Let’s take a back-to-back look at two videos: a Jay Leno’s Garage episode about the forthcoming Slate Truck and a Hubcap Club take on the controversial 1958 Packard. While Leno enthusiastically hyped the forthcoming electric truck, the Hubcap Club heavily criticized the final Packard.
Is this not a metaphor for the American automotive media — new cars tend to get positive coverage whereas old cars are much more easily panned?
Slate makes the media rounds as production gets closer
Videos for the Slate Truck have been showing up with greater frequency of late in my YouTube feed. For example, a few days ago Jay Leno’s Garage interviewed two Slate staff members.
Leno is a softball interviewer, but the episode was helpful in showing how Slate is positioning its entry after federal electric-vehicle subsidies were killed along with regulations that had been coaxing the industry away from gas-powered engines.
Jeremy Snyder, Slate’s chief commercial officer, told Leno that the “definition of an affordable car is broken” because the average new car goes for $50,000. “Seventy-percent of Americans can’t afford that. We purpose built the company to build the most affordable vehicle possible” (Leno, 2026).
Slate is able to hold the cost of a base Truck model to around $25,000 partly because “every single truck comes off the assembly line identically. What that does is it allows the ability to scale manufacturing in a much more efficient and effective way” (Leno, 2026).
Also see ‘Can the Slate Truck find a large-enough market to be profitable?’
Another Slate selling point is that it has an “open source” approach to repairs. In other words, owners won’t invalidate their warranty by not going to an authorized dealer for serving. Indeed, customers can “DIY warranty repairs — which is a first in the industry” (Leno, 2026).
This is a refreshing different — and badly needed — approach, but the question still remains: Can Slate survive the end of federal EV subsidies? A recent CNBC (2025) documentary was skeptical, particularly when its expected base price wasn’t all that much lower than a better-equipped Ford Maverick, whose price starts just above $28,000.
Hubcap Club takes critical look at the 1958 Packard
The Hubcap Club’s latest episode doesn’t appear to have broken any new historical ground in its overview of the 1958 Packard family cars and Hawk. However, this is a well-produced video on one of the more curious cars of the 1950s.
Rob, the YouTube channel’s host, was admirably thorough in walking through the unfortunate final year of the Packard brand. He was also rightly critical of the Packard’s weird styling and arguably overly high prices.
The main thing I would have added to the presentation was to compare and contrast the Packard family cars with the newly downsized Rambler Ambassador. American Motors CEO George Romney was convinced that Americans wanted smaller cars, so Ambassador advertising emphasized that it was more maneuverable and got better gas mileage than comparably priced full-sized cars.
In contrast, the Packard — much like its lower-priced corporate sibling the Studebaker President — tried to look big. Advertising used illustrations with ridiculously exaggerated proportions.
The major auto history reference books vary in their production figures for the 1958 Ambassador, but in all cases the car still surpassed the Packard and Studebaker President combined. This was even though the new top-end Rambler was priced between the two S-P models. The Packard sedan and wagon did particularly poorly, with upwards of around 2,000 cars leaving the factory.
One might wonder whether the Ambassador’s advertising pitch was the key to success or if better styling was a bigger factor. After all, the Rambler had a more modern design that didn’t suffer from bug-eyed headlights and cross-eyed taillights.
NOTES:
Production figures from auto editors of Consumer Guide (1993, 2006), Flory (2009) and Gunnell (2002).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 1993, 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL.
- CNBC; 2025. “How Bezos-Backed Slate Plans To Build An Affordable EV Truck In The U.S.” Posted Aug. 15.
- Flory, J. “Kelly” Jr.; 2009. American Cars, 1946-1959: Every Model, Year by Year. McFarland & Co.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Hubcap Club; 2026. “The Bug-Eyed, Fish-Nosed, Double-Finned 1958 Packardbaker.” Posted Feb. 3.
- Leno, Jay; 2026. “The $25K EV Truck You Can Repair Yourself: Meet The Slate Truck | Jay Leno’s Garage.” Jay Leno’s Garage. Posted Feb. 2.
ADVERTISEMENTS & BROCHURES:
- oldcaradvertising.com: Rambler Ambassador (1959)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Packard (1958)
rambler was hardtop
If you are noting that another advantage the Ambassador had was that it offered a four-door hardtop sedan and wagon, that’s true. These body styles didn’t sell all that well — only around 10 percent of total production in 1958.
