(first posted 10/29/2013) You would be forgiven for mistaking this modest-looking sedan as a low-trim Dodge, Pontiac or Mercury. But a Packard? The very name conjures images of exclusive cars from the classic era, like this illustrious coach-built V12, or perhaps its last gasp luxo-boat, the 1956 Caribbean. But finding this lowly 1951 Model 200 sitting curbside just a few blocks from my house was actually more fortuitous (and likely) than finding a glamorous one. Because in the history of this fabled brand, this car played quite a pivotal role: it brought Packard down.
In 1899, James Packard bought a one-cylinder Winton, and wasn’t fully pleased. When he wrote Winton a letter with his recommendations for improvements, Winton responded by telling him to go…build your own car. Packard acted on that, and Winton disappeared before long. And although James Packard personally didn’t stay around long, his founding commitment to excellence became its enduring legacy.
In 1912, the 48 horsepower Six put Packard in the big leagues. Its reliability, quality and refinement solidly established the Packard reputation.
And the brilliant Twin Six of 1916 not only cemented it, but also put it clearly ahead of Cadillac’s new V8 from just one year earlier. The cylinder race was on.
In those early decades, the definition of luxury was rather different than today. Sure, size and comfort were a factor, but the greatest luxury was mechanical quality, refinement and reliability. If you valued those highly in a time when they were still far from universal, and you could afford it, you were quite likely a Packard owner. And you became part of Packard’s famous advertising slogan “Ask the man who owns one”.
And it wasn’t just cars either; Packard built trucks and commercial chassis for the most demanding and discriminating buyers. Packard was the closest thing to an American version of Mercedes-Benz, pre 1990. And it became a very prosperous company, consistently outselling Cadillac from 1925 until WW II, except for a couple of years in the Depression.
All the remaining independent high-end car makers except Packard were wiped out during the Depression. Packard was sitting on a huge cash reserve, and kept building its exquisite big cars. But it was not sustainable, so Packard made the fateful decision to expand into the mid-market with the 1935 Model 120 (above), which cost one-sixth of the V12. And two years later, an even cheaper six cylinder 115/110 appeared. It would be like Rolls-Royce selling a $65k car today. (1937 Packard Six CC here)
These junior Packards (1942 110 shown) were excellent cars in their own right. And they sold very well; suddenly the most desirable brand in the land was affordable to a large portion of the middle class. Sales exploded from 8k in 1934 to 122k in 1937, and Packard became a top ten mass producer. But the junior models diluted Packard’s exclusive image for the truly wealthy. Cadillac began to look more desirable as well as more stylish, thanks to Harley Earl.
Since GM had lots of brands covering all the pricing levels, Cadillac was relatively more isolated from the pressure to go down scale. Now if Packard had created a new mid-level brand, it might have spared itself the brand erosion. Packard historians will argue about this to their graves.
During WW II, Packard built the legendary Rolls Royce Merlin V12 aero engine that powered the fabulous P-51 Mustang fighter, among others. It came out of the war years as the only debt-free independent car maker. Packard was now holding its last hand of good cards, and how it played them in the post war boom was critical.
Just before the war, in 1941, Packard introduced a new mid-level car, the Clipper, its stab at progressive and aerodynamic slab-sided styling. It was handsome, and sold well. Packard decided to bet the house on it, literally. It ditched the old junior and senior Packard models (but the dies were not sent to Russia, as per common urban legend), which were sitting on pretty ancient chassis anyway, and based (and named) all its postwar cars on the Clippers. That left it without distinctive top-tier cars, further eroding its image. And to try to keep volume high, Packard aggressively pursued the commercial market with taxis, ambulances, etc.
During the pent-up sellers’ market right after the war, everything got ripped out of the manufacturers’ hands. But that eased by 1948-1949, just as the Big Three unveiled their all-new cars, like the handsome 1948 Cadillac. Since Packard’s heavy investment in the Clipper body dies wasn’t yet amortized, the old Clipper was heavily disguised for the critical 1948-1950 years. It came off looking heavy and bloated, and was dubbed the “pregnant whale”. Packard’s situation was becoming precarious.
This is where our Curbside Classic comes in. Packard bet a huge chunk of its remaining cash on a completely new car for 1951, the last all-new Packard ever. A reasonably handsome car, yes, but not exactly distinguished in any way. And it was still powered by the flat-head straight eights that dated back to the thirties, while the competition was romping (even at Le Mans) with new OHV and hemi V8’s.
Packard offered two versions of this venerable lump of cast iron; I’ve heard they weigh over a thousand pounds. The 288 cubic inch (4.7 liter) version in this low-end 200 Series churned out 135 hp. A longer stroke 327 cubic incher (5.4 liter) for the higher end cars managed 150 hp. Yes, they were inefficient, heavy and outmoded by 1951. But straight eights do have their charms. Inherently balanced for both primary and secondary vibrations, it runs as smooth as melting butter.
With all that cast iron, low compression and mild state of tune, you literally can not tell that this engine is running unless you look at the fan. At a car show once, I saw someone balance a quarter on edge on an idling Packard straight eight. And backing it up was a mighty smooth transmission, the fabled Ultramatic. It was the only automatic fully developed and built by one of the independent makers.
