"Packard's Four-Year Plan"

Posted by su8overdrive On 2013/9/30 1:28:26

Type the above into the search box of YouTube to watch and listen, each part running about three minutes.

Immediate thoughts upon watching were couldn't Packard have gotten Ronald Colman or Walter Pidgeon to do the voice over, and used instead light classical music instead of this breathless hysteria and sports stadium shrill? Was Packard really this insular in 1935, let alone 1940?

You'll also want to enter "Packard Commercial" in the YouTube search box to view a six-part promotional suffering the same wow folks narration, presenting the new 1940 One-Sixty and One-Eighty, with close ups of the "gigantic 104-pound crankshaft" .... the "unique" cylinder head, a thorough look at the new engine, just as you'll see many scenes of the factory at full tilt 1935-40 in the "Packard Four-Year Plan" movie.

I've seen some rah-rah from Rolls-Royce films chest thumping over the Merlin, but even in 1942 Derby remained securely upscale, after the war skillfully marketing
those funky little R-R Silver Dawns/Bentley R-Types and Silver Wraith on the same wheelbases to the inch as the junior and senior Packard Clippers.

The Derby, and postwar Crewe products were arguably finer furniture, a "great confidence trick" and "a triumph of craftsmanship over engineering" as English motoring journalists admitted, but concurrent Packards, junior and senior, were better automobiles.

Yet you'd n e v e r know it from the bush league presentation the GM fellows running Packard permitted in the Andy Hardy golly gee whiz of "Packard's Four Year Plan," "Packard Commercial," "1941 Packard Commercial" and other
shrill promotionals on YouTube.

Sure, they're interesting to us Packardites. But also cringe inducing.

Buick, let alone Cadillac, promotionals much smoother,
hipper.

The "new 160-horsepower Super-8" makes its appearance in part 4 of Packard's Four-Year Plan, after we're earlier assured that in all models of the new 1940
Packards, One-Ten, One-Twenty, One-Sixty and One-Eighty,

"....the vent windows stay out and provide a he-man look."

In Pt. 5, they time the new '40 One-Sixty "through the gears" from 0-60 at 13 seconds, then race ahead of a '39 Super-8 at the Proving Grounds, the ever enthused voice asking us, "....what's the speedometer read? 104 mph..." while lapping hands free.

That single question in the narrative bespeaks reams. An earlier Packard still leading the industry would've given a timed, precise figure rather than reporting a speedometer reading.

The close in Pt. 6 briefly shows a Darrin, and then the entire lineup driving off to get trounced by GM's racy new 1940 1/2 C bodies and HydraMatic.

I found several 1940, '41, and '48 such Packard commercials on YouTube, presumably shown in movie theaters as well as to and at dealerships. Can someone find 1941- 47 Clipper?