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Thinking about the lower priced small Packards of the thirties, the 120 and 110. Did Packard have smaller lower priced models before that? I know they had a Light Eight in the early 30s and made a six cylinder car alongside the straight eight in the twenties. Did they have smaller cars before that, in the Twin Six period and earlier?

Rusty

The Model Thirty had a smaller companion, the Eighteen (taxable horsepower). The Dominant Sixes came in two sizes, though nobody could ever possibly conceive a Dominant Six as anything but huge or bigger. I thinks the short ones had a 138" wheelbase

Of course, the first one cylinder cars are "small" but even they are much bigger than a Curved Dash Olds

You should save your pennies and get a copy of the Kimes book. It's really a very good story.

Regards


John Harley

You could consider the Twin Six of 1915 a smaller and cheaper car, it replaced the larger and more expensive "Dominant Six" (the 48).

Owen

Correct, and the Twelve of the Thirties was originally going to be a smaller front drive companion of the Eight. MacCauley was always conscious of competition from below

Regards

John Harley

Absolutely. Macauley and Company knew long before the stock market crash where the action was. Rolls-Royce was
mainly concerned with their "small HP" companion series 20, 20/25, 25/30, postwar Silver Dawn (and "Bentley" versions of the latter three), their huge Phantoms being a minute figure of their production.

Cadillac got a lot of marketing mileage out of the few V-16s they built, concentrating on more affordable cars.

The above posters sum it well. What's remarkable and says volumes for Packard is that they cornered not just the national, but international luxury business from the advent of the Big Six in 1912 through the next nearly three decades.

The problem was not in producing smaller, more rational cars, but in Packard's failure to market them as adroitly
as Rolls-Royce or Cadillac, witness so much of East Grand's downright hokey advertising for the otherwise fine junior cars from 1940-on.

It's one thing to go downscale, so long as you market upscale. Rolls-Royce and Cadillac remembered and practiced this. Packard didn't, regardless how fine their cars were.

JJH.......

The Kimes book remains my favorite. I still page through it regularly.

I remember a dyed in the wool Caddy man who got a very low mileage Packard Eight and was totally sold by how nice it drove. I've driven the big Caddy's and they don't drive as well as Packards. The downside is they hold up better because they are so over built - Excluding the 38-40 V-16 which had Packard beaten in everyway but the hood ornament.