The 1949-1954 Ultramatic was essentially a one-speed; low range was only used for steep ascends or descents. A two-stage, multi-turbine torque converter amplified the big eight’s twist sufficiently for starting; somewhere between 15 and 55 mph, depending on rear-axle gearing and throttle position, a lock-up clutch engaged direct mechanical drive.
That meant no pumping losses at speed. It basically split the difference between the very slushy and inefficient one-speed Buick Dynaflow, which always stayed in fluid drive, and the efficient but rather hard-shifting original four-speed fluid coupling Hydramatic.
It’s all-too obvious that this Packard is anything but luxurious. Its interior is downright taxi-cabbish. Prices started at $2300 ($20k adjusted). This Series 200 of 1951 was the final and most extreme case of the dilution of Packard’s image that started with the series 120 in 1935. Packard’s sales slumped badly, and in 1952, an energetic new President, James Nance, was hired to salvage the fast sinking Clipper ship.
His solution was a retreat from the low end of the range and the taxis and commercial cars, and focus on competing with the higher end Cadillacs. The new 1955 models (CC here) were just a clever re-skin by Dick Teague of the old ’51 body, but did sport more flair (and chrome). An all-new OHV V8 brought it up to power parity with the competition. And a radical “Torsion-Level” suspension option put it firmly (or softly) ahead in that department: it was the first active suspension in these parts.
Long torsion bars interfaced the front and rear suspension on each side, and electric motors adjusted their tension according to load weight. It was considered more effective than GM’s experiments with air suspensions at the time. And it’s probably a challenge to keep working fifty years later.
In 1956, Nance finally did what should have been done in the thirties: he made the lower-priced Clipper a separate brand from Packard. But it was a classic case of too little, too late.
Packard was already overwhelmed by its “merger” with Studebaker in 1954. In reality, Packard bought and bailed out Studebaker, without realizing how bad the situation was in South Bend. Studebaker was running low on cash, and its fixed overhead was way out of line with its falling sales. The white knight now got swallowed whole by the princess in distress.
Packard had planned all-new ’57 models, but ’56 sales crashed, so the only option left was for Packard to use Studebaker body shells, thinly disguised. The pathetic 1957 “Packardbakers” were an ignoble ending to this once high flying brand.
Capitalism is creative destruction, and premium brands are particularly vulnerable. The Depression killed numerous high flyers. Packard and Imperial are long gone. Lincoln and Cadillac are shadows of their former selves.
Undoubtedly, there will always be a market for conspicuously upscale cars. But in the most developed countries of the world the symbols that are used to project success are changing. In Western Europe, a Mercedes S Class is mostly a social liability, unless you want to be presumed a Russian mobster.
It’s happening here too. In the biggest wealth-generating area of the US, Silicon Valley, as well as other places, a Tesla Model S is now the social statement equivalent to a Packard boat-tailed Roadster in the thirties, a Caddy Biarritz in the fifties, a MB SL in the seventies, and a Porsche 911 Cabrio in the nineties. Nothing ever stays the same, especially when it comes to the toys, fashions and badges of the rich.
Very nice article Paul. I agree, the 51 Packard models can at best be described as somewhat “dowdy”, The 41 Clipper though I think is very under-appreciated from a design perspective – it’s quite striking.
Nice picture of “Black Bess”, the 57 mule as described by Dick Teague in his “last days in the bunker”…..
There seems to be a sense of irony in the first and last pictures with the Packard in the foreground and the Fifth Avenue in the background.
Despite its lower market target, this Packard is a favorite of mine. Several years ago my wife found a cream colored ’51 Packard for sale at a used car dealer in St. Louis. She called about it several times but it sold before we could go see it. When seeing Packards of this era, so many terrific things jump to mind.
An unrelated Packard story: My father has told me several times that his father would periodically re-sell cars as well as made several attempts to start a salvage yard – always vetoed by my grandmother. One of the cars he once had was a base model ’39 Packard coupe. They were in a money crunch and could not sell the Packard. It sat and sat. It finally sold to an older lady who worked a deal for making payments to my grandfather. She could not pay for it and he had to repossess it. Having it once again, and still needing money it would not sell. And it would not sell. And he was needing money.
One fateful Saturday morning, he woke my father early. After eating they went outside and my father was told grab an axe. The two of them proceeded to use a chopping axe to scrap the Packard. It greatly pained my grandfather to scrap it, as he knew it would one day be desirable. It was hauled off on Monday and he was able to get some desperately needed money from the Packard.
Styling is a hit and miss job over the years,the proposed 57 looks a lot like the soon to arrive Edsel.The first Packard I saw had comedienne and actress Hilda Baker being chauffeured in London’s West End in the early 60s.Hard to believe they were once a serious rival to Rolls Royce and Cadillac and just a few years after the war they were dead and buried.The pre war cars are very elegant and I love the ask the man who owns one line.The Caribbean looks like a real rival to the Caddilacs,Mk2 Continental and Imperial of the time.
You would be amazed at the bling detailed badges and fetishes in the up scale Packard models.
I’m a big Packard fan…having crawled through an immaculate Torsion riding 400. The detailed and extravagant badges and fetishes on the inside…sold me.
You don’t see stuff like this anymore.