Another wrinkle is that the Packard and Studebaker fielded a new two-door hardtop whereas the Ambassador did not. However, S-P’s two-door hardtops didn’t sell any better than the Ambassador’s four-door hardtops. That’s why I consider it a wash.
I believe Packard’s gradual demise in the marketplace was only hastened by the adoption of all Studebaker based products. The Packard buyer simply didn’t want a mildly masked higher priced Studebaker.
One dirty little secret of the Studebaker-Packard tie up was that, one way or another, Packard was going to end up sharing a platform with Studebaker. Nance’s original plan was to come out with a new full-sized platform in 1957 shared by Packard, Clipper and Studebaker. Packard would have had unique sheetmetal, but this scenario was quite expensive — and lenders refused to fund it.
Another dirty little secret was that eventually S-P would need to consolidate production in one plant — and Studebaker’s South Bend facilities had more capacity than Packard’s “new” Conner Avenue plant. However, the Studebaker plant reportedly could not build full-sized cars, which may help explain why postwar Studebakers were quite a bit narrower than their Big Three competitors. Thus, a South Bend-built Packard would have had to be downsized.
As it turned out, the collapse of Packard happened so fast that S-P only had time to graft some Packard elements onto an existing Studebaker. Things might have worked at least somewhat better if S-P could have reskinned the Studebaker and given the Packard more unique sheetmetal. However, in order to do that Nance would have had to decide to downsize the Packard much earlier. He was apparently too much of a big-car guy to do that.
Slate: I don’t mind that Jay Leno is a softball interviewer. At least everyone gets the same treatment, and we get to see a lot of cars. However, absent was a lot of praise for the driving experience. He didn’t really talk about acceleration, torque (a strong suit for an electric car) or handling. It was more about the production philosophy. Also, it is hard not to notice that the interior was not that roomy for two big guys sitting up front.
Your comment spurred me to look up the Slate Truck’s dimensions. It is 70.6 inches wide, which is an inch narrower than the Ford Maverick but a half inch taller at 69.3 inches. The big differences are in wheelbase (108.9 versus 121.1 inches) and length (174.6 versus 199.8 inches). The Slate is sized like a traditional compact car of the 1960s while the Maverick is more like an intermediate in all but width.
Interestingly, the Slate’s curb weight is 3,602 pounds, which is around 300 pounds less than the Maverick despite the extra heft of EV batteries.
Its often forgotten how the entire industry crashed in the mid-50s from aggressive GM and Ford tactics that violated anti-trust regulations. The value of great political pull! They did what they could down in south bend. The irony is that because the indies were taken out the imports were able to find their way in.
Agreed. Your comment aligns with a piece I wrote a while back (go here) that elicited a fair amount of blowback. Antitrust policy is apparently still a controversial topic among car buffs.
I’m still not convinced the Slate will survive now that the tax credits have disappeared. We’ve already seen deep discounts across the EV market, and at that point a buyer might spend only a little more for a better‑supported EV from Nissan, GM, or Ford. I’ve questioned the Slate’s value proposition from the start—if I have around $28K to spend and don’t care about the energy source, why wouldn’t I buy a Maverick hybrid from a company that will definitely still be here? If the Slate never reaches critical mass the way Tesla did, who’s going to support it for repairs you can’t do yourself?
That said, the Slate highlights a real gap in the market: small EV pickups. They might stand a better chance than the full‑size EV trucks, which continue to struggle with sales, expectations, and production costs.
The small Six sold about 107000 units. About 37000 were top trim Custom wagons and sedans.
The small Rebel V8 sold about 10000 units.
The Ambassador V8 sold about 14000 units.
The fact that the top trim Six outsold all V8s suggests that most 1958 Rambler customers (especially switching from other brands) weren’t attracted into the store by the Ambassador or the V8. The fanciest Six was plenty of car for them. A high share of V8 customers probably were switched from a Six by color, availability, or a bigger discount from MSRP. A LOT of Sixes were wagons, so most Six sedan buyers certainly thought they had enough power and weren’t interested in any Rambler V8.
The difference between Ambassador and President/Packard probably can mostly be explained by floor traffic for the Rambler Six, not any particular difference between the cars. Those Ambassador customers probably came in for a “Rambler” because they liked the image and the story, and they happened to drive away in an Ambassador.
That could have represented part of the difference in sales. However, I would also think that a prime market for the 1958 Ambassador would have been big Nash owners who wanted a new car that was closest in size, luxury and power to their previous one.