Indie Auto has received a pair of comments from a reader we will call D.B. His first comment was in response to our story, “The 1955 Packard’s styling was an evolutionary dead end.” D.B.’s second comment (which begins at the second subhead) was regarding, “Could the 1956-57 Lincoln have saved a dying Packard?”
The 1955 Packard’s styling was ‘fantastic’
Your opinions are just that . . . your opinions. The 1957 Predictor was WELL received. The public loved it. The ‘55 Fords and Mercury’s were based on their 1952 models. Lincoln couldn’t decide what it was other than Buick/Oldsmobile competition. Its 55 restyle was ungainly at best. GM restyled their senior series for 1954.
Management was the problem. Nance knew zero about the automobile business and seemed rather cocky. Buying Studebaker without looking at its books was just stupid. Nance made that buy decision. Studebaker was a money pit. Packard should never been allowed to die. They were a piece of Americana.
Also see ‘Would Hudson have been Packard’s best merger partner?’
I owned a 1955 Patrician with air conditioning. I have breathed Packard air. The suspension was beyond cool. The styling was fantastic. The ‘cathedral’ taillights had nothing to do with a spaceship. Most people can see the church cathedral in the tail lights. I certainly do.
Richard Teague did work for AMC as the head of design. I l loved his Hornet in particular. I had a new Hornet hatchback in Maxi Blue with a denim interior and a small V8. That was a fun car. I bought his 2 door Alliance too. I should have bought a Concord but ending up buying wide white, disco Chrysler LeBaron coupe. It looked great but lean burn didn’t work. After Packard went broke, my family started buying Chryslers. I’m old now, and cars are dying with me. It’s fitting.
Proposed 1957 Packard looked better than the Edsel
I disagree with your assumptions. Edsel’s problem was that is suffered the uglies from every angle and it was marketed like the second coming of Christ. 1958 was a recession year. I have seen all of the photos of the proposed 1957 Packards. They were stunning and would have fit in well with the 1957 Dodge / Plymouth / Chrysler / Imperial and Ford / Lincoln / Mercury cars. GM was behind the styling loop until 1959.
Packard should never have bought Studebaker and James Nance is responsible for that poor management decision. Packard was still profitable in 1954. Packard should have been saved.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcarbrochures.org: Imperial (1961); Packard (1956)
Indie Auto invites your comments (see below) or letters to the editor (go here). Letters may be lightly edited for style.
The trouble was by the time the 57 prototype was shown it was too late. Even if it got green lit by the money bunnies there is no way it could have gone in production for the 57 model year. A facelifted 56 would be acceptable for the time but due to the economics I fear Packard would essentially sell Buicks at Cadillac prices. The car would visually resemble the problematic 55s and would probably sell quite a bit less than the 45 k of the 56 models. A lot of if onlies going back to the 30s.
DB, it may be useful to know that this is a journal of opinion. So, yes, we opine freely here. The story on the 1955 Packard was a “Design Notes” feature so dealt only parenthetically with Nance. If you haven’t already, you might want to check out this and this story.
I get that the 1955-56 taillights were inspired by a church, but I dare say that the exhaust ports below them were not. In addition, the Caribbean’s upward arc of the rear-fender chrome piece sure looks to me like it evokes the tail of a jet.
Of course, we will never know how the public would have responded to the proposed 1957 Packard in comparison to the 1958 Edsel. And even if the Packard had sold reasonably well, the big question is whether that would have been enough cars to achieve profitability — and not just in 1957, but throughout the platform’s production cycle.
One thing that could have gotten in the way of adequate sales is that the Clipper was supposed to have completely different sheetmetal and marketed as a stand-alone brand. If it didn’t sell well enough, even excellent volume by the higher-priced Packard could not have made up the difference.
Clipper sales did quite poorly in 1955-56 (go here for further discussion). More ominously, there was enough customer resistance to removing the Packard insignia on the Clipper’s deck in 1956 that it was put back on later in the model year.
The other thing we might consider is that Nance apparently planned to continue building Studebakers in a separate plant. So even if he could have afforded to switch Studebaker to the new full-sized platform, the company would not have benefitted from consolidating production in one plant like American Motors did. Sales for bigger and more expensive cars tanked in 1958 due to a deep recession (go here for production graphs). Thus, if Studebaker-Packard followed that pattern it could have had two plants operating at well below breakeven point — thereby accentuating its financial difficulties (we talk more about that here).
If they switched production to the Packard plant, it was arguably too small to adequately ramp up production for the entire company in good years. So in the long run, the Clipper/Packard would likely have been produced in South Bend . . . if the brands made it through the late-50s and early-60s.
It’s my understanding that the Packard Board of Directors was pushing for the merger with Studebaker. Even if Nance had been against it, the Board would have overruled him. The Board was convinced that Packard needed a partner to survive.
As for the proposed 1957 line-up – I’m not sure it would have been a success. The Packard comes across as a toned-down 1958-60 Lincoln. Those Lincolns were hardly a success in the market. The Packard certainly wasn’t as deftly styled as the 1957 Cadillac or Imperial.
The proposed Clipper and Studebaker aren’t bad looking, but they would likely have faced the same fate as the 1967 AMC Ambassador and Rambler Rebel. Those American Motors offerings were nice-looking cars that fit in with contemporary styling trends, but they were not sufficiently compelling to get people out of a Chevrolet Malibu or Dodge Coronet. The Clipper and Studebaker would have had the same problem, in my opinion.