One other important factor when considering Packard’s demise. Their bodies were built by Briggs and when Chrysler bought out Briggs, Packard had to assume the task themselves. That required even more precious capital that they really didn’t need to spend on that task.
The planets were just not in alignment.
It was even more complicated than that. Jim Nance had wanted to bring body production back in house for a while, but Packard had concluded that they couldn’t afford it. When Chrysler bought Briggs from the Briggs family, it forced the issue and Packard tried to buy Briggs plant on Conner Avenue with a loan from one of Packard’s backers. Chrysler raised the price, so Packard ended up having to lease the facility from Chrysler instead.
Packard then decided that they would try to shift both production and assembly to the Conner Avenue plant in order to cut their production costs. This ended up backfiring badly in a number of ways: The plant was on the small side for what Packard wanted to do, the transfer took a lot longer than expected, the confusion messed up production quality, and Packard sales dropped too low to quickly pay off the upfront costs as Nance had hoped.
My dad said that he worked with a fellow back in the Fifties who owned an old Packard convertible from the Thirties. He said that it was a beautiful car, and it never saw winter – the owner garaged it and drove an old Ford during the winter months. He also said that it was great to ride in – it had a small windshield with a long hood hiding that straight eight engine. Unfortunately, it couldn’t pass a gas station, though that wasn’t such a big deal in the Fifties. A few years ago I saw an old Clipper in downtown Toronto. It was painted a lovely cream color and was in showroom condition. I watched it pull into the parking lot next to the building I work at, and I spent a few minutes looking it over (and kicking myself for not having a camera handy). A rare treat.
Packard could afford to be a conservative, understyled car – so long as it had its prestige and reputation working in its favor. But by 1951, that prestige was ebbing fast. The Chrysler was built probably just as well, but offered the excellent Firepower V8. Packard was left appealing to older traditionalists, but not too many others.
I told the story in another thread once that at some point (probably the late 40s) my grandfather bought a Packard. My father later told me that he never forgot the sound of my grandmother yelling at him “A PACKARD! Who buys a PACKARD!” It was Granddad’s first and last new Packard. It would be Cadillacs from there on.
The car looks to be more of a Chevy or Pontiac than a Ford or Chrysler product with that greenhouse styling.
All I can say is: Love all those openable windows! Probably didn’t have A/C…
Paul’s perspective is popular among automotive historians. It illustrates “GM envy” — the notion that the only road to success for an independent has been to copy Alfred Sloan’s brand hierarchy strategy.
That doesn’t add up for me. Packard was simply too small to field two brands without lapsing into counterproductive badge engineering. Folks seem to forget that a car company which typically produces under 100,000 a year can’t afford to do the things the Big Three can. Indeed, independents that have been most successful purposely violated industry groupthink.
Mercedes-Benz is an instructive example. In Europe the brand hasn’t slavishly followed the Sloan model, e.g., for years Mercedes has had a heavy presence in the taxi market.
I think Packard made the right move to go downmarket in the mid-30s. Should it have kept a bigger foothold in the luxury car market after the war? Perhaps. Should Packard have come out with a V8 engine more quickly? I’m less sure of that.
In general, Packard was almost always going to be one step behind the Big Three when it came to the latest technological firsts. If Packard was to survive it needed to emphasize qualities that turned the company’s smallness to its advantage, e.g., quality of fit and finish.
That’s a big reason why Rambler did so well in the late-50s and early-60s. People grew tired of Detroit’s fixation with glitz over practicalness. Packard was one of the first victims of this shift. Its 1955s were quite “modern” but they were plagued with reliability problems. That’s a key reason why 1956 sales tanked.
One other historical tidbit: High-end Packard sales held up much better than the Clipper’s in 1956. Could it be that people were less interested in buying a Packard if it wasn’t called one?
Packard made two serious blunders during the 1930s, in my opinion. The first was introducing the 110, which went too far down market. It was one thing to offer the 120, which competed directly with the big Buicks and Chryslers, but the 110 was a bridge too far. It went head-to-head with the DeSoto and cheaper Oldsmobiles, if I recall correctly. I’m not sure that Packard had any business competing in that market segment.
The second was that it focused too much on the 110 and 120. The Twelve was dying on the vine, as were all of the big, multi-cylinder custom cars by the late 1930s. Packard, however, never effectively countered the Cadillac 60 Series, which quickly became Cadillac’s bread-and-butter.
Waiting until 1955 to roll out the new V-8 was a huge mistake, in my opinion. Buyers in that class simply expected their cars to have an ohv V-8. If I remember correctly, either James Nance or another high official surveyed Packard dealers around 1953, and they were demanding a V-8 engine. They knew what customers shopping in Packard’s field expected.
The lack of modern V-8 hurt Packard as badly as the lack of a fully automatic transmission did for Chrysler during the same time. Buyers shopping for a car in those prices classes expected cars to offer those features. The straight eight, whatever its virtues, cemented Packard’s reputation as a car for old people.
I often wondered why the straight 8 lasted so long especially as Packard had made successful V12 car and aircraft engines many years before 1955.A sad end to a maker of great cars.
Geeber, you make good points about Packard’s 1930s strategy. It’s perplexing as to why Packard ran so quickly away from its traditional market.
