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

Posted by su8overdrive On 2015/3/1 15:49:38

Though offering everything i had to say on the first page of this fanciful thread, Tim Cole has added something concrete to the Monday morning quarterbacking/what ifs. Tim makes insightful, factual points. And his observation about the Masons is one i've long wondered about. It does seem there was something esp. kooky, insular about Packard management, certainly when compared with the occasionally hipper, breezier, worldly men at Chrysler, GM, Hudson.

Walter P. Chrysler, only a high school education, making money selling milk door to door from his mother's cow, began setting steam locomotive valves, nonetheless endowed symphony orchestras and the arts. At Hudson, you had Frank Spring, a cultured, educated vegetarian, who practiced a healthy way of living most Americans still can't grasp. At GM you had Nicholas Dreystadt, who fought racism, which saved Cadillac, to the benefit of increased sales with no diminution of brand name. Buick's advertising was breezy as a Cary Grant/Constance Bennett farce. R-R/Bentley's ads were not only lovely, but upbeat, without Packard's increasing and tacky shrill playing to Main Street. The hidebound East Grand Avenue Masonites with their secret handshakes just didn't understand what GM and R-R, even Chrysler (Saratoga, New Yorker, Royal, Windsor, Imperial) & Buick knew:
Main Street does not want to see themselves as Main Street, but to the manor born. That's how you sell upscale cars, not forever banking, as Tim Cole observes, on your grille. That Packard in the '20s turned down a Nash amalgam suggests they were doomed long before their second chance in the '50s, by which time they were boring also-rans, anyway. We like what we like, but if you really believe a '50s Packard was as good an automobile as a concurrent Chrysler New Yorker, i've a bridge in NY and some fine bottom land in Florida to sell you.

Meanwhile, it's telling that fevered history disregard continues but no one has yet unearthed any SAE or other vetted papers comparing Safe-T-Flex with the GM i.f.s.; anything other than Packard promotionals contrasting their 356 with Cadillac's 346, Buick's 320; anything comparing the Packard, Pierce and Chrysler 384s; any engineering journals contrasting the four-main-bearing Packard 445/473 V-12 with the seven-main Pierce 429/462 V-12.
I like my '47 Super Clipper-- no other car of the era had a better chassis -- but its Briggs body is not as finely executed as an upper-echelon GMobile's Fisher.

It's possible, sportsfans, to enjoy what we have while remaining objective. In the late '30s, R-R annually disassembled a new Buick Limited to glean the latest Detroit production tips.

Tim Cole well summed it. Maybe we can get back to "just the facts, ma'am;" tips on preserving our cars, and isn't it l o n g overdue that someone offered a modern epoxy coil with a base screw for those of us with 1941-47 Clippers with armored ignition wire with no interest in jerry-rigging?

When you get a chance, go to YouTube and watch "Auto-Lite on Parade 1940 Vintage Automobile Film." You can argue we're driving "Auto-Lites" as much as Packards.

It seems some here spend more time on their Hewlett-Packards playing fantasy car, ignoring history and the tenor of the times, than working on Packards.

Let's do something constructive, get cracking on a quality replacement six-volt coil per above.