Re: Small Packards

Posted by su8overdrive On 2013/5/31 22:40:35

Absolutely. Macauley and Company knew long before the stock market crash where the action was. Rolls-Royce was
mainly concerned with their "small HP" companion series 20, 20/25, 25/30, postwar Silver Dawn (and "Bentley" versions of the latter three), their huge Phantoms being a minute figure of their production.

Cadillac got a lot of marketing mileage out of the few V-16s they built, concentrating on more affordable cars.

The above posters sum it well. What's remarkable and says volumes for Packard is that they cornered not just the national, but international luxury business from the advent of the Big Six in 1912 through the next nearly three decades.

The problem was not in producing smaller, more rational cars, but in Packard's failure to market them as adroitly
as Rolls-Royce or Cadillac, witness so much of East Grand's downright hokey advertising for the otherwise fine junior cars from 1940-on.

It's one thing to go downscale, so long as you market upscale. Rolls-Royce and Cadillac remembered and practiced this. Packard didn't, regardless how fine their cars were.