On the V8 I’ll throw out an alternative perspective. Chrysler’s premium-priced brands saw sales fall as dramatically as the independents in 1954 despite having both a V8 and an automatic transmission.
In retrospect, it is surprising that Packard waited so long to switch to a V8, but I’d argue that the company hurt itself more by unveiling an engine with teething problems in 1955.
Part of it was that in the 30s, Packard was run by George Christopher, who had come there from Buick. Where previous management (Alvin MacCauley) had been about craftsmanship for old money, Christopher was about volume for the middle class. It was my conclusion when I did the CC on the Packard Six that it was still very expensive for what it was, and Packard could charge Buick prices for a car that was really more in the Pontiac/Dodge class because of the prestige associated with the Packard name. Much like Lexus today – there are big and expensive ones which make the small expensive ones worth the money. But after the war with no high end models, Packard sort of went from a Lexus model to a Lincoln model. After the war, there was one car (not two as before) and it was the cheaper one that got dressed up better for its higher end models. A recipe for failure.
I would also mention looks. Cadillac (and Buick) were turning out extraordinarily beautiful cars in the early 50s. Luxury cars were no longer so much about reputation as about style. Cadillac had it, Packard didn’t. Packard was still trying to sell to engineers. Cadillac was selling to their wives.
In a broader sense, I think after the ’30s Packard really struggled to establish itself as a Modern (capital-M) car. For Cadillac, the ’48 and ’49 was sort of a one-two punch: leading-edge styling, leading-edge engine.
Packard seemed to a have an increasingly difficult time translating its styling idiom to the postwar aesthetic. The first Clipper was an interesting effort and the initial postwar Clipper/Super Clipper was really quite an attractive car, but the bathtubs were awkward (and ironically ended up costing Packard about as much in tooling changes as it would have cost to do something new). Add to that the lack of a V-8 and the brand started taking on the aura of Jack Benny’s Maxwell.
“..Jack Benny’s Maxwell.” An ironic choice since Walter P. took over Maxwell which became the first Chrysler. My favorite Packard ‘what-if’ is the one where Chrysler buys Packard in ’54 to get a genuine top-end brand and more defense business.
Mike PDX, your why didn’t Chrysler buy Packard thought has been on my mind lately, although I probably would have done it earlier – around 1950, say. Too late to affect the design of the high-belted ’51, but there probably would have been more money to keep it fresh through
’54 and then move to the large Chrysler body – You can see how the Packard yoke grill could set well where the ’55 Imperial had it’s split grills. Put a larger hemi in it and keep Ultramatic until Torque-Flite was ready.
As the luxury Mopar, there would have been less pressure to stay down-market, and Packard (in 1950) still had a cachet Imperial was never going to capture.
Wouldn’t have saved East Grand – it was too inefficient a layout. But Chrysler would have acquired a well-regarded proving ground without having to build Chelsea, and could have built a dedicated assembly plant adjacent to, or more likely, in place of the Utica engine plant.
The big question in my mind is distribution – would you keep a dedicated Packard network (probably ideal) or partner with Chrysler-Plymouth, which might have added the critical spur to Plymouth only franchises…
The original Clipper was Packard’s answer to the Sixty Special and on a sales basis did pretty well, although immediately applying the Clipper name and styling across the board diluted its impact. Although the Sixty Special did okay, it was never Cadillac’s bread and butter; it was originally a style leader and later became the fanciest consumer model (the Series 75 being more for the carriage trade), but never sold in large numbers. The bread-and-butter Cadillacs were the cheaper Series 61 and Series 62.
As for the other points, well… The difficulty with this argument is that a lot of what we’re saying about Packard could also be said about BMW and Mercedes in later eras and both BMW and Mercedes are thriving. Both have been aggressively pursuing the D- and even C-segments for years, selling a lot of four-cylinder diesels and fighting the bigger family cars (and winning). We could say that both are bolstered by the continued development of their high-end cars, which is true to a point, but I’d argue that in BMW’s case, the brand’s images as the definitive Yuppie bauble has not noticeably wavered despite the abundance of low-end 1- and 3-Series and the fact that the 7-Series has yet to come close to unseating the S-Class as the default choice in the big luxobarge class.
I’m coming to the conclusion that the success of a luxury brand really comes down to one important but rather ephemeral point: What people in the class to which buyers aspire are buying. Style, power, and technology may contribute to that, but not necessarily in the same way they do in plebeian segments. If the powerful, rich, and/or affluent are still choosing the brand, it can shrug off the occasional misstep, even serious ones, but if the wealthy decide the brand is too ordinary or yesterday’s news, even arguments like value for money and most power in class won’t necessarily save you.
Also, the decision to drop the Twelve is not hard to understand from a business standpoint. The Twelve was a magnificent car, but it was a lot more expensive to produce than the 120 or 110, sold maybe a few hundred a year and was increasingly seeming like the product of another era. Cadillac and Lincoln made basically the same choice for the same reason and it did neither of them any harm.
Nance knew the day he took over in ’52 that the Packard desperately needed a V-8 to be competitive. Unfortunately, there were bigger fish to fry which included divorcing the Clipper from the Senior Packard line and trying to re-market the cars to make them more appealing and placing the emphasis on luxury and exclusiveness. This did happen in ’53. Packard had to have ample lead time not only to develop a modern OHV V-8, but they had to come up with the tooling and a facility to build it. This too took time and $$$$ . . . and it certainly didn’t help things when they got hoodwinked (deliberate or not) with the Studebaker “merger’ (for God’s sake! In big business, who doesn’t audit the other guy’s books prior to an acquisition?)
