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

Posted by Rusty O\'Toole On 2013/10/26 15:33:56

In a 1952 road test Tom McCahill reported that Packard was as proud of their build quality, fine upholstery and appointments,comfort, smooth quiet ride and overall, understated luxury as others were of their performance and gaudy styling.

He reported they were going after the steady, conservative luxury car trade in the upper medium and high price brackets.

This was not a bad strategy. I know in many parts of the country Cadillacs were for characters from the wrong side of the tracks. The real community leaders and wealthy people drove Chryslers and Buicks.

I had a successful real estate broker tell me in all seriousness, that if he was seen in a Cadillac it would hurt his business and his reputation. This was in 1976. He just bought a fully loaded Buick Electra and I remarked that he could have had a Cadillac for the same money.

This is why I said earlier that Packard was willing to concede Broadway and Hollywood to Cadillac, and take the rest of the country for themselves.

So, Packard was smart enough to know they couldn't build a better Cadillac than Cadillac, and offer their customers a real choice.

Unfortunately times were changing and a everybody wanted big V8s, chrome, tail fins, and 3 tone paint jobs. By the time Packard got onto this they had fallen behind the parade.

There was another thing I mentioned in passing and that is the thin choices they offered in the luxury car price brackets. The Pacific hardtop and their convertible were priced in Cadillac territory but were comparable in size and power to Oldsmobile or even Pontiac. Patrician was more like a Buick Roadmaster than a Cadillac.

Could they not have stretched the hardtop and convertible body as they did the sedan, and put them on the senior chassis? They could have reworked the body as they did the sedan to make the senior car out of the Clipper.

This would have required making rear fenders suitable for the 2 door body and possibly a new panel between the rear window and trunk. The floor pan and inner fenders could have been adapted from the 4 door body.

This would have given them a bigger hardtop and convertible more comparable to Cadillac.

Cadillac also had the 60 Special, basically their 62 sedan with 4 inch longer wheelbase and stretched out tail, with fancy trimmings.

Henney was always looking for custom body work to do. I wonder if they could have given Packard some "specials" to draw attention, even if they sold in small numbers they would add prestige to the rest of their cars.

Another thing they did not have after 1950 is a station wagon. Station wagons were hot in the fifties, some experts predicted the way they were growing in popularity by 1960 they would outnumber sedans.

Things never got quite that far but station wagons were best sellers in suburbia.

Packard did good business with their Station Sedans. They used practically all the sedan body and the additions at the back were mostly made of wood which costs very little to tool up for.

Then, the station wagon is a very expensive model in any car maker's line.

A Station Sedan would have been a worthwhile addition to the 51 - 56 line.

Of course it all gets back to the matter of costs. They didn't have the money for new models, or station wagons, or anything like that. Because they did not sell enough cars, to make enough profits, to buy new tooling, or to cut their prices to be more in line with comparable cars.

This underlines my feeling 1) that their problems date back long before the late fifties and 2) that they needed more mass produced cars they could sell, not more hand built super deluxe models.

Packard's best post war year they sold 141,000 cars. In 1951 they sold a little over 100,000 for the last time.

They should have been selling 250,000 to 500,000 cars a year. This would have made them as popular as Buick, not an impossible goal. If they could have done that they would have had the resources they needed to develop new models and features.