nance and the S-P board. He was damned if he did… and damned if he didn’t.
And contrary to persistent myths, the Packard Conner Plant was NOT a single story building. I know, I saw it thousands of times. This is the “single story” is story that refuses to die.
5.) RE: the black Packard image above “Black Bess” posted here… This photo is referred to as a “styling buck” but in fact it was actually a scale model of the proposed 1957 Packard Four Hundred. It was built by a friend of mine, Tom Beaubien who worked at Packard at the time. It was not a full-sized work. Some of the unknown features of this model were the fact that it had actual working torsion bar suspension under it and a special black paint job with gold flecks in the paint–not obvious in the photo. This kind of paint job was something pretty revolutionary for those times, even if fairly common today on production cars. It pre-dated the “Firemist” colors of GM that would come later. The experimental color on this model was suggested by Creative Industries of Detroit (the company whose headquarters building is pictured here behind the Predictor) who also suggested the color on the Request and Predictor.
Thanks for the info about the scale model. I’ve incorporated some of your corrections into my article.
As to the lack of showroom excitement in 1955, I stand by my statement. While there was initially some strong demand for the 1955 Packards, it quickly petered out as supplies tightened, word got out about the horrendous quality, and dealers started their usual wait for factory incentives. And while the styling was updated for 1955, it was still based on the 1951 car, while the Big 3 had all new cars.
While the Torsion-Level suspension was very advanced, it is not very “exciting” and suspension is very hard to sell to consumers. As the Ward book makes clear, their initial marketing efforts around the 1955 suspension fell flat, and Packard had to quickly adjust their marketing efforts.
And I stand by my statements. All I can say is I was there… and there was plenty of excitement. Not something I got out of a book or off the internet. I was there and I remember it well.
As for the suspension… whether it sold well in itself or not–it was the talk of the town back then. It wasn’t merely “suspension.” As someone who has actually worked in the automotive industry on exotic suspensions (some of which made production), I can absolutely, positively assure you that Packard Torsion-Level was indeed exciting. This is something I vividly remember. This was not something purely mechanical. And it wasn’t airbags. It was a phenomenon… even if all this is forgotten today. People would line up just to try out the suspension leveler and go ohh and ahh as they would sit in the back seat… the car would drop down… then faint whirring and magically rose back up. They would run the battery down over and over at the dealerships and auto shows. Salesmen never got so much attention in a car. This was not some droll example of “Hey… we got new springs under there somewhere… and they’re great.” This was a real attention grabber (in addition to all the real functions it had). It may be forgotten today or overruled by 20-20 hindsight and cold sales records in books… but for people who were at the auto shows and in the car salesrooms (and there ARE some of us left), Torsion-Level suspension was an amazing thing… and it got plenty of attention.
Finally I see my comments about Predictor’s vertical bumper have been migrated over to the 1957 Four Hundred scale model. I don’t know whether that feature would have been on production 1957s. I only know for sure it was on Predictor.
Thanks.
First, I tip my hat to Leon. He is as knowledgeable as the best of the people who post on Packard Info. I agree with almost everything he said, especially his comments on Torsion-Level. T-L was an option on some of the Clipper models in 55 and the take rate was so high that it became standard on some trims. Road tests published at the time raved about how smooth and steady the ride was and how squat on acceleration, which was often extreme in those days, was eliminated.
I will take issue with how the Conner plant deal was executed.
First, the Briggs sale to Chrysler was precipitated by the death of Walter Briggs at the end of 52. It would seem reasonable that the word was on the street by spring of 53 that the Briggs heirs were shopping the company. Even without hearing rumors to that effect, a management with any foresight should have been concerned with the stability of their sole source for bodies on the death of the owner. Having that sort of foresight is why management gets the big bucks.
A management that was suitably concerned with the stability of their sole source for bodies, should have jumped at the opportunity when Ed Barit came calling shopping Hudson, which included a fully equipped and staffed body plant with a capacity of 160,000 bodies/yr, which could be acquired in a stock swap.
There were other body plants in Detroit. Murray was only building a trickle of bodies for the Willys Aero and Hudson Jet and iirc, Budd was still in the body building business.
imho, Nance wears the blame for waiting until the roof caved in on him and merely reacting, rather than getting in front of the issue.
Moving final assembly into Conner was motivated by Walter Grant’s savings estimates. I don’t recall the numbers off the top of my head, but Grant estimated a savings of several million for Packard taking over Conner and trucking the bodies to E Grand, vs what buying from Briggs cost them, but he estimated larger savings by having final assembly at Conner. Nance went for the higher savings number, in spite of the millions it cost Packard to move the assembly line.
As for Conner being single story, or not. The 54 Annual Report caption for the production picture I posted above says “…integrated, one-floor, final car assembly operation”. This is a shot of the Conner plant. Looks to me like a 4 floor front section with a single floor rear section.
Street level view of the front of the Conner plant.
The Hudson body plant is at the lower left in this pic. If Nance had moved in 53, he could have had this plant, and access to Hudson dealers for, essentially, script, by swapping Packard stock for Hudson.
Timing was not on Packard’s side after the window of opportunity closed in June 53 when Barit signed a letter of intent to merge with Nash. AMC announced the closure of the Detroit Hudson facilities, which put the body plant on the market, about two weeks after Packard signed the lease on Conner.
Eventually, the body plant was bought by GM and it was used as a stamping plant by Cadillac until the Poletown plant was built in the early 80s.
Absurd, endless arguments about Conner Avenue Packard Plant being one story are going to go on and on and on and on and on and on forever. And other silliness. And there will always be somebody quoting from some book somewhere… or wikipedia or on and on as a backup “source.” Everyone doing so is welcome to continue on doing whatever it is that they do.
• Wikipedia will tell you that there were TEN Packard Requests made. Right.
• Various internet sources will tell you a lot of silly stories about the Earle C. Anthony neon sign, then show a photo claimed to be from 1923 with a sign on a building that was not even built until 1929!
• There are stories of a Packard that supposedly came back from World War II duty on a ship to the USA mainland… and books that say so. But that ship was sunk off of Luzon in the war.
• There are “histories” right now on the internet and BOOKS that claim Packard was making cars at Grand Boulevard in 1956.
… and other silly stuff.
Anybody who chooses to buy into all of these endless arguments or to believe something simply because it is written up someplace or on a internet site is welcome to do so. But none of this can alter actual truth, facts and real history.
My family’s store was at 12718 East Jefferson. Look it up on a map. To get there means I went past the Conner Packard Plant at least twice a day for the entire time it existed. And past the Briggs Plant before that. Does this mean my eyes were playing tricks on me when I was looking at a multi-story building?????
Furthermore, my aunt worked as secretary for the guy who set up Packard in the Conner Plant. Now I’m being told information I got from him is not “first-hand.”
Conner Avenue Packard Plant just wasn’t one story… no matter who or what says so. It is a common myth, but not the truth.