A brief comment on ZILs and Packards: the earlier ZIL/ZIS limousines s did indeed use Packard dies from Briggs, but the ZIL 111 (which is a dead-ringer for the ’55-’56 Packards) is merely described as being “Packard-style.” (This is from one of my favorite reference books, “Russian Motor Vehicles, Soviet Limousines 1930-2003.”)
The ZIL 111 didn’t show up until 1958 or 1959.
It seems odd to me that ZIS/ZIL was able to get the Packard dies for the earlier models, but when the big Packards were actually out of production and the company in dire straits, the Russians chose to make their own copy of the Packard rather than use the original manufacturing equipment. Maybe by the time 1957 rolled around it would’ve been un-American to send the dies to the Russkies!
Sorry, but that long-perpetuated myth has been thoroughly debunked. Since the Cold War thaw, ZIS cars have been imported to the US, and others in Russia measured and examined carefully. The ZIS 110 was a splendid “replica” of a senior Packard, but the body parts are all somewhat different in key dimensions.
The Packard dies didn’t even belong to them; these bodies were supplied by Briggs.
The ZIS engine and other components are also very similar to the big Packard, but not interchangeable. The ZIS engine block is a bit longer. etc…
ZIS may well have bought a few (more minor) parts from US suppliers initially, as some accessory parts do interchange.
The whole ZIS-Packard dies myth was perpetuated even by scholarly books for decades, but has been acknowledged now to be baseless. Here’s a very in-depth thread on a Packard forum on the ZIS 110: http://packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=1062&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&type=&mode=0&start=0
Could the ZIL/ZIS have been made by reverse engineering?The Russians copied the Dakota,Catalina & B29 aircraft by reverse engineering.
Yes, that’s essentially what they did, depending on the precise definition. The ZIS’ body is different enough so that no body parts interchange, so it was really copying and adapting. The engine was converted to metric, and for some reason, the basic dimensions are also different enough to not interchange (block is a bit longer). But Stalin loved Packards, had several real ones, and told ZIS to make Russian “versions”. Why certain things were changed is not exactly known. Obviously, the body changes were to suit the requirements of the specific functions, as well as perhaps some updating. The ZIS windshield leans back a bit more, etc…
Thanks Paul
My guess is that a lot of the changes came down to manufacturing expedience; the “workarounds are faster than troubleshooting” school of engineering. Certainly Russian aircraft engineering of that period was very expedience-oriented, which given the potential consequences of making Stalin impatient is understandable.
It wasn’t just Packard there was a Mercedes Zil and a Cadillac Zil as well, but of course they thought of it first… 😉
I was just going to say, I think there’s a direct parallel with aircraft like the Tupelov Tu-4, which was a reverse-engineered B-29 with Russian engines.
I think a bad wifi connection just ate my long-ish reply to Paul, but the gist is: thanks for getting to the bottom of it!
David42,
I have owned, restored, and serviced pre-war senior Packard Super Eight limousines over the last 50+ years. I know these cars VERY well.
Once the iron curtain fell, I began a detailed investigation into how the ZIS 110 limousines came about. I have had the opportunity to spend hours and days going thru and documenting ZIS 110 limousines and the armored version, the ZIS 115.
As Paul and others have stated here in CC, The Packard body panels and the ZIS body panels do not match. The ZIS is a vehicle designed and built to resemble the 1942 Packard series 2008 limousine. Based partly on my correspondence with people in Russia who worked as unofficial historians for the ZIL factory, We know today the ZIS was built as a result of Stalin’s use of several 1942 Packard Super Eight 180 limousines during WW2.
Stalin basically said to create the new ZIS limousine based on the Packards, but with several specific updates he detailed. They include:
1. No sidemount tires.
2. No running boards [he hated the build-up of snow on them!]
3. Updated bumpers.
4. Add more rearward slant to the windshield.
5. Change the rear window roofline and trunk area to closely match the 1946 Cadillac limousine.
Now let me discuss a few merits and problems associated with production of such a car, but with very limited production numbers. The ZIS cars for roughly 10 years of production rarely [if at all] exceeded 25 cars per year.
Now let me also mention that up until I retired and sold my remaining inventory about 15 years ago, I was in the Packard parts business. I know Packard parts, and I have every Packard parts book the company printed.
In looking closely at several early ZIS 110 and even a 115 armored version, I have found actual Packard parts on these cars. The parts vary from large castings like intake/exhaust manifolds, to small dashboard parts like switches and gauges, even the Philco radio in the dash.
Imagine in 1946, having been instructed to build a car similar to the Packard, the people at the ZIS facility would need to design and build all those individual parts, involving huge amounts of time & effort, just for a couple of dozen cars each year.
Or they could have people around the world walk into various Packard dealerships and simply order the parts as needed. Buying a few of these parts at a time would not raise any questions from the Packard parts & service division. And so what if the Packard manifolds had raised part numbers cast in the part. A man wielding a grinding wheel, and a few minutes later it was no longer a Packard part!
