Re: A drawing - What If Packard had Survived?

Posted by su8overdrive On 2012/10/7 18:53:39

Dr. Cole's right as always. Stick a Packard grille on anything. Some codger'll buy it.

Packard was an also ran from the time Alvan Macauley left the Company in 1948. The bathtubs didn't hold a candle to the crisper, hipper, racier looking '48 Cadillac, despite Packard's thorough engineering and build quality.

The 288 and 327 were good, dependable engines. A Mayfair coupe with stick and overdrive one of the best road cars of the early '50s, if not as good a car as a Chrysler New Yorker.

Ultramatic got Consumer Reports' "Best Buy" rating among slushboxes, if automatic transmissions turn you on.

The only worthwhile thing Packard did in the '50s was Torsion Level, and Bill Allison had to sell the hell out of it to Packard's Elmer Fudd management. And it still had Mickey Mouse bugs that'd never, ever have gotten into production when Packard was Packard.

Packard built some fine automobiles before Macauley left.
Let's focus on those.

Dr. Cole's right. You have to have a Packard behind the grille. Refined engineering, quality, chassis stability, above and slightly apart from the fray. Otherwise, what are you purveying?

And the Packards built from the time Alvan Macauley left weren't really Packards, and became less so each year. Several auto journalists then and since commenting that '50s Packards looked like "....bigger, gaudier Fords."

Doesn't mean they were bad cars. But they weren't as good as a Chrysler New Yorker from the '50s, as others here have pointed out. The Caribbean was no more than a Packard version of Buick Skylark, Cadillac Eldorado, Olds Fiesta. All of these overstyled, overweight, vs. regular production cars. Were Packard still Packard then, they'd have produced something rivaling the Bentley R-Type Continental,
a real sporting luxury barouche.

When Packard was Packard they weren't an also-ran. So which Packard are we heralding with the faux grilles, designey cues?

W.O. Bentley had nothing but open respect for Packard. Enzo Ferrari was inspired by Packard. Ettore Bugatti drove a Packard, not Bugatti, on his long, fast European business trips.

No one was or is inspired by bathtubs on, not that the Company hadn't already blundered royally with their clumsy marketing of the otherwise fine junior cars contrasted with R-R/Bentley's adroit selling of Derby-built large/small HP fare, postwar Crewe-assembled Wraith/Silver Dawn/R-Type Bentley on the same 127- and 120-inch wheelbases as concurrent Packards.

We might learn from the Railton Owners Club and other organizations. They're having too much fun with their survivors to worry about bringing out of context design cues into a 21st Century that's loooong moved on.

Listen to Dr. Cole. Perhaps there are too many worn out bombs around. Rather than get them fixed right, as Drs. Cole & Dyneto do, some people want to play with their computers, stick Packard grilles on other also rans.

There was more to Packard than a grille and design cues.
That's why the grille and design cues meant something.

We'd be better served by putting our energies into reproducing quality items that keep our Packards running the way Packard intended, something few people other than Monsignors Santana, Cole, Dyneto really know and appreciate.