And a 2017 analysis of the hows and whys and wherefors of the 1954 move of final assembly from East Grand Boulevard to Conner Avenue can be argued and debated into the ground ad infinitum. But nobody today can undo what was done… and what was done in 1954 was nowhere near as simplistic as 2017 analysis may make it appear.
Jim Nance and the Packard board did whatever it was they did. And nobody but nobody knows absolutely all of the facts about this decision. It certainly was not done with malice and not out of the ignorance so often depicted today. It was a bad time and and urgent decision. There was plenty of blame to go around. And the fact that people are still debating this matter today after all these years shows the passion… and perhaps the proclivity for conclusions that are part of the “information age.”
Leon Dixon: threw me with the different name than the one you use on Packard Info. Looked at the cover of your book about Creative on that site and it clicked.
Leon… any speculation on what became of the new engine line?
The suggestion of Ford buying Packard is very interesting. A great opportunity would have been mid-1956 when Packard’s assets could have been purchased for a song, with Ford perhaps seeking product insurance in case the planned ‘58 Lincoln wasn’t able to make headway against Cadillac’s most expensive cars. We know that for a brief moment Henry Ford II was open to the idea of a ’57 Lincoln-based Packard (see rendering of green car, above). The fact that the Packard version would have had an 8 inch longer hood suggests that the plan would have been to position it above Lincoln.
Let’s run with all that.
To really set the Packard apart let’s assume that the new owners funded development of the V12 that Packard’s engineers had been working on, to be built at Utica, and that the car would have used Lincoln’s chassis rather than adapting Lincoln’s body to Packard’s as had been planned, saving time and money. Torsion Level would have been worked in but the Twin Ultramatic would have been gone. Hidden headlights like Predictor’s would have helped furthered the mystique around the car, which would have continued through 1958 and replaced by a car based on the ’59 Park Lane. That Mercury is very interesting because its greenhouse appears to be an evolution of the ’57 Lincoln greenhouse, which would have been perfect for Packard in terms of design continuity. With clean Packard sheetmetal and an 8 inch longer hood, vertical grill and hidden headlights I think the design would have been an improvement over the boxy car that Packard had planned for 1957 which, as has been pointed out, proved a failure as the ’58 Lincoln.
By 1962 things would have gotten murky because Mercurys were again based on Fords rather than carrying unique bodies. That said, one can imagine – with a little creativity – Packard developing cars in the ensuing years that used existing corporate bodies, stretched where needed, to offer very special luxury cars for the top of the market.
The 1959 Edsel that would have used Mercury’s body was cancelled.
If Mercury had been directed not to use the second of the two roofs it had planned, would have cleared the way for Packard, lperhaps ooking something like this.
Probably no more than a few thousand sold per year, built either in Conner, Lincoln’s vacated plant or a Mercury plant, the latter being a risk for same reasons that effected the large ’58 Edsel.
A bit late to the party but here are a few perspectives: These design developments for the 1957 Packards and Clippers were truly eleventh hour efforts to forestall demise. Had they made it to market on time, albeit introduced into a major middle-priced market contraction, with acceptable build quality and pricing, represented by a strong dealer network and fielded by a company financially able to weather the Eisenhower Recession, their sales performance might well have paralleled Chrysler’s 1957 Forward Look lines. Before that was possible, a good many smarter, better, more savvy moves by management would have had to have occurred to create a framework for these to be built and to succeed.
Understand the 1957 Packards, Clippers and Studebakers were all to be built as shown on the shared Common Body Program diagram above. As such, it would have been parallel to how GM handled its full-line 1959 body program. Interior dimensions would have been appropriate for Packard and Clipper, generous for Studebaker, the latters cars finally brought up to industry standard width. Production of the wider platform at South Bend would have required significant modification of those plants to handle that work.
Styling direction under Bill Schmidt, beginning May 1, 1955, for the Packard was to be clean and rectilinear, with a strong vertical front element evoking the classic grille in modern interpretations as well as ‘cathedral’ tailights and general surface developments shown on the Predictor. With Schmidt spearheading the program, it could hardly but have shown the influence of his prior work for Lincoln, the 1956 Premiere and Capri his well-known work. Styling explorations of future vertical grille themes had been ongoing since from the late 1940’s even as the new 1951 horizontal grille appeared in the showroom. When James Nance became company president May 1, 1952, he continually searched for ways to differentiate the luxury Packard’s appearance from the mid-market Clipper. Analyzing Packard’s many problems, he understood the situation that a lack of differentiation for years had wrought on the luxury models, reducing them to below ten percent of annual volumes, an ‘also-ran’ in the segment.
Developing a strong visual identity for Clipper was going to be a greater challenge, while the Packard at least could employing the vertical grille theme to evoke its pre-war Classic Era reputation. Middle-priced marques then generally depended upon new styling themes from series to series, only consistent with emblems and minor styling devices for brand identity. By the way, the Clipper styling with the raised fender-line and “angry” brows was an early iteration. A later, a more conventional design that was to be shared with Studebaker President to save tooling cost was what was approved for production. Images of much the 1957 program designwork can be source from the Henry Ford Museum Research Library.
On the issue of whether the Packard vertical grille was influenced by the upcoming Edsel or vice-versa, only so much as cross-pollinization took place through personnel moving from company to company and/or by styling espionage . At least for Packard, a vertical ‘grille’ element evoked a styling heritage; for Edsel it was simply a device for instant visual identity. Had the 1957 Packard made it to market, the public would understand and accept a revived classic grille element. As we know, the Edsel vertical grille became a polarizing feature, one to single out as an aura of failure began to envelope the car. The causes for its failure were far deeper and broader than something as superficial as the front grille.
Steve, some good points, especially ” Before that was possible, a good many smarter, better, more savvy moves by management would have had to have occurred to create a framework for these to be built and to succeed.” which sums up the situation that, by 56, Packard was beyond it’s ability to salvage itself. As the guy who lectured on Packard, Studebaker, Nash and Hudson at the Gilmore last Sunday summed up, the industry was dominated by truly brilliant people in the persons of Ford, Chrysler and Sloan. Other company’s managements could be really sharp and be right the majority of the time, but if they were half a step less than as brilliant as Ford et al, they did not have a chance in the long run.
Differentiating Packard from Clipper. Nance had been trying to divorce the two lines for years, with the different taillights in 54, the ship’s wheel badge, but when the Packard badge was deleted in 56, dealers and customers rebelled. Clipper never even divorced itself from the Packard grill shape, though they wanted to. A pic is posted above of a 55 Clipper proposal without a trace of the Packard grill.
The issue with the Studebaker version of the common platform is that the Champion accounted for nearly half of Studebaker’s sales. The 185 was barely adequate to power the narrow, lightweight, Studebaker platform as 0-60 took over 20 seconds. For Studebaker to build a Champion on the new common platform, which would have needed to be at least 6″ wider, and correspondingly heavier, they would have needed to either make the 259 the standard engine, or develop a new OHV six to compete with the 230 cuin, give or take, engines from the big three. As with the modifications in the body plant for a wider body, developing a new Six, pushes the cost of the 57 program up by millions. Abandoning the Champion would be suicidal because of the volume and it’s help in covering fixed costs.
