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Here's a thought for Packard survival in the late 50s. Strike a deal with Ford to use the new '58 Lincoln unibody platform and Wixom assembly plant. Not a merger with all its baggage, which Ford didn't want. Nor a car that would compete directly with Lincoln in price, like the '57 shared body shell proposal. The carrot for this deal would be that since the '58 Lincoln and T-Bird were expensive new stand-alone products for Ford that had little in common with the rest of the company's line-up, Packard would help pay for the program. Not initially... they were broke. Instead through a percentage of the profit from each '58 Packard sold. As an added inducement the new Wixom plant would get added volume, thus reducing its per unit cost. To ensure no cannibalization between the two cars, the Packard would sell for 25% more than the Lincoln. Packard would pay for its own new tooled parts like exterior stampings, but the bankers might have gone for it since one of the Big 2-1/2 was involved and bankrolling most of the program. Combined with the '57 Studebaker-based Clipper the new showroom might have seen Packard through its darkest days.

As to the car's design, the new Lincoln looked suspiciously like Packard's 57/58 design proposal anyway. Packard could have kept the roof and all inner body stampings. To make the Packard top end, the hood could have been extended several inches. Otherwise it was simply a task of smoothing out the Lincoln body sides and adapting a Packard front and rear clip. The big question would have involved the mechanicals. Historical accounts suggest that Utica had to go no matter which survival scenario was chosen. Painful though it might have been to Packard's pride, the Lincoln 430 V8 and transmission would probably not have detracted from the car. Perhaps Packard's "Plus" could have focused on suspension engineering, adapting Torsion-Level to the new unibody and maybe an independent rear. Here's a Lincoln/Packard image comparison.

Long term, Chrylser might have been the better and more willing partner to share platforms with but for 1958, Lincoln had the design and quite possibly the motivation.

All thoughts welcome!

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I like the idea, AND the thought that went behind it. Good Job!

Thanks, much appreciated!

your rendering makes a much better looking car than the grotesque 58 Lincoln. The plan using the '57 Lincoln seems easier to do even though it would be an older platform. 25% seems too high a differential and really all that Ford would need to do is keep the economy of scale for Lincoln as their advantage.

I like using Torsion Ride as a differentiator. When Ford bought Jaguar, they used head and suspension design to differ the S-type from the Lincoln

You raised a number of points that I think are worth exploring. Keep'm coming.

The first