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

Posted by Mahoning63 On 2013/10/16 14:31:08

Agreed Guscha, Packard was lost in space by '56.

Packard up to 1923 shared the luxury market with the other two P's... Pierce and Peerless. It was only when Packard came up with the one-two punch of Six and Eight in 1924 that they broke out of the pack and became the King of Luxury. Duesy was never a challenge, not with its ridiculous prices and fewer than 500 cars sold over several years. The Sixteen... big flash in the pan followed by big fizzle. Packard probably could have skipped the Twelve and done just fine with the Super Eight leading the charge. They wouldn't have had bragging rights but so what, the only bragging rights that counted were market share and profits.

Packard had oodles of R&D money in the early Thirties. They used it first on the low-slung FWD V12 car but that didn't pan out. Their next big R&D effort was the One Twenty, which did pan out. That they didn't immediately leverage it and its new assembly line to make a new line of flagships was an Alvan Macauley blunder, plain and simple. The 110 was also his mistake. And he was two years late with IFS for the Seniors and four years late with split windshields for all the cars. And finally, he got tagged directly in the nose by Cadillac's 60S. Packard's ascendancy to the top of the luxury market was due to Alvan. So was Packard's initial descent.