Building the 57 platform in both Conner and South Bend would push costs up farther as stampings would be shipped between the two locations. The obvious move would be to abandon Conner and consolidate in South Bend, but, even with S-P on the brink of bankruptcy, Chrysler did not want to let them out of the lease on Conner. I think the book about Harold Churchill goes into what S-P had to do to get out of that lease. Then there is the issue of whether to leave the V8 and Ultramatic lines in Utica, or break everything down and move it to South Bend.
However the issues would have been settled would have cost millions more than if the S-P merger had been done a year earlier, before the Conner and Utica commitments were made. It wouldn’t have happened a year earlier, because 1: Studebaker management didn’t think they were in that much trouble. 2: Studebaker workers didn’t think they were in that much trouble and would not have taken the pay cut they took in August 54 3: Packard management would probably be repelled by the idea of leaving Detroit for what they probably saw as a hick town in Indiana.
The best path I see to 57, if the resources were available, would be to drop the Studebaker truck line to clear Chippewa. Move the body line, paint booths and ovens, from Conner to Chippewa. Drop Clipper, as it was never accepted by the market, and restore the Studebaker brand to the mid-market in place of Clipper, using the new platform for the Commander and President. Break Champion off as a stand alone compact brand, using the existing Studebaker platform and downtown production facilities, which keeps the 185 Six and the existing body plant viable.
This entire thread really shows what a pipe dream and investment banker’s sales pitch the common platform was at the time the merger closed.
Would have liked to have seen what Teague could have done for the entire ’57 line-up given the brilliance he displayed with the ’55 cathedral taillights. Wish Nance had never allowed Schmidt and Ford’s boxy design philosophy into Packard’s studio. Not everyone there was enthused with his rectilinear superstructure, and the new team even managed to ruin the cathedrals.
“The solution to both of these objectives was sitting at the corner of Jefferson and Conner.”
Agreed, a Packard/Hudson merger in late 1953 would have had real potential. Of major challenge would have been absorbing Hudson’s losses through 1954 amidst Packard’s.
IMHO the merger would have been DOA unless appearance improved dramatically, starting with Packard. The ’54 Cadillac 60 Special’s wheelbase was 6 inches longer, length 9 inches longer and rear overhang several inches longer than planned ’55 Patrician so Nance, probably in January 1954 when the new Cadillacs appeared, would have needed to have given a last minute “match or exceed” order to his planners. Five inches of rear overhang and a 6 inch longer hood would have matched Cadillac in wheelbase (133) and bested it in length (230.5 vs. 227.4). Replacing Patrician’s tall, homely greenhouse with a 5 inch longer version of the hardtop coupe’s roof, and working in hardtop-like window frames, would have completed the beautification. Hardtop coupe and convertible would have used 5 inch shorter bodies as in previous years.
As compensation for being taller than outgoing Step-Down, the ’55 Hudson could have married ’54 Clipper styling to ’55 Patrician’s body shell to offer a good looking 127 inch wheelbase sedan that was a foot longer than the ’54 Hornet and with the most rear legroom in the upper medium segment. A backlight shaped like the outgoing Clipper would have helped set the car apart from Packard despite use of same roof, while a new hood mated to ’54 Hornet’s grill, and I/P from ’54 Hornet would have made the car fresh yet familiar to buyers of both marques. Like Packard, 2-door models would have used 5 inch shorter bodies.
Marketing would have been key because Hornet and Clipper shoppers would have both needed persuaded to choose the new car. For the traditional Hudson buyer, “it’s roomier and more stylish than your old Hornet and has a V8” while for the Clipper owner, “it’s really a Packard underneath and a better car than last year.” would have been the key talking points. Dualed Packard/Hudson dealers would have helped to get current Packard owners into the new Hudson.
Had the merger been successful it would have been Nance and not Nash with the upper hand, offering to build the Ambassador. By this time Mason would have passed and Romney likely would have said no. One wonders if Romney would have instead sought purchase of Studebaker, which by 1955 or 56 would most likely have been in receivership. With Studebaker dealers now focused on Rambler, AMC might still have realized the huge sales gains of the late 50s/early 60s.
One wonders if Romney would have instead sought purchase of Studebaker, which by 1955 or 56 would most likely have been in receivership. With Studebaker dealers now focused on Rambler, AMC might still have realized the huge sales gains of the late 50s/early 60s.
Another fascinating scenario: Mason is put off by the price Packard wants for it’s V8 and Packard’s demand that Nash buy the Ultramatic for the V8s and goes to Studebaker to ask about an enlarged version of the 232.
For this scenario, the timeline is perfect. Nash wants a V8 for 55, starts discussions with Studebaker at the beginning of 54. The two parties realize that Studebaker has the V8 Nash needs and Nash has the modern, wide platform with the best ventilation system in the industry, that Studebaker needs. Studebaker workers agree to the terms of the Nash contract in August 54 and merger closes in early October 54.
Mason had decreed very late in the design cycle that the 55 Nash would have a curved windshield, so 55 production did not start until January 55, so enough time from the close of the merger to get the 289 in production and sales literature prepared for the 55s with the 289/4bbl in the Ambassador and 259/2bbl in the Statesman.
Studebaker Champion dropped after a very short run. Stude dealers get the Rambler to replace it. Champion Six line shut and retooled for the OHV 196 that came out in the fall of 55.
Commander and President replaced by reworked Nashes in summer of 55, ending car production in South Bend.
By end of 55: AMC stamping work pulled from outside vendors and sent to South Bend stamping plant. Kenosha foundry and engine closed. All casting and engine production consolidated in South Bend.
Moving casting and engine production to South Bend opens up enough footprint in Kenosha to build a body plant next to the assembly plant, eliminating trucking assembled bodies from Milwaukee and simplifying the introduction of the process for dipping bodies in primer that was introduced in late 57 for the 58 models as the body plant can be designed around that process.
2 thumbs up on plan to merge AMC and Studebaker operations. Each side would have been given something constructive to do and less work would have been out-sourced. Good strategy!
1 up, 1 down on Studebaker ilo AMC V8. Would have saved investment and gotten large and small engines into Ambassador and Statesman in 1955 without Mason having to crawl to Potter, er Nance. Or was Mason Potter? Seems they both were but regardless, South Bend’s V8 was by some accounts heavy for its size. AMC’s V8 was larger and an excellent unit overall, serving the company well for 20 years. Its absence would have been regrettable.
2 thumbs down for any car based on the ’52 Nash Ambassador/Statesmen. Just ask Hudson. Or Nash!
Pin all hopes on a large Nash redesign in ‘57? With what money and for what car? If attached pic was one of the proposals, the plan would have been DOA.
Looking at the situation more broadly, could the low priced market have supported a fourth full sized car in the late 50s? Packard or Nash based, the Studebaker would have been no Fury.
