Re: Why no Packard in a "Packard"?

Posted by 55PackardGuy On 2012/4/7 23:56:40

Quote:

Can you please explain how this ground has been covered? Once again, I don't claim to be an "expert," but if the Golden Hawk used this engine in 1956, what made it a "non-starter" in a Packard Hawk a year or two later? The engines WERE available, they didn't have to be built in Detroit or South Bend, they were already built. They certainly were crate-able and shippable as well as salable as-is. They were used over the following years in marine conversions and even, so I've read on these pages, sold in JC Whitney catalogs to the delight of quite a few hot rodders and racers. Perhaps even in the pickups exported to Argentina. I don't know, Kev didn't say. Thanks for the great pics, Kev, with writing on the windshield no less.

I find the objections to the feasibility of a Packard-powered Packard Hawk at best confusing, and at worst based on specious reasoning, or perhaps "testiness."

Remember, also, Studebaker did not go out of business, just Packard disappeared, and I offered the question in this thread mainly to understand why there wasn't more of an effort to appeal at least a little bit to Packard buyers while South Bend got straightened out with some facilities to produce a Packard more suitable to bear the name.

A lot of the "what-ifs" about how Packard could have avoided demise just point out what Packard shoulda coulda done differently before the great merger debacle, rather than considering what the folks in South Bend could have done once the die was cast by Packard to throw in their lot with them. At least the remains of the companies could have left us with a couple of model years of racy, lightweight, Packard-powered cars in the tradition of the "roadsters" that had been part of the Packard legacy from years gone by.

As far as I'm concerned, the "Golden Hawk" proved that it could have been done. Was their resale value stunted because of the Packard engine? I don't think Nash makes a very good comparison, as they weren't part of the S-P corporation, and not even vaguely the same style of automobile.