The logical assumption is the ZIS cars were mostly ZIS parts, especially the big parts like chassis and body pieces. But there is ample evidence to indicate the cars were built with many smaller genuine Packard parts, available worldwide, by part number!
Did Stalin and those around him know the cars used American made parts? We’ll probably never know.
This comment by Bill could become an article itself and expand with lot of comparison photos and such…
Extraordinarily well done and documented, Paul.
If anyone wants to get closer to some of Packard’s stellar sheet metal, I strongly recommend a visit to America’s Packard Museum in Dayton, Ohio. Set in what was an original Packard dealership, the breadth of Packard’s output can be found there as well as Packard’s engineering marvels in aircraft and naval applications.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Americas-Packard-Museum/117562424957047
Try this Packard Museum from the Packard brothers’ hometown:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/National-Packard-Museum/211710702177034
It’s great to see an old straight-eight Packard still being driven. I saw a very similar car in long-term lawn ornament status when I recently went for a bike ride through the Lummi Indian Reservation. I only got one fairly good shot of it, but it had obviously been resting in the same place for quite a while. (For those of you who want a closer look, I’ve posted a higher-resolution photo to the flickr cohort.)
As much as I love the underdog manufacturers, I try to put myself in the shoes of a typical buyer of cars in a certain price class, ca. 1955 and then try to compare it with today.
Sitting in a SAAB at the 2011 car show and thinking “this is nice” – but somewhat Spartan for the $54K made me think as to why people who were spending that amount would gravitate towards a BMW 5 Series of Mercedes E class. Much the same could be said for Packard vis-à-vis a Cadillac or Lincoln in the 50s . . . . And Saabs had the same negative soon-to-be-an-orphan stigma attached to them in 2010 and 2011 just as Packard did in mid 1955 – early 1956.
If anyone’s interested, there’s a 1952 RHD 200 for sale here on trademe, with some interesting shots of its restored chassis and running gear: http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/other/packard/auction-550396502.htm
People have often cited BMW as what the indies could have been if better managed. BMW nearly lost its shirt on the “Baroque Angel” larger cars in the 1950’s and were teetering on the brink as its Isetta cyclecars were also falling out of fashion.
Enter the “Neue Klasse” cars and they’ve been building cars along the same theme ever since. And those were solidly mid-market. They didn’t move back up the ladder until the six-cylinder E3’s and E9’s. And those corresponded to the subsequent 5 and 6-series. The original E23 7-series was a step higher still.
Alfa Romeo was dead in the water after the war as well. Same idea, same solution. Build middle-class cars, survive to the present day. As for the French luxury makes like Delahaye and Talbot-Lago, peers to Alfa in their day, adieu!
Of course, the situation in postwar Europe was dire to the extreme, but the prewar Depression here was no picnic, either. Cadillac and Lincoln, as was mentioned before, had the less-expensive GM makes and Ford to fall back on. Packard would followed Pierce-Arrow into oblivion if it remained strictly a luxury manufacturer.
I don’t think the move downmarket killed Packard, the Studebaker merger probably did much more damage.
I cannot understand why Packard stuck with the flattie-straight-8. GM had straight eights, but put OHV heads on them(Buick,Oldsmobile,Pontiac), until their V-8s were ready. Nash had the best OHV straight-8 ever(–excepting Pierce,Stutz, & Duesenberg), and it had an OHV head with the “rich”/wealthy affectation of twin-plugs. The straight-8 Nashes were referred to as “Kenosha-Duesenburgs”! The famous, aluminum-head(1948) XK-6 Jaguar had overlap on some of the pots(cylinders) on some of their various displacements in various years, so Parkard should have bought (and adapted) the Nash head, if not the whole engine. Weren’t the Parkard-Merlins, US copies of the DOHC V-12 Rolls-Royce Aero engine? Packard was making the best piston engine in the World (Gen. Galland [Luftwaffe] asked Goering for a “Squadron of Spitfires” to win the 40s Nazi “Blitz” against England), making MONEY on those war contracts, and their engineers had no time/interest in a downsized DOHC V-12, V-8, or DOHC-head for their boat-anchor flattie? Why didn’t Packard cast an ALLOY-block straight-8, as that would have been half the weight of their cast iron boat-anchor? Did you know that the Japs used versions of the Graham-flathead 6 as a BASE for their later, more successful OHV/OHC/DOHC 6s? Graham, nearly bankrupt in the mid-30s(–FDR raised taxes, killing several famous makes in the mid-30s), sold their entire low-line, Graham “Cavalier,” to Japan, including some trucks,–some of each we saw later while fighting Imperial forces in the Philipines & elsewhere in WWII in the Pacific). Wasn’t Budd making bodies for Graham, Hupmobile, REO, and others, and some of those factories were slightly more (many less) than 250 miles from Detroit, so if Parkard hadn’t wanted to live (and Die) in Detroit, other suppliers and factories WERE available. Checker-(cabs) Motors in Kalamazoo (150mi. from Detroit) could have stamped bodies for Packard, keeping Briggs’ charges to Packard lower, plus other facilities in the tri-state area (Ohio, Michigan, & Indiana) could have handled the engines. Studebaker had excess capacity for 150,000-plus units/yr. in its South Bend facilities, for engines, bodies, or assembly, so I feel Packard should have LEFT Detroit, and might have saved enough doing that to afford updates allowing survival. Nance was VASTLY over-rated as an executive, killing a Packard-Hudson merger that would have made both stronger( but Nance might have not continued to be in charge, so he nixed it). A DOHC-alloy head on the 308/5Liter flat-6 Hudson block, would have allowed the Hudson stock cars to STAY ahead, not giving-up the straight-sections in Nascar races. Hudson dominated for a while in Nascar, because the step-down chassis had the other makes passed on the corners, but the Hudsons would be passed on the long straight stretches.
