Re: Interesting '55 Packard 400 on Ebay

Posted by Rusty O\'Toole On 2011/1/6 13:38:24

"Believe it was intended for the junior businessmen types who couldn't quite afford the big time yet. One of the Packard books authors mentioned they had called it the car for the man on the way up."


"Executive" was one of the buzz words of the mid fifties. For the first time the middle class, middle management group was big enough to be a market all its own.

Edsel was marketed to the young executive on his way up too. Evidently Packard beat them to it by a year or 2, or possibly Edsel copied Packard's marketing - not that it did either of them any good.

Some pundit did an essay about that time on the excesses of modern advertising, one of the ads he picked on was selling socks "in the executive length" meaning long socks.

The idea of selling to the new managerial class was fashionable at the time.