I think Romney had it right. Nash owned the small but growing compact market and fortunately for Nash’s design department, that market appears to have been very forgiving of poor styling in the 50s. Merging with a beaten down Studebaker, Hoffman and Vance finally gone, would have been a windfall for AMC because what Romney really needed were dealers. Body stamping and Six sourcing from Studebaker would have still made sense. Could the ’58 Ambassador with its 9 inch longer axle-to-dash have become the new President? Likely not. Hudson ultimately wasn’t used for that car either, even though this had been the original plan.
AMC’s V8 was larger and an excellent unit overall, serving the company well for 20 years. Its absence would have been regrettable.
iirc the AMC V8 was lighter: some 685 for the Studebaker vs about 650 for the AMC. The big difference is AMC would not need to spend $10M getting the Potter V8 into production at a time when they were nearly bankrupt. Romney met with the same insurance company people who had just turned Nance down for a loan in 56. Romney admitted after the meeting that he was “blowing smoke” at the money lenders, but apparently he was able to show them a credible roadmap to recovery where Nance had failed as he got some money from them.
2 thumbs down for any car based on the ’52 Nash Ambassador/Statesmen. Just ask Hudson. Or Nash!
I rather like the 55 Hudson version, but things went off the rails with the 56. A combined Nash/Studebaker would follow the same timeline after 57, with the senior platform dropped, along with both legacy brands, to focus on Rambler.
Steve – your comment caused me to pause and ponder. Perhaps I was too quick to discount the Studebaker name, and the $10M saved by not having to tool another V8 may indeed have been put to better use.
The brief but impressive success of the Lark demonstrated the cache South Bend still had in the market. What if that $10M had funded a new Rambler-based Studebaker, and with money to spare?
Consider this work-up of ’58 Studebaker President, which has only three alterations to the ’58 Ambassador. First, the rear doors have been extended 4 inches just as Studebaker had been doing since 1947. Second, Rambler’s roof has been cut near the rear and a new rear roof section has been added, inclusive of a more forward raked backlight. Third, fender skirts have been added. Left to the imagination is a more engaging front design. Underhood, the 259 V8 for base President and 289 for “Regal” or “State” President (you choose) with 3-tone paint and a nicer interior.
I doubt that Studebaker’s dealers could have survived on only this car but if it and Rambler had been sold in both AMC and Studebaker dealerships, the strategy just might have worked. In this scenario Ambassador would never have been offered.
Another awesome photoshop. Does the rear part of the roof have more than a hint of Imperial in it?
The extra long front on the 58 Ambassador always looked too long to me, but Nash/Rambler platforms being unibody, it was probably the only feasible way to stretch the car. Studebaker, using a body on frame platform could do a back seat stretch more easily. Right up to the end of the AMC senior platform in the 70s, they did all the stretches in front of the firewall. The 114″ wheelbase 67 Rebel, 118″ wheelbase 67 Ambassador and 71 Matador and the 122″ wheelbase 69 Ambassador were all the same body from the firewall back.
By the mid 50s, Nash was still playing in the mid-market, while Studebaker had fallen to cheap car status. If a car as you depicted would be offered as either, it would have been offered as a Nash. My expectation however, was that Romney would have done the same thing as he did: kill both the Studebaker and Nash brands in 57 and be all Rambler all the time.
Your comment about the ’69 Ambassador having such a long hood compelled me to revisit what I have long felt was a great opportunity to revive Packard. Newly minted photo work-up has me more convinced than ever. It all started with Exner’s Packard Revival concept presented in Esquire in December, 1963.
Now consider the ’69 Ambassador coupe.
What if, instead of AMC spending all that money to do the AMX coupe, which was basically a new rear married to Javalin’s front, they instead acquired the Packard name and productionized Ex’s design, with a new rear married to Ambassador coupe’s front?
The result might have looked something like this.
Up front try to imagine hidden headlights and traditional Packard grill mated to Ambassador’s bumper. Ambassador’s front fenders and hood could have probably have been retained, also the forward section of roof. A convertible could have been offered too.
The luxury coupe market was on fire at this time and continued to grow throughout the ’70s.
Some historians say AMC went under because they tried to become a full line producer. I disagree. They had two platforms, Rambler and American, each evolving at major redesigns. Ambassador was mostly a sales success. A Packard version at the top, even if only in 2-door style, would have generated healthy additional profits and added needed luster to AMC.
The study got me to thinking about possible AMC-Packard connections even earlier, say 1958. The only platform available was Rambler so the car would have been smaller than luxury cars of the day. Nor was there a 2-door Rambler to work from, so it would have been a 4-door only, definitely hardtop, possibly sedan too.
Had created this image some time ago but wanted to show it here to spark the imagination. Not shown would have been opportunity to widen Rambler several inches by simple means of new outer panels. Broader shoulders and Ambassador’s long hood would have made it more of an intermediate in appearance, and more substantial looking than Ambassador. With AMC’s biggest V8 would have been fast yet easy to handle and park, making it a potentially viable offer especially after Sputnik, as more American’s began to consider anew Romney’s argument that traditional American cars had become dinosaurs. Annual sales of 15,000 – 20,000 would have probably made it profitable, and allowed the Packard name to live on with chance of eventually regaining full health and status.
Working from clean-sided ’57 Rambler, hood has been lengthened 9 inches and width increased from 71.3 to around 75 inches, permitting some overhang around front wheels. Decklid carried over but rear fenders extended rearward several inches. Roof treatment would have been difficult, Rambler’s raised surface adjacent to backlight forcing similar surface change with Packard. I re-positioned the surface change to define the Predictor-style roof. Not a good situation but it would have been important to keep Rambler’s backlight and inner roof structure.
Since the body sides and door jams would have been all new and Rambler’s rear legroom rather minimal, I reversed the small rear doors per ’57 Eldorado Brougham, which had a similar situation. That’s the vehicle which I think ’61 Conti’s door arrangement and tight rear legroom were modeled after.
Predictor styling up front includes hidden lamps. AMC’s 327 V8 underhood, Ambassador only getting the 250 V8. Pricing from mid-$3,000’s.
Overall, the result would not have been the best situation for Packard but at least it… would have been. I actually kind of like the car.
Overall, the result would not have been the best situation for Packard but at least it… would have been. I actually kind of like the car.
Your speculations are probably close to what would have happened had Nance not been so obstinate. or blinded by his hubris.
Several years ago John Conde wrote an article about how Mason’s merger proposal to Packard was laid out: future Packards were to be nothing but a retrimmed Nash Ambassador.
Ultimately, if Packard had merged with Nash on Mason’s terms, the result would probably have been the same as with the Hudson merger: the senior platform abandoned in 57 and all the legacy brands abandoned with it.
Probably true. It seems nobody was looking out for Packard in these final years. Even Nance put himself first, allowing the merger to be structured such that he would gain full control but Studebaker would come out on top if everything went south.
All our pondering really opened my eyes to the product and corporate possibilities. And there was (at least) one more: Nance, turned down by the investors, could have ordered something dramatic using the Studebaker’s body.