Coming to this post late, I have to say I agree with Jack Dale above but adding a similar argument with respect to the styling – they should have updated the early 40s Clipper styling by making it svelter etc. In my opinion, this would have been infinitely more attractive than the pregnant elephant and not too far from what GM did with the Caddi.
I think your opinion on Packard is full of the same old left over trite that has been floating around for the last 60 years. Huge custom made cars where outmoded and not a desirable thing as the world rushed to war in the late 1930’s. Packard had to change with the times and they did successfully with the 110 and 120. People forget the country experienced a deflation during the Depression. a $1,000 Packard was not a car that could be afforded by what now we consider the middle class. Even the wealthy was buying new Fords and Chevys. The Packard of this period and really until the end was a car for the upper class who still managed to hold on to their money through the Depression and during the 90% tax rate of the Roosevelt administration. Packard’s where always big powerful cars capable of traveling long distances in comfort and quite. I think it is a falsity that anyone at the time looked at Packard as a cheep car because it was not! Regarding the postwar 48-50 Packard’s my Father who is 96 was there in the Packard showroom on Vermont Ave in Los Angeles when they came out. When they came out in the summer of 1947 my dad says “they where the newest thing around. His College buddy and ex GI bought a beautiful Custom Convertible on the showroom floor and they used it in the Homecoming parade at the USC-Notre dame game that fall. I doubt his buddy would have spent all of his service pay and used it in the parade if it was a dog. Regarding the 51 200 it was by far the most popular Packard that year and its clean styling won an award. It is and was a big massive car when compared to just about anything at the time including the Cadillac which was on the gaddi side. They sold more 200’s in 51 and 53 than Nance did after calling the car the “Clipper”. Sales where down on all makes because of the restrictions on production and credit imposed by the Truman administration. Yes Packard did make mistakes by over producing the 48’s and 49’s and later the 53’s when the market changed. They declared high stock dividends in 1951 instead of allocating the money to bring out an over valve V8 in 1953. Nance over expanded and spent all the cash reserves on a new engine and a converted assembly plant when the double production line at the East Grand Factory was not even 10 years old. He spent money on buying Studebaker which was not making a profit but eventually saved the company with the Lark while Studebaker-Packard diversified away from automobiles. A Packard was a Packard and all models where worthy of the name.
I recently noticed an early example of Packard’s divided branding. In 1927 radio was still somewhat experimental and somewhat luxurious. Packard was one of the first national companies to sponsor regular programs. They ran two weekly music programs with separately named bands. The Packard Six Orchestra played jazz and swing, and the Packard Eight Orchestra played classics only.
I realize these are old posts, but thought it worth adding that the ohv Packard V-8 was greenlighted in 1951 by Hugh Ferry, Jim Nance’s predecessor as Packard’s president. (Source: The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company by James A. Ward.) The V-8 took a lot longer to get into production than it should have, partly because of the Korean War as well as all the factory turmoil that was going on at the time, but the company wasn’t totally blind to the obsolescence of the straight eight.
Ferry also initiated the torsion-level suspension program well before Nance’s arrival on a flaming chariot.
As for the poster above who says that GM modernized its flathead straight eights by converting them to overhead valves, well, you learn something new on the internet every day!
“As for the poster above who says that GM modernized its flathead straight eights by converting them to overhead valves, well, you learn something new on the internet every day!“
Forgive me if I failed to detect your sarcasm, but that comment is totally false.
Buick had its OHV straight eight from the 1930’s. Oldsmobile kept its flatheads until they got the OHV V8 for 1949. Pontiac kept its flatheads until 1955 model year. Chevy had always used OHV sixes until their V8 was added to the mix.
Some smaller companies did convert old engines to OHV, but GM had the deep pockets to avoid that kind of half-assery.
I think it’s a bit harsh to call the ’51 dowdy if you compare it to its contemporaries (looking at you GM and Chrysler)
My Grandfather’s first (and only) car…’51 Chrysler Windsor, his was 4 door and black. My Mother just stopped driving (got her ID card rather than license renewal) learned on it; it was a semi-automatic, and to this day she’s never really been comfortable with anything other than an automatic. In ’98 she was travelling with her brother to eastern Europe, and as my uncle has been known to have odd things happen to him on a trip she wanted to be able to back him up as a driver, so I took her out in my ’86 GTi in a recently abandoned Walmart parking lot and got her re-aquinted with standard, at least stops and starts. My Dad formerly had a ’59 Beetle, which my mother actually left stranded at the top of our street when she gave up driving it (guess my Dad rescued it). Five years ago I took my Dad to the same DMV office to get his ID card, he was gone less than a year later..it was odd to have someone who had been driving you around all your younger life suddenly now not be able to drive at all…but I guess driving isn’t an attribute of being a certain age; neither of my Grandmothers for instance ever had a license (didn’t stop one of them from piloting a mini-bike , though).