For Studebaker, Nance would have been better off spending the money to do what the corporation ultimately did for 1959. Namely, rework the existing Studebaker into something like the Lark. If he had done this in 1955-56, he may have been able to spend more money, and make the resulting car more compelling. If the Lark had debuted in 1957, it would have had more time to gain a foothold before the Big Three compacts appeared.
The bottom line is that, at this time, the market was not crying out for a fourth full-line automaker. Trying to compete head-on with the Big Three across the board was doomed from the outset. Romney understood this; Nance didn’t. Which is a big reason why the insurance companies were willing to lend money to AMC, but not to Studebaker-Packard.
It seems the market was ready for a car in the 108=112 inch wheelbase range around the 57 model years. If studebaker did this and perhaps did a well appointed companion make (Clipper?) they would be in good shape to weather the recession. Although the drawings and models of the proposed Packard have the look of the 58 Lincolns the mule had more of an Edsel-Mercury look. In fact it reminds me of my father’s 58 Ford.
Regarding those cathedral taillights, the ’53 Studebaker had gotten religion two years earlier and the ’56 Lincoln had experienced its own awakening long before the ’55 Packard launched.
I think the ’58 Edsel Pacer/Ranger was a great design. It’s too bad FoMoCo didn’t restrict the new brand to just those cars and freeze the design for two years. It takes time to build a new brand, especially when there is in-fighting within the parent company.
In terms of design talent, Lincoln + Packard = Cadillac. By that I mean that there was a successful four-box luxury car somewhere in that combined East Grand Blvd/Dearborn mess but it would have taken the merging of the ’55 Predictor concept and ’58 Continental to get it.
The ’57 Packard proposal was a boring shoebox with fins while the ’58 Lincoln was a more desirable flowing box, and with blades in the rear that would have aligned very nicely with Predictor’s front center bumper blade. Predictor’s hidden headlights were also a winner and miles ahead of Conti’s slanted headlights. The ’58 Conti’s other problems were ugly side side scallops and a long rear overhang, both of which had to go.
The first Wixom-built Lincoln Capri rolled off the assembly line on August 1, 1957 and represented a car that Lincoln’s planners had never wanted. It should have been a Packard. Just a simple 4-door hardtop with retracting backlight and the other suggested clean-ups.
The new Continental Mk III should have been the ’58 T-Bird, competing in the luxury 2-door market. And the all-new ’59 Lincoln should have been the Park Lane that Mercury should have never offered, with the Lincoln having different styling.
Having owned hundreds of Packards from 1968 on, and multiple 1955-56 Packards that I drove as everyday vehicles, I have to agree with what D.B. said in general. However there was a major problem with the early 1955 Packard and Clipper cars due to the change from Briggs building the bodies, to Packard having to move their entire body making facility into smaller quarters on Conner Ave in Detroit. This change was rushed and the early production cars suffered from quality control issues in panel fit and paint. Had Chrysler not bought Briggs and forced Packard’s hand, I’m confident the new V8 cars would have faired better in the minds of the car buying public.
Yes, Nance did make a huge mistake in unknowingly bailing out Studebaker. Had they paid an independent auditor to examine Studebaker’s finances, the discovery of just how bad Studebaker’s finances were could have resulted in Packard paying far less, therefore maintaining a higher cash reserve level for what was to come.
I also agree the 1957 Packards and Clippers were cutting-edge designs, along the lines of Chrysler products. I have an original pencil line drawing of the 1957 Packard 400 hardtop, created by the gifted stylist Robin Jones, and that simple line drawing allows the beauty of the basic design to shine thru. [Don’t know how to show it here, or I would.]
Anyone can just google 1957 Packard prototype and 1957 Packard concept and the readers will get dozens of pictures. This comes back to 1954 when Ford’s E car was in sketch stages and already going with a vertical blade design. Also around this time Packard and Ford were like two dogs sniffing each others butts. I wrote this a dozen times here and elsewhere that Packard would literally be a perfect fit for Ford in it’s lineup. Instead of pushing Mercury upmarket, always a difficult job, Ford could drop a ready made upscale brand exactly where they wanted it in the lineup. Instead, Studebaker essentially bought Packard with Packard’s own money and the rest is history.
l’ve got to read more of this tomorrow, but it’s 11:10 – past my bedtime. l really find this time of American “independent” auto manufacturer’s history very very fascinating!!
BUT, D. B., James Ward’s very good book says Packard was definitely NOT profitable for 1954. Ward says that “Packard had a $2,790,000 deficit for the first half of the year and guessed [this is Nance’s assessment] it would lose $24 million before taxes or $10 million net”.
Before someone opines that AMC was doing much better and Packard should have been seeking haven in it’s “harbor”, please know that “Mason was ruthlessly cutting costs. But AMC was losing lots of money – $6,774,667 in the second quarter alone. By contrast, Grant (Nance’s financial right hand man) pointed out that Packard lost $5,000,000 in the same quarter”. According to Ward, AMC was, at this particular time, also “more heavily in debt than Studebaker”.
Thanks, D.B. and Steve, for this discussion. Hope to read more tomorrow! Now it’s almost 11:30! Good night!!