Re: '37 Junior-based V12 revisited
Posted by Mahoning63 On 2013/3/25 14:47:12
Excellent Steve, now we've got the juices flowing. Once the sport sedan was completed it would have been straightforward to expand to a full line-up that retired the old Seniors. Have attached what turned out to be an easy cut/paste showroom that shares one common rear roof/backlight shell. Has all the body styles typical of Packard in those years. Two new decklids - short and medium - would have been tooled to replace the former trunk hump design. The 2/4-pass coupe's long decklid and body style would have been retained. The sport sedan and other models in the new V12 "sport series" would have used the medium decklid exclusively, as shown.
I like your idea for a bigger Eight. Heck, let's call it the new Super Eight. If it wasn't ready for 1937 concurrent with the new V12, Packard could have simply used the 1935 256 inline 8 for the '37 Eight series (1500, 1501, 1502) and the 282 for the '37 Super Eight (1503-5). The new '37 V12 would become the 1506-8 series. The Super Eight would have used the Eight's (i.e. former One Twenty's) hood and front fenders and the interior of the '37 CD series. The new Twelve would have used an even richer interior.
One thought about the C-bodies, Clipper and how all that history might have gone down differently had the scenario that I laid out above occurred. Packard would not have found itself caught in a pinch in 1941-42 where it only had the money, engineering resources and time to tool a Clipper sedan and fastback coupe. Instead the wide and low 1940 "almost Clipper" style that I mentioned would have received the full investment and engineering support that had gone into the 1938 all steel body program, the result being a showroom peppered with all the body styles of the day including limos and convertibles. This modern line-up would have served Packard admirably until 1948 when Reinhart's "51s" could have been unleashed 3 years earlier.
My conclusion is that Packard, as it mapped out its forward planning in early 1935, went conservative with style, aggressively downmarket for growth instead of upmarket where they needed to regroup, and weren't quite ready to let go of their masterpiece - the wonderful but increasingly outdated traditional Seniors. At the same time Cadillac was in the final stages of releasing its 1936 60 Series and in the early stages of developing the related and stylistically avant garde LaSalle-turned-Sixty Special. The generation of cars that followed from each company dictated who would lead the luxury market over the next decade.
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I like your idea for a bigger Eight. Heck, let's call it the new Super Eight. If it wasn't ready for 1937 concurrent with the new V12, Packard could have simply used the 1935 256 inline 8 for the '37 Eight series (1500, 1501, 1502) and the 282 for the '37 Super Eight (1503-5). The new '37 V12 would become the 1506-8 series. The Super Eight would have used the Eight's (i.e. former One Twenty's) hood and front fenders and the interior of the '37 CD series. The new Twelve would have used an even richer interior.
One thought about the C-bodies, Clipper and how all that history might have gone down differently had the scenario that I laid out above occurred. Packard would not have found itself caught in a pinch in 1941-42 where it only had the money, engineering resources and time to tool a Clipper sedan and fastback coupe. Instead the wide and low 1940 "almost Clipper" style that I mentioned would have received the full investment and engineering support that had gone into the 1938 all steel body program, the result being a showroom peppered with all the body styles of the day including limos and convertibles. This modern line-up would have served Packard admirably until 1948 when Reinhart's "51s" could have been unleashed 3 years earlier.
My conclusion is that Packard, as it mapped out its forward planning in early 1935, went conservative with style, aggressively downmarket for growth instead of upmarket where they needed to regroup, and weren't quite ready to let go of their masterpiece - the wonderful but increasingly outdated traditional Seniors. At the same time Cadillac was in the final stages of releasing its 1936 60 Series and in the early stages of developing the related and stylistically avant garde LaSalle-turned-Sixty Special. The generation of cars that followed from each company dictated who would lead the luxury market over the next decade.
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