It is true the ’57 Clipper was an amazing accomplishment given the shoestring budget, but looking back it was a stinky effort. It was Studebaker that got the real dough in the ensuing years, witness the ’59 Lark. Where did that money come from? Why didn’t Packard get it for 1958? Or ’57?
Here’s a ’57 Clipper mod that tries as hard as possible to create a Predictor working with as many existing stampings as possible. Axle-to-dash has been increased 4.5 inches, wheelbase now 125 inches. Predictor hidden lights and vertical grill motif. Utica 374 V8 and Ultramatic, already packaged for 1956. Torsion-Level if possible.
I think it would have been a lovely car. Not a big car but no wimp either, and would have gotten a further appearance improvement and 4-door hardtop in 1958 with intro of S-P’s new flat roofs, the shorter one of which Studebaker used for not only its ’59 Lark sedan but also Lark 2-door hardtop.
Together with the super short Lark these longer Packards would have made S-P strong enough to continue. And no, Mercedes need not have defeated the effort.
Once Romney was gone, merger with AMC could have finally been consummated.
Together with the super short Lark these longer Packards would have made S-P strong enough to continue. And no, Mercedes need not have defeated the effort.
Another interesting rendering. Problem is, the Studebaker platform was too narrow to even be competitive with Ford or Chevy by that time. Up this thread I posted a pic of a 53-55 Studebaker hardtop parked next to a 55 Plymouth. Even the Plymouth was wider that the Studebaker from the same year. The 59 Chevy parked a few spaces away looks huge compared to the Studebaker.
By the time Studebaker took the Sawzall to their car to create the Lark, a compact was the only thing they could make that was competitive because the “full size” cars had grown so much. If they had wanted to spend millions on a new, wider, platform, they would have needed to spend millions more to reconfigure the body plant to accommodate the wider body.
The Packard 374 and Ultramatic were not available in 57. As part of the Eisenhower administration’s back door bailout of S-P, Curtiss-Wright leased, later bought, both the Studebaker Chippewa plant and the Packard Utica plant. The new Packard engine line and the transmission line were uprooted from Utica and the equipment was put in storage at E Grand until it was eventually sold for scrap. Moving all that hardware to South Bend and reinstalling it would have cost millions.
The real bottom line is that the 57 Packardbaker’s role was to stick a Packard badge on something so the Packard dealers would not sue S-P. With such a halfhearted effort, the Packard dealers would either pick up Studebaker, or starve until they abandoned Packard, solving the lawsuit problem.
Roy Hurley should have never been needed.
Nance and the Board still had wiggle room immediately after the insurance companies refused to fund the ’57 large Packard program in early 1956. It was at this point that they could have presented to the insurance companies an alternate plan that consolidated Packard production in South Bend for 1957 and used Studebaker’s body, with Packard getting the lion’s share of 1957 MY tooling allocation. Packard’s leadership could have still entertained other possibilities in parallel, such as using Ford/Lincoln bodies or merging with Chrysler, AMC, International Harvester or non-automotive companies, but the primary plan would have continued uninterrupted. For the duration of 1956 the goal would have been, unfortunately, to lay lots of people off. Packard car assembly would have ended as history recorded while Utica operations would have been temporarily suspended.
True, the ’57 Packard Predictor would have been a medium-sized car, but so was the Mercedes and that car cost a whole lot more. History can’t have it both ways!
The new Predictor would have been priced from $4,000 which would have been $800 more than the Clipper that would have never been. This would have put it in upper Buick territory and $700 less than Cadillac. Good positioning for what would have been one of the industry’s first luxury sport sedans. With the 374 V8 it would have been one of the fastest cars on the road and an absolute pleasure to drive. Torsion-Level would have given it a large car ride. Leather or broad cloth interiors, nothing less. Full Packard instrumentation, no dials left out!
If you listen to the excellent commentary about 5:50 into this video you will hear a great story about the supposed nose-heavy nature of the ’56 Golden Hawk powered by Packard’s 352 V8. I think this gentleman is spot on. Anything concocted by Hoffman/Vance, dating all the way back to their screwing Pierce-Arrow in 1933, should be treated with suspicion. Am greatly appreciative of this gentleman allowing us to experience his car.
As for the would-be Packard, as the latest work-up hopefully attests, it would have benefited greatly from a new hardtop. Unlike the ’58 Studebaker flat roof, I wrapped this car’s roof around the windshield header like GM, to reduce the height of the side glass and give the roof some character. Front and rear glass would have been carried over. Predictor grill up front with hidden lamps. Come to think of it, Teague and Hudson’s earlier renderings of classic grill would have also looked nice.
I think sales of 30,000 units would have been doable, courtesy an awesome car.
Inverting color shows the appearance tie-in to Predictor show car and highlights the beautifully executed Darrin dip. Wrapped windshield introduced mid-year ’55 is very similar to Exner’s nicely done ’57. Overall, scaled up this theme might have been a better path than Schmidt’s boxy form.
Here’s a pillared sedan version that uses stock doors. Probably would have been a good addition, saving cost and weight (~130 lbs) and giving buyers choice. Hardtop’s front doors would have come from trimmed coupe doors for the outers and lowest cost solution for the inners.
Speaking of weight, if Standard Catalog is any guide, Studebaker’s supercharged 289 is actually 70 lbs heavier than Packard’s 352. My rough calcs suggest that the hardtop would have weighed around 3,825 lbs with 3-speed manual and overdrive, pillared sedan around 3,695 lbs.
With 310 HP underhood, acceleration would have been eye-popping, the Master Engine Builder’s blood flowing stronger than ever! The only analogy I can think of is if Packard had either pulled ahead its 356 Eight or installed its V12 in the ’35 One Twenty and enhanced the appearance by lengthening the hood and wheelbase, working in styling elements from the ’34 LeBaron Sport Phaeton (chromed V-windscreen) and ’35 Aero coupe (fastback style), and priced the car similar to ’35 standard Eight.
Still having fun with these inverted colors, this time the hardtop coupe on 4 inch shorter Commander/Champion wheelbase. Included an opera window to get it even closer to the show car. Would have beat the 4-pass T-Bird to market by a year.
A few revelations from this latest study:
– Nance would have needed to quickly make the mental leap to a smaller Studebaker-based Packard that not only pushed style and power but also technology, including new rack-and-pinion steering to be shared with Studebaker, and disc brakes and Torsion-Level shared with highest trim President and Hawk.
– Half the tooling budget would have needed to have been directed at two new flat roofs (standard and 4 inch long) used by all 1957 S-P product, with pillar-less hardtop style for 2-door models and chromed B-pillar/window frames per earlier Predictor work-up for sedans. Studebaker roofs would have been derived from Packard stampings by trimming C-pillar to give familiar reverse slant, similar to how the large ’57 Packard Program planned to create its pillared sedan from hardtop roof stamping.
– The other half of tooling budget would have been directed at new Packard front fenders, hood and bumper/fascia/grill on 4 inch longer axle-to-dash, allowing 120.5 wb Predictor 2-door hardtop to share torsion bars with 120.5 wb President and Hawk.
