Re: Would it have been easier to salvage Packard than Studebaker?
Posted by Mahoning63 On 2010/11/28 22:36:51
Yikes! Sorry for long thread. A loaded topic indeed. Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving.
excess size, excess chrome, excess power...
Packard and the others played the "excess" game in their day and buyers loved it. Look at 1930. Long hoods, chrome radiator shields, extra lights, fancy horns, dual side mounts, dual rear mounts, chrome wire wheels, chrome disc wheels, luggage racks, two tone paints in eye-opening hues. And that was just Packard! Throw in the V16s, V12s, DOHC I8s, Supercharged DOHC I8s, boat tails, rear compartment bars, velour, silk, tapestry, mahongony, ad infinitum and it doesn't seem like a very staid crowd at all. Look at their houses. Wretched excess times 10! Ornate stone and woodwork, 20 bedrooms, pools, spas, gargoyles... I know a lot has been written about the so-called conservative clientele of the golden age but I just don't see any evidence that they were any more conservative than the Leave It To Beaver, Ike generation. Which would make sense. People are people. Regarding the fate of Packard and later Cadillac... as the product goes, so goes the image. They didn't maintain their product post-war like they should have. Packard started slipping, IMHO, beginning in 1938. The sales data on this is very clear. The underlying reasons aren't but I believe it had to do with market positioning and styling.
1937-38 saw an ugly dip in the Depression...
The product planning time frame that I am referring to is 1935-36 when the economy and Packard One Twenty sales were rebounding and Alvan Macauley was on a spending binge. That's when the company created its "5 Year Plan". I would argue that Alvan went too far down in the market with the 110, spent too much on an aging Senior platform in 1937 and was too slow to buy into the proposition, in fact the outright necessity, that the Seniors needed to come off the Junior line and could be done so while still maintaining Packard's fine standards.. Nor could he or his design team comprehend the need for a lower car. Over at Cadillac it was a completely different dynamic. First the lower cost V8, then the lower 60 Special. A combo that handily outsold its Cadillac brethren and completely defied the defeated '38 market. Packard was 3-1/2 years late with the Clipper. Nor did the car erase all sins. It was a great design and the market rewarded it. And the 1941 Cadillacs were a great design and the market rewarded them too.
I attached some imagery that I have created through the years to try to map out a possible design and platform path for Packard's seniors beginning in 1935. It's a work in progress but I find it both helpful and entertaining. The history is very clear on what happened between 1938 and 1958. The touring sedan morphed into the now common 3-box style (a la the 60 Special), cars got lower and wider, and luxury car production adopted mass production techniques. In all these areas, GM often led while Packard often lagged.
Explanation of the images:
1935-37
Packard's first opportunity to test the torpedo sedan waters. Duesy's Twenty Grand and Packard's own Car of the Dome contained the primary elements back in 1933: torpedo sedan, integrated trunk, split windshield. Could have been a somewhat lower volume addition to the line-up but an attention getter.
1938-40
In late 1935 when Packard's planning for 1938 was commencing, Cord was dazzling the market with a super low car and Lincoln demonstrated a RWD car (Zephyr) with a fairly low floor and a trans hump. At the same time, Packard's Seniors were at the end of the line in terms of weight, body construction and manufacturing, and weren't very profitable. Would the market for fine cars return? I would argue that it didn't matter, Packard's traditional fine cars were fast becoming outdated. As Packard looked ahead to 1938, they were planning to make a big investment in all-steel bodies that would lock their styling and proportions in for years. Why not make it advanced? Why not get the Seniors on the same line? The money spent on the '37 110 as well as the '37 Senior chassis and '38 Senior pontoons could have easily paid for a new, lower 282 Eight and longer hooded (5 inches) 356 Super Eight pulled ahead 2 years. Dietrich had given Packard a series of renderings depicting a great looking 3-box profile, so that suggestion had been planted. I tried to show how such a car might have looked in Super Eight form. (have also created images of a full '38 line-up, if any interest)
1941
Clipper with traditional grill and no running boards. Details have already been discussed in a recent thread.
1949
Great opportunity to do a new model for the 50th Anniversary. I don't know what it should or could have looked like... vertical grill?, straight-through sides? Anyone want to take a stab at it?? I show the 200 stretched 5 inches to depict a 400 with a more formal c-pillar. A freshening of the would-be '49 in '52 could have held Packard over until '55.
1955
Recently discussed this in another thread.
1958
Have no image to show other than a lower version of the '55 image. We've already discussed the many opportunities.
BTW, I liked your post on the would-be Packard of the 70s and 80s. Had they followed the Big 3, a quite likely scenario. Had they charted their own course, a number of alternatives could have played out, some good.
