Re: Ex-Packard Designers

Posted by Leeedy On 2014/7/19 13:43:22

Whether PMCC was legally "forced" or made to do so out of a dictum in somebody's rule book is rather academic. And unfortunately the "Standard Catalogue" series has slipped considerably from where it once stood on the accuracy-O-meter.

By the early 1950s, Americans were deep in the throes of expecting change in an automobile every 365 days. Period. We can wax all about this today in an academia sense, but this is the reality of the way it was down on the ground. This is why the next year's cars were held in such secrecy and why the dealers clouded up the dealership windows to prevent people seeing inside at new model introduction. Why many cars were shipped from the factory fully or partially covered... so you could not SEE the new styling! It means little or nothing today, but the annual styling change was important back then.

Designers weren't called "designers" back in those days. They were officially called "stylists." It you wanted to study automotive design, you were preparing for a career in what was known as "automotive styling"... and the even the chiefs of this field were known as heads of styling, not design. Ford and GM issued books that were officially titled "Styling" ...not design. And the very premise of style-especially in the American postwar era lexicon-meant what is IN and what is OUT of style. Last year's car was yesterday's newspaper and therefore, definitely OUT of style.

Packard, who perceived their automobiles in series was "forced" to go to year designation and a yearly change in "styling" since nobody wanted to look like last year's car. Anybody in touch with marketing in those days knew this was a hard fact to be ignored only at a company's own peril.

Americans were more concerned with keeping up with the latest style and identified their car years by style, not by series or serial numbers or any mundane ID marker. They wanted longer, lower, wider, latest style. Believe me, I vividly recall...everyone knew what a 1955 Packard LOOKED like. Same way they knew what a 1957 Chevy was. By the style.

As for those who bemoan the so-called "hi-pockets" high beltline of the Reinhart styled bodies-either then or now-I've got news for ya. All this stuff is a matter of style-and as such, it is cyclical. Just as "style" always, always is.

Don't believe me? Nearly a couple of decades back, Rolls Royce and Hummer came out with super-high beltlines and windows that looked like rifle slots. Did people recoil from this styling paradigm shift after decades and decades of cars with almost knee-height beltlines? Nah! Americans ate it up. No you say? Then look at the Chrysler 300 sedan series that followed the Rolls and Hummer and sold for many years. The 300 all had super high beltlines and sold a gang of 'em. These cars even got to the point where their name out on the street was "baby Roller." But by then it was a style statement. High beltlines had become cool again.

So... as style goes... style goes. Wait long enough and everything comes back. Go hard enough in one direction, then someone will get a lot of attention by designing something in just the opposite direction. With most cars today looking like grinning or frowning jellybeans or potatoes (and a few on the top end looking like variations of a stealth fighter jet), I predict cars with skirts and hidden headlights are not too far off in our future. The problem is only that the American public (due to turnover in the populace age) rarely realizes that what seems to be "new" is usually just a rehash of something that was once considered "old" and-dare I say it-out of style.