– The downsized, stylish, powerful, richly appointed and technology-laden Packards would have been 30 years ahead of where the global luxury market eventually landed, and in the late Fifties would have represented a mid-point between the capable but austere Mercedes and the opulent American luxury car. This would not have been the first time Packard tapped a smaller less expensive car to build its next gen flagship, happened first with the ‘21 Six that spawned ’24 Eight, then the One Twenty that led to the One Sixty/One Eighty. Survival sometimes requires tough choices.
Here’s the 120.5 Predictor coupe in normal view. Note that it and previous image’s hood are a half inch shorter than earlier 4-door images. Bucket seats and center console might have been a worthwhile package to develop, perhaps offered with the opera window as part of a high level series that included the 440 V8 that Packard had been working on. Four door hardtop could have been included in this series.
These renderings look nicer than Packard’s own proposals. The thing with being Studebaker based is, first, downsizing was not what customers wanted. Like now, with the SUV fixation, customers were buying what was bigger. Second, my parents had a 1956 Studebaker Commander, bought new, and nothing about that car was luxurious. My dad commented on how it “drove like a truck”. By the mid 50s, the Studebaker platform wasn’t competitive with Ford or Chevy, let alone anything mid-market or higher. I have a copy of a road test of a Studebaker from 57 or 58, after the company had made some revisions to the steering and suspension. The report said words to the effect that, if Studebaker had built that car in 1954, they would have sold a lot of them, but as a 58, it was still uncompetitive.
Let’s throw some data at the problem. Here’s a report on Packard’s engine in Studebaker car, appears to be from same gentleman who made the video above. Torsion-level, rack-and-pinion and disc brakes would probably have solved most of the vehicle dynamics issues.
http://www.1956goldenhawk.com/56ghperformance.pdf
And we have these dimensions.
Working through volume estimates prompted more revelations, the biggest being that Lark would not have been needed and all Studebaker engine production needed shut down after 1957.
First the volumes. We know Golden Hawk with Packard V8 accounted for 20% of Hawk production in 1956 despite costing $600 more than next most expensive Hawk. That gives some indication of the worth of horsepower and to a certain extent, Packard power. Second, we know the ’57 Clipper sedan sold at 60% the ’57 Studebaker President sedan rate despite a $700 price premium, indicating the value of the Packard name in absence of breakthrough styling. And finally, we know that Studebaker 2 door sedans sold at 7% of 4 door sedan rate in 1957 while 2 door hardtops sold at 35% of 4 door sedan rate in 1958 despite fairly hefty price premium, indicating the worth of hardtop styling. What we don’t know is what compelling styling such as the Predictor theme would have done for Packard, but we do know that in general, the market rewarded good styling.
Given all this, I arrived at a Studebaker-based ’57 Packard Predictor sales range of 20,000 units on the low side and 50,000 on the high side, with 30,000 a number that I would have “booked.” Given the cost-efficient platform the car would have been built on, see no reason why the effort would not have been moderately profitable that year, taking a dip in ’58 then rebounding in ’59.
This would have taken care of Packard until a brand new S-P shared platform, several inches wider but still not full-sized, could have been developed for 1960 or 61. To afford it, Studebaker needed to get its act together too. More on that next…
Mating proposed ’57 Packard’s new hardtop roof with Studebaker body, as suggested several posts above, would not have been enough of an appearance improvement to reverse the sales slide. I think Studebaker needed to abandon the reverse angled C-pillar theme.
Studebaker’s “borrowing with pride” of ’57 Chrysler greenhouse theme for its ’58 hardtop was a smart move, and given the disaster and limited cash that Nance would have been managing throughout 1956, Studebaker’s opportunity probably would have needed to wait until the 1958 MY anyway. Attached work-up makes only a few changes to the ’58 President 2-door hardtop. First, the roof had been curved around the windshield header similar to proposed Packard execution, which would have allowed shared front door assemblies including side glass and vent windows. Second, I washed away the swollen quad lamps in favor of carryover dual lamps or quad lamps properly positioned rather than grafted on. And third, added skirts.
1958 Studebaker line-up would have included two versions of the roof design, standard and 4 inch long, both using common backlight. All series and trims could have been retained from prior years including 2 and 4 door sedans and 2 door hardtop on 116.5 wb and 4 door sedan on 120.5 wb. By 1958, Packard might have productionized its 4 door hardtop doors, eliminating the reverse rear door opening in favor of standard industry practice for handle location and hinging (if it hadn’t already done so for 1957). For Studebaker such a car might have looked like this.
IMHO it is this series together with the proposed Packards that would have saved S-P, not the Lark. I say this because the industry would soon adopt mid-sized cars as its second favorite size, relegating compacts to third place, not a good position given the already thin margins. No American mid-sized luxury car existed from the late 50s through the Sixties but i think one can surmise that enough buyers would have existed to support Packard.
Note sure if my earlier post went though so here it is again:
Table below shows the proposed ’58 engine changes. Packard is in light blue, new Studebaker engines in yellow and cancelled Studebaker engines in pink.
Utica was a brand new state-of-art facility and its engines were vital to Packard’s survival. It HAD to survive. Studebakers engines were old (Six) or mid-life (V8) and too small for the late 50s. Even in OHV form, Studebaker’s 186 CID Six would have been a dog.
One look at S-P engines versus the competition should have prompted Nance to shut down all Studebaker engine production and create a new series of Utica-built Sixes based on Packard’s V8. The new Sixes would have cost several million dollars to develop, funded by the success of the ’57 Packards and continued support from investors. Performance would have been near Studebaker’s V8s, weight significantly lower and piece cost theoretically lower or at least a wash, given transport costs.
The reality is that Packard and Studebaker both needed to take a hair cut. Packard would have lost its body production, Studebaker its engines. A terrible situation for hourly and salaried workers alike and mostly the fault of leadership, but at least survival would have offered the potential for future growth.
Hey Joseph, you’ve got a lot of great material here. You ever think of contributing? We have a special category on CC called “Alternate History” for photoshops like this (as opposed to Forgotten Future, which is actual cars that didn’t make production).
Tom – can’t say I had but am open to the idea. Would like a bit more info on the process, if you would be kind enough to email. Thanks and btw, my name is Paul West though sometimes I go by my middle name as here. The good folks at PackardInfo know me by Mahoning63.
Steve – am trying to figure out how to guestimate a 1957 sales estimate. Will post if something semi-reasonable comes together. Not much to go on… ’58 Ambassador might help marginally, Golden Hawk too.
With the full $10M they probably could have done a Champion too. Same roof change but on shorter Rambler body and with Rambler’s shorter hood. This would have allowed the dealers to focus on one brand as before.
Yes, rear absolutely inspired by Imperial.
Re: Packard/Hudson merger, a few additional thoughts.