Attach file:
(28.83 KB)
excess size, excess chrome, excess power...
Packard and the others played the "excess" game in their day and buyers loved it. Look at 1930. Long hoods, chrome radiator shields, extra lights, fancy horns, dual side mounts, dual rear mounts, chrome wire wheels, chrome disc wheels, luggage racks, two tone paints in eye-opening hues. And that was just Packard! Throw in the V16s, V12s, DOHC I8s, Supercharged DOHC I8s, boat tails, rear compartment bars, velour, silk, tapestry, mahongony, ad infinitum and it doesn't seem like a very staid crowd at all. Look at their houses. Wretched excess times 10! Ornate stone and woodwork, 20 bedrooms, pools, spas, gargoyles... I know a lot has been written about the so-called conservative clientele of the golden age but I just don't see any evidence that they were any more conservative than the Leave It To Beaver, Ike generation. Which would make sense. People are people. Regarding the fate of Packard and later Cadillac... as the product goes, so goes the image. They didn't maintain their product post-war like they should have. Packard started slipping, IMHO, beginning in 1938. The sales data on this is very clear. The underlying reasons aren't but I believe it had to do with market positioning and styling.
1937-38 saw an ugly dip in the Depression...
The product planning time frame that I am referring to is 1935-36 when the economy and Packard One Twenty sales were rebounding and Alvan Macauley was on a spending binge. That's when the company created its "5 Year Plan". I would argue that Alvan went too far down in the market with the 110, spent too much on an aging Senior platform in 1937 and was too slow to buy into the proposition, in fact the outright necessity, that the Seniors needed to come off the Junior line and could be done so while still maintaining Packard's fine standards.. Nor could he or his design team comprehend the need for a lower car. Over at Cadillac it was a completely different dynamic. First the lower cost V8, then the lower 60 Special. A combo that handily outsold its Cadillac brethren and completely defied the defeated '38 market. Packard was 3-1/2 years late with the Clipper. Nor did the car erase all sins. It was a great design and the market rewarded it. And the 1941 Cadillacs were a great design and the market rewarded them too.
I attached some imagery that I have created through the years to try to map out a possible design and platform path for Packard's seniors beginning in 1935. It's a work in progress but I find it both helpful and entertaining. The history is very clear on what happened between 1938 and 1958. The touring sedan morphed into the now common 3-box style (a la the 60 Special), cars got lower and wider, and luxury car production adopted mass production techniques. In all these areas, GM often led while Packard often lagged.
Explanation of the images:
1935-37
Packard's first opportunity to test the torpedo sedan waters. Duesy's Twenty Grand and Packard's own Car of the Dome contained the primary elements back in 1933: torpedo sedan, integrated trunk, split windshield. Could have been a somewhat lower volume addition to the line-up but an attention getter.
1938-40
In late 1935 when Packard's planning for 1938 was commencing, Cord was dazzling the market with a super low car and Lincoln demonstrated a RWD car (Zephyr) with a fairly low floor and a trans hump. At the same time, Packard's Seniors were at the end of the line in terms of weight, body construction and manufacturing, and weren't very profitable. Would the market for fine cars return? I would argue that it didn't matter, Packard's traditional fine cars were fast becoming outdated. As Packard looked ahead to 1938, they were planning to make a big investment in all-steel bodies that would lock their styling and proportions in for years. Why not make it advanced? Why not get the Seniors on the same line? The money spent on the '37 110 as well as the '37 Senior chassis and '38 Senior pontoons could have easily paid for a new, lower 282 Eight and longer hooded (5 inches) 356 Super Eight pulled ahead 2 years. Dietrich had given Packard a series of renderings depicting a great looking 3-box profile, so that suggestion had been planted. I tried to show how such a car might have looked in Super Eight form. (have also created images of a full '38 line-up, if any interest)
1941
Clipper with traditional grill and no running boards. Details have already been discussed in a recent thread.
1949
Great opportunity to do a new model for the 50th Anniversary. I don't know what it should or could have looked like... vertical grill?, straight-through sides? Anyone want to take a stab at it?? I show the 200 stretched 5 inches to depict a 400 with a more formal c-pillar. A freshening of the would-be '49 in '52 could have held Packard over until '55.
1955
Recently discussed this in another thread.
1958
Have no image to show other than a lower version of the '55 image. We've already discussed the many opportunities.
BTW, I liked your post on the would-be Packard of the 70s and 80s. Had they followed the Big 3, a quite likely scenario. Had they charted their own course, a number of alternatives could have played out, some good.
Attach file:
(28.83 KB)
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