Re: What SINGLE factor MOST contributed to the demise of Packard?

Posted by su8overdrive On 2013/4/26 15:30:54

The first thing is to clarify the question. WHICH Packard
are you referring to? Because the Packard after Alvan Macauley stepped down in April, 1948 was no longer the same company which had earlier stood slightly above and to the side of the fray. By Macauley's departure, Packard was just another also-ran, chasing GM's lead.

Dutch Darrin well summed it in late 1939 or '40: "Packard was so afraid of GM they couldn't see straight."

Packard execs might've had a hollow laugh when Cadillac vindicated them in 1930 after years of crowing over their V-8, as the Cad V-16 was essentially an inline eight with firing impulses halved for less crankpin loading.

But GM's racy new C bodies introduced mid-'40 underscored that Packard's Clipper, which debuted mid-'41, might've come sooner, or Packard might've "Darrinized" the entire 1939 or '40 lines. Or 1938, considering the styling if not sales impact of the '38 Ford and a half Zephyr and Cadillac 60S Fleetwood, which caught Packard already napping, the same year Packard had their first quality issue, casting glitches in some of that year's 319-ci Super 8 blocks.
This latter certainly had no impact on Packard survival, but is mentioned only to show that Packard was starting to slip.

From 1948 on, the cars were almost an afterthought, phoning it in, the Company's previous passion thrown into defense/aero engines, gas turbines, this being Rolls-Royce's mainstay from 1935 on, their cars a boutique, "assembled" sideline, but smartly marketed.
Packard never learnt to market their junior cars as deftly
as R-R/Bentley did, Derby's "small hp" rank and file, Crewe using Pressed Steel---who supplied Austin and half the English car business--even as Packard relied on Briggs from 1941 on.

The immediate postwar R-R Silver Dawn/Bentley R-Type and R-R Silver Wraith were on the same 120 and 127-inch wheelbases as Packard's junior and senior Clippers, which were better automobiles if lesser furniture than Crewe's product. But the former GM men called in to teach Packard
how to produce the excellent, worldclass '35 One Twenty in 1933-34 were now running the Company, and that included the
inept ads playing to Main Street. Main Street does not want to see itself as Main Street. No one wants "downscale."

So the question needs refinement. Because there was no
Cadillac after 1935, and even the 1934-35 Cadillacs shared some body pieces with Buick. All 1936-on Cadillacs were GMobiles sharing components with lesser divisions,essentially junior cars. But Cadillac advertising was crisp, hip, Packard's increasingly lame, inept, trying too hard, junior and senior.

It was some time since Peter Helck's magnificent 1934 "Hush" ad.

Packard lost the last vestige of that special allure, elan when they brought out the 1948 bathtub, which Tom McCahill, dean of roadtesters, called "a goat." Well built, well-engineered, but compare with the crisper, sharper '48 Cadillac. No contest.
Another motoring journalist described Packard's '50s products as looking like "....bigger, gaudier Fords."
Again, following, not leading, the Caribbean was Packard's response to the Cadillac Eldorado, Buick Skylark dreck, 200 more pounds of "sporty" deadweight on an otherwise stock convertible.

An earlier, confident Packard would've anticipated Bentley's R-Type Continental instead.

Packard had no major inhouse engineering breakthrough in the '50s. Bill Allison had to sell the hell out of his Torsion Level to Packard's floundering management after the rest of Detroit passed.

Hispano-Suiza survives making pumps for nuclear power plants. BMW owns R-R, VW Bentley.

So rephrasing MIDan's question answers it.

Otherwise, JD's right. NO independent could approach GM/Ford tool amortization costs, economies of scale,
afford the increasingly "necessary" annual model changes, costly TV advertising.