First, in thinking about what Nance and Barit could have done quickly to reduce ’54 losses, installing Packard’s 327 Eight and Ultramatic might have helped fetch a few hundred extra sales, maybe more. Offering a 4-door Hollywood (it appears that the doors would have aligned to the C-pillar) might have driven a few thousand extra sales and re-positioned Hudson as maker of “normal” cars. Rear legroom would have stunk but at least they would have gotten something out there. Hollywood’s wrapped backlite was very similar to Jet and proposed ’55 Packard-based Hornet, important for design continuity.
Second, the benefits of new-to-industry Nance and his green team being influenced by old industry hand Barit and his seasoned team cannot be overstated.
“We are considering moving assembly to Conner.”
“No, that won’t work for several obvious reasons. Leave the body work to us, we know what we are doing and have the capacity to serve both Packard and Hudson’s needs.”
“We know the ’55 redesign is being rushed and prints are late to be released, but our new team has a can-do attitude.”
“No, we’ve been making cars long enough to know that can-do isn’t enough. We’ll help you launch all the cars with quality because some of them are going to carry a Hudson badge!”
“Our V8 will be ready and running right, we promise.”
“No, you will prove it to our engine experts. From here on, consider them part of your development team. You can see the fruits of their labors tearing up the stock car circuit. They know a few things.”
Of course, the benefits would have flowed both ways:
“Our intent is to carry over the Hornet Step-Down and put your V8 in it.”
“No, your Step-Down is out of date. We will drop the Clipper name and transform that car into your next Hudson, and it will look modern and stylish.”
“Our intent is also to carry over our beloved Jet.”
“No, your unloved Jet is ugly and should have never been built. We’ll either fix its appearance on the cheap or drop it. Sorry, you should have gotten it right the first time.”
Not all the arguments would have fallen on deaf ears, though:
“You can’t use Clipper for our Hudson. Even with the hardtop roof it will be an inch and a half taller than our Step-Down, and our customers like the low roof on our car.”
“You have a point. Problem is, we don’t enough money to do a new car. What if we kept the chassis and floorpan, and sectioned Clipper’s body and inch and a half and covered most of the welds with side trim? Or are your body people not up to the job?!!!”
“Don’t worry about our body people, just tell us where to cut and send us new stampings in areas where we can’t get the panels to roughly align. But we don’t want that silly wrap-around windshield and knee-knocker dogleg, not with sectioned bodies.”
“Fine, then keep the ’54 windshield, it will make our Packards look that much more unique.”
Do you want your Packards sectioned too?”
“No, the lower seats relative to floor might work for your more spirited buyers but not the conservative folks who buy in our price class. We are already pushing it with the hardtop roof that takes away their hat room, will go low with you at the next major. By then the fine car market will have had time to adjust.”
The resulting Hudsons might have looked like this.
And the Packards, like this.
Long wheelbase car would have had two rather than typical three rows of seating, thus avoiding Cadillac which by then owned the limo market. Nance had wanted to cater to executives by equipping Patrician with division window, Dictaphone and other gadgets. This car would have served that purpose. Sits on 142 inch wheelbase, 9 more than sedan. Because the coupe’s front doors were 9 inches longer than sedan, low investment strategy would have been to cut a 4.5 inch length off the coupe’s door and weld it onto the sedan’s rear door, creating new outer panels front and rear. Door inners would have been more involved but nothing Hudson’s body folks couldn’t have figured out. Roof would have been lengthened by welding in an insert or better yet, stamping a separate front and rear section of sedan’s roof and welding the two together. Slightly wider B-pillar for visual balance.
Packards could have come in two trim levels, base and custom. Or perhaps the naming could have been Patrician and Caribbean, the latter affixed to not only the convertible but all the body styles, with side trim, interior upgrades and highest horsepower V8 just like the actual Caribbean convertible that we are familiar with. Nance wanted to either take Cadillac head-on or bracket them. This strategy would have done the latter, with Sixty Special priced between them. The new Hudsons would have been priced below Cadillac, competing with mid and high end Buicks, Chrysler and low end Lincolns.
No need to fabricate a story that connects Hudson to Packard’s Torsion-Level suspension, it came from Hudson’s suspension innovator, William Allison, who was still employed with Hudson when he helped Packard! Of course, Barit would have wanted it on his Hudsons too, which might not have been a bad idea as it would have helped unify and bolster the new Packard-Hudson name.
Nice photoshops by the way.
Indeed. I like them!
Thanks, much appreciated.
Nov ’54 rendering by Teague hints at ’55 Request and shows promise for ’57 redesign when P-H cars would have been lowered and incorporated step-down (along with rest of industry). I like this design better than Schmidt’s direction. Grill wrapping under car might have been problematic.
Fred Hudson, working with Teague, created this concept with hidden headlights and vertical grill bars. Very sensuous body with, alas, curves! How dare they create beautiful sculpture when the truly smart design leaders of the day knew that what the industry really wanted was… a shoe box.
The Request’s grill might have been a good update for Reinhart body’s last year, 1956 and set Packard’s frontal design on a promising new path. The wrap-under grill didn’t work visually and who knows what damage rocks and curbs would have inflicted.
At minimum it needed a lower fascia.
And maybe hidden headlights, Teague never liking the “starry eyes.”
Finally, we get to the Jet. Could it have been saved?
Frank Spring had wanted a much lower car but was overridden by Barit, who was clearly a card carrying member of the Hat Room Club. Also the Stubborn Goat Club and many others, the names of which “decorum prohibits from listing here.” But he was also a good car guy in the classic sense and to my eye, a good person. It’s unfortunate that he found himself in charge at a critical time in Hudson’s history and just as the styling revolution had overtaken the industry.
This image keeps the entire car from shoulders down. Hood forward edge moves down to what Spring had originally intended, and if you have ever looked under the hood of the Jet, everything appears to have been packaged for that lower height. Roof now mid-Fifties modern and with hardtop appearance but still fixed B-pillar. Total vehicle height drops from 61 to 56 inches though at expense of rear legroom, which would have meant this would have been viable as a 2-door only. Probably a few million dollars to redesign, money that Packard-Hudson would have had to break many small piggy banks to find. Because the Jet’s bones were sound and the car could have still been advertised as Mono-bilt, I think it would have been worth reworking, especially given the success Studebaker was having with its low slung Loewy coupes.
Somebody commented that Edsel designers changed the front end design of the upcoming Edsel because of its similarity to the Packard Predictor show car. What date was the Predictor first unveiled? Here is a picture of an Edsel prototype dated 8-17-1955 which features the infamous “horse collar” grille section that is very close to the grille on the production 1958 Edsel. The rest of the front end is very different but the vertical grille is almost identical. If the Predictor influenced Edsel designers to change the frontal appearance of the Edsel then the designers must have seen the Predictor by August 1955. Did the designers get an early peak at the Predictor? Or is the story that Edsel changed the front end design so it would look different to the front end of the Predictor a myth?
Here is another view of an early Edsel prototype, dated 7-19-1955. Did Edsel designers see the Predictor prior to this date?