My Grandfather actually hauled groceries in his Windsor..not unusual you say? well he was proprietor of a mom/pop grocery and used it to stock items in his store (the ones I guess that wouldn’t be delivered). No real parking, it was in a city where most of the traffic was walk-up (no surprise it didn’t last much past the 60’s). Not sure why he didn’t have a pickup or van for hauling, but it doubled as his personal car to take to church and family excursions. My Uncle inherited it after Grandfather died, almost lasted him through undergraduate days but the flathead 6 blew a headgasket and my Uncle didn’t have time to mess with it, he was trying to graduate and the draft board was after him in ’69, so he just got rid of it buying a new ’69 LTD 4 door hardtop.
No comment on the Packard, always think of Anton Myerer’s “The Last Convertible” when I think of that marque. Even dinged and dented, guess that car got passed down between classmates until it was restored and brought to a college reunion (think in 1969!)
If “it runs as smooth as melting butter,” and “you literally can not tell that this engine is running unless you look at the fan,” why the mad rush to OHV V-8s? Smoothness and silence–that’s what customers in this class desired in a luxury car. Plus, as explained, you had Ultramatic which was one-speed smooth like Dynaflow, but more efficient like Hydra-matic. Sounds like the best of both worlds.
The professors, dowagers and bank executives who bought Packards were not hot-rodders. And how many of them knew (or cared) what an overhead valve was? Or knew the difference between a V and a straight?
Packard’s straight 8 / Ultramatic was just the thing…for the 1940’s. Once Oldsmobile and Cadillac releases their V8’s they quickly became the hot new thing. The horsepower wars heated up quickly. Car buyers may not have understood the nitty gritty under the hood, but they knew V8’s were cool and fast and they knew Packard didn’t have them.
Things were changing fast in the 1950’s and none of the independents could really keep up. Packard made some mistakes but even if it hadn’t I don’t think it could have survived the decade. In hindsight, the only way it could have staggered on was in the American Motors merger.
As a serious and devoted Packard enthusiast years before I could legally drive, I have attempted to delve into the demise of Packard.
I grew up as a teenager convinced that only one man, James J. Nance, singlehandedly sent Packard to an early grave. But when I heard his [1970?] Speech to the Packard Club, outlining his efforts to save the company, I began to have second thoughts. Since then a groundbreaking book put together by Beverly Kimes, convinced me that there were many mistakes made by hundreds of people, along with other corporations like Curtiss-Wright and large insurance companies, that doomed the Company.
The actual facts around the Post WW2 period of the company are so abundant, and the journey so twisted, it took James A. Ward over 8 years of serious investigative work to finally publish a book that tells the story in great detail. As he noted in the book, he scoured more than 70 TONS of paperwork tucked away
ANYONE interested in the history of Packard needs to read Mr. Ward’s book:
“The fall of the Packard Motor Car Company” [ISBN 0-8047-3165-9]
It’s currently available online for under$15.
I belonged to a car club 30 years ago in which the majority of cars were the “land yachts” of the 1950s and 1960s. Though I looked at GM models, I went with a 1951 Patrician. Were 9001 of them produced. I believe I read the total production of Cadillac in 1951 were at 110,340.
Though the Packard is SLOW off-the-line with the straight-8, with the 9-main bearings it is ever so smooth once it gets going.
It with a patina look now (something I didn’t care for at one-time but even okay now with a TV’s ‘car guru’ Wayne Carini).
I have had it up for sale a couple of times. Couple older guys wanted to restore it, then a youngish guy was quite fine with the patina. I have owned it for this long. Most very likely I wouldn’t be buying a 1950s vehicle again – so am hanging onto to.
This series Packard looks better in person. It is a big car with a real presence. The car is tall. Should a Dodge be placed beside it, the difference would show. I think. As a long time Packard fan, my opinion is subjective.
Having owned both a ’56 Patrician and ’56 Clipper (pic) (the latter with manual trans and no Torsion Level, having learned the hard way), the serious initial teething problems that the magnificently-on-paper engineered ’55s suffered exacerbated all of the other financial problems the company suffered with at the time. A superb technically over-engineered V8 with oil pump problems (current owners adapt Olds 455 pumps), a transmission and suspension blighted with electrical and other glitches, were impediments that the imposing styling just wasn’t able to overcome. A shame, as one ride with a properly functioning Torsion-Level at high speeds over railroad tracks will overcome any doubt about the potential but unrealized superiority of these flawed masterpieces.
One of the most unusual cars ever to come my way (this is England) was a 1951 2 door Packard coupe. Dripping with chrome with a glorious sidevalve straight 8, and the same thing struck me as it did you, an interior lifted from a taxi. A sad fall from grace.
Did Packard think up any better alternatives for a model name and entry-level brand in place of One-Twenty, Junior and Clipper?
A better template for the lower-end Junior and Clipper models would probably be Rover with its more advanced form of the F-Head or IOE 4/6-cylinder engines, which were also used in Land Rovers and the Marauder sports-car designed by Rover engineers.