Re: What would a traditional Packard "Senior" have looked like in 1951?
Posted by Mahoning63 On 2017/8/1 19:59:15
Great conversation! 5687, you are changing my thinking on the bulls-nuts taillights and '53-54 grill and trim. And I do love the hardtop's racy backlight. Speaking of which, measuring the body height of blue car vs. artist's, appears the later was sectioned 1.5 inches which is exactly what Reinhart had wanted to do, though I think he also intended the greenhouse to grow taller by same, which would have been a bad move.
Am attaching a final image with 1.5 inches sectioned from blue car because am tired of post-war Packards being looked at as the lunch cafe on first floor of big city hotel while the pre-war classics are the revolving 5-star restaurant at top. Should have never gone down that way and IMHO there is only one person to blame: Ferry.
True, Christopher hated the 12th-17th series Seniors. But how could one blame him, they lost money! It was Macauley who ordered the shorty short 110 instead of taking the 120's hood length in the other direction to create a new Senior.
Working with what he had, Christopher tried to make decent Seniors out of the Clipper and he's the one who contracted with Henney to build the limo. Yes, he blew it with the bathtubs but his decision to do straight-through body sides was gutsy nonetheless. Of course we all know that in the end he went completely wacko in wanting to rework the Clipper a second time, and was fortunately fired.
Nance was a mixed bag just like the rest. I think he was right blow off Mason and later Romney wrt sharing because the only thing Nash had of value to Packard was the '54 integrated A/C, but Mason expected Nance to go along with an Airflyte-based Packard or at least sharing of Nash panels, and insisted that he be Nance's boss. Based on what merits? Just because Mason could envision a Big 4th didn't mean he should have led it. He was as tone deaf as the rest of them when it came to styling and proportions.
Nance had a better feel but was still lacking. Case in point: he should have ditched the Contours for 1955 because they were fundamentally deficient by then and still with no provision for a properly proportioned Senior. Instead he should have begged, borrowed and stolen from the bankers and insurance companies to fund something along the lines of the Panther show car - low, wide and with straight-through bodies. Throw in a step-down floor and of course, the V8. People deride the Panther but I think it is a great design that just needed tweaking. Had Nance plotted such a course before close of 1952, by late '53 when Barit approached him with request to buy Hudson he could have had a medium-priced brand of good standing, with a decent dealer network and lots of owners wanting to buy another low-slung Hudson, now Panther-based.
I think the V8 is over-blown. You'd think it was as if a car couldn't roll down the road in the early 1950s without it. An yet, Buick did fine without it through 1952, setting one sales record after another. Meanwhile, AMC put Packard's V8 into the big Nash and Hudson and what happened to sales? Absolutely NOTHING.
If given the choice between a '51 Contour with a new OHV V8 or the blue Contour work-up below with only a 327 or 356 Eight, I'd bet the farm that the former would have, at best, merely slowed Packard's decline and made it very difficult to fund a Contour replacement, while the latter would have catapulted Packard back near its former glory and easily paid for the 1955 V8 and full redesign two years later.
Attach file:
(66.04 KB)
Am attaching a final image with 1.5 inches sectioned from blue car because am tired of post-war Packards being looked at as the lunch cafe on first floor of big city hotel while the pre-war classics are the revolving 5-star restaurant at top. Should have never gone down that way and IMHO there is only one person to blame: Ferry.
True, Christopher hated the 12th-17th series Seniors. But how could one blame him, they lost money! It was Macauley who ordered the shorty short 110 instead of taking the 120's hood length in the other direction to create a new Senior.
Working with what he had, Christopher tried to make decent Seniors out of the Clipper and he's the one who contracted with Henney to build the limo. Yes, he blew it with the bathtubs but his decision to do straight-through body sides was gutsy nonetheless. Of course we all know that in the end he went completely wacko in wanting to rework the Clipper a second time, and was fortunately fired.
Nance was a mixed bag just like the rest. I think he was right blow off Mason and later Romney wrt sharing because the only thing Nash had of value to Packard was the '54 integrated A/C, but Mason expected Nance to go along with an Airflyte-based Packard or at least sharing of Nash panels, and insisted that he be Nance's boss. Based on what merits? Just because Mason could envision a Big 4th didn't mean he should have led it. He was as tone deaf as the rest of them when it came to styling and proportions.
Nance had a better feel but was still lacking. Case in point: he should have ditched the Contours for 1955 because they were fundamentally deficient by then and still with no provision for a properly proportioned Senior. Instead he should have begged, borrowed and stolen from the bankers and insurance companies to fund something along the lines of the Panther show car - low, wide and with straight-through bodies. Throw in a step-down floor and of course, the V8. People deride the Panther but I think it is a great design that just needed tweaking. Had Nance plotted such a course before close of 1952, by late '53 when Barit approached him with request to buy Hudson he could have had a medium-priced brand of good standing, with a decent dealer network and lots of owners wanting to buy another low-slung Hudson, now Panther-based.
I think the V8 is over-blown. You'd think it was as if a car couldn't roll down the road in the early 1950s without it. An yet, Buick did fine without it through 1952, setting one sales record after another. Meanwhile, AMC put Packard's V8 into the big Nash and Hudson and what happened to sales? Absolutely NOTHING.
If given the choice between a '51 Contour with a new OHV V8 or the blue Contour work-up below with only a 327 or 356 Eight, I'd bet the farm that the former would have, at best, merely slowed Packard's decline and made it very difficult to fund a Contour replacement, while the latter would have catapulted Packard back near its former glory and easily paid for the 1955 V8 and full redesign two years later.
Attach file:
(66.04 KB)
This Post was from: https://packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=194564