The Predictor/Edsel thing will likely go on forever… but It just plain would not matter what time or point that Ford’s people got a look at Predictor. As I’ve said before, Packard was already set on reviving a vertical grille by the time the Request concept was done at Creative Industries of Detroit in late 1954. The Request already had a vertical grille and it was fairly well understood that Packard styling would be headed in this direction. This was no secret.
Furthermore, a simple gander at the proposed 1957 Packard models and mock-ups… would have told everyone far more than a peek at Predictor. OR they could have seen Predictor drawings, illustrations or even the original scale model even earlier than that. Or at least heard of them. They didn’t have to wait to see the actual vehicle in public.
And all of this is really moot when one includes the reality of the fact that William Schmidt was hired away from Ford Styling to oversee work on the 1956 Packards and 1957 Packards. Not just Dick Teague as people seem to think. And… to think there was no cross-pollenization–or at least inside knowledge– here is a little extreme.
Finally, and as previously stated, Predictor’s so-called vertical radiator grille was no radiator grille at all. It was a spring-loaded vertical front bumper.
That 57 Clipper by Packard mock up is not the final form the car was to take. As the car neared final form it retained what would be Mercury like taillights, but the front end was cleaned up quite a bit. The front fins were deleted, the grill expanded and wrapped around the sides. It ended up a much smoother, very attractive design. Because it shared the Studebaker body, it looked somewhat similar. The Studebaker had a shorter body, Lark like rear taillights. All SPC cars, the Packard, Clipper and Studebaker shared inner panels and many center door frame, roof design elements. The Packard was much larger of course and was to come in a variety of body styles. Many Packard design ideas later showed up
on Ford products, not just Edsel.
Even with the finely styled Lincoln’s of the 1960’s, Lincoln always ran second-fiddle to Cadillac, with Imperial running a very weak third. It’s conceivable that there was just not enough room in the market anymore for a competitor to Cadillac.
Packard’s salvation would not have been to take on Cadillac head-on, but rather, like Romney, look for niche markets, but instead in the luxury field. That might have been going even upper-market than Cadillac, e.g. in Rolls-Royce territory, or perhaps going for something more refined, elegant, lightweight, e.g. going in the direction that Mercedes would take in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
It is true that merging with Hudson would have made more sense than merging with Studebaker, especially given Hudson’s sporting image (which wasn’t really something that resonated unfortunately with the general public). The Packard board was dead-set on Studebaker from the get-go, hard to figure why, which is why they shut out Nash from merger inquiries even late in the game, as well as early 1949.
The thing that killed Packard was when they had to fire Max Gilman in 1942, because he was the only one in the boardroom with any vision. It was downhill from there.
People keep saying the senior tooling was lost/no good/sold during the war, but the non-Clipper seniors had already been discontinued in 1942. That ship had already sailed, pun possibly intended.
The thing that killed Packard was when they had to fire Max Gilman in 1942,
I have read that his successor, George Christopher, wanted to compete with Buick, not Cadillac, so took the brand down-market. His follower, Hugh Ferry, didn’t want the job. He did little, but recruit Nance to take the job off his hands.
My theory about the “mysterious disappearance” of the senior tooling during the war was that Christopher sold it for scrap. He was not interested in that market segment, so making some money off the metal was probably the best use, as far as he was concerned.
An old Nash hand wrote an article years ago, about how he was tasked to work up the flip charts for Mason’s merger presentation to the Packard board. Partway through that project, his team was ordered to rework the charts to work Hudson in. Apparently, as soon as the Jet’s failure became apparent, Ed Barit started shopping the company around. Packard rebuffed him, but Mason listened.
Reportedly, the failing of the merger proposal, in Nance’s eyes, was Nance would only be President of the Packard division (with Packards being retrimmed Nash Ambassadors). Nance wanted to be top dog, but Mason had been grooming Romney for years. In an article in Business Week, shortly after Nance became President of Packard, he said the only reason he took the job was to do a big deal, and be a big shot. Apparently, being effectively demoted to a divisional President didn’t suit Nance. And, apparently, merging with Hudson was not a big enough deal to interest Nance either. Studebaker was the largest of the independents, and both Hoffman and Vance were willing to step aside, and let Nance be the big dog. So, Packard went barreling in to the merger, with no due diligence, so that Nance could realize his big shot dreams.
Didn’t read through all of the 100+ older comments, but I believe the rendering of the dark green and white car was based on a short period when Lincoln was being considered as a provider of chassis and bodies for the new big ’57 Packards: note the roofline and windshield designs. It was quickly put to rest when Lincoln declined to participate iirc.
There’s endless speculation among Packard fans over the fateful 1955 to ’58 period. And it hasn’t been resolved yet!
I thought about Joseph’s comments on the proposed Exner’s revival of Packard but when I check the front end of the proposed 1966 Duesenberg with a little photoshopping, it could look like a Packard front end. While we’re at it, I think the 1966 Duesenberg could have serve as a basis for a 1966 Packard.
Now I wonder if customizer Dean Jeffries, who created the Black Beauty from a 1966 Imperial to be used in the tv series The Green Hornet could have been inspired a bit by Packard as well?
That “mix and match” Interchangeability chart that Steve posted upthread showing the shared inner structure of the proposed ’57 Studebaker-Clipper-Packard lineup is the first place I’ve seen a proposed Studebaker El Camino-like thing (the “express coupe” at the lower left). Anyone know anything about these?
Interesting that someone came up with that concept with no station wagon body to share a lot of parts with. And more so that there was no Studebaker station wagon body proposed at all when station wagons were a substantial part of the competition’s production at that time, particularly for the Low Priced Three.
The interchangeability chart does mention parts shared between the Express Coupe (pickup/ute) and 2 Door Station Wagon in the color-coding key at the bottom, as well as “short sheet is station wagon roof die” (?) at left showing the roofline for a station wagon, apparently sharing some rear window area parts with the express coupe. Not clear from drawing whether Packard or Clipper planned to field any station wagons, or whether Studebaker planned any 4 door wagons (S-P didn’t have any 4 door wagons in 1955-56). For that matter, the Express Coupe doesn’t show any Studebaker branding, although it is styled like the proposed Stude.
All these comments are at least as interesting as the article itself. As a volunteer at America’s Packard Museum in Dayton, OH (amercaspackardmuseum.org), it is so gratifying to me how people far too young to remember Packard come into the Museum, are absolutely fascinated by the 50 years of cars we have on display and walk away with a real appreciation of what fine cars the Packards were. I love seeing the interest in all the commenters here as well. Good on you and please, keep it up!
You left the letter “i” out of “America’s” so the link says (amercaspackardmuseum.org). “amerca”… and thus does not work.
So. The correct link ought to be “www.americaspackardmuseum.org”
Destroying the prototype was a requirement of some sort, perhaps involving corporate taxes. Don’t believe for a second they didn’t believe in the car they were planning to build. If you were to find the article Collectible Automobile magazine did about the ’55 and ’56 Packards, which included a article about the plans for ’57, Richard Teague told a amusing tale about the destruction of the prototype, where he told one of the welders to cut the car up, and after it was done, told him that he meant the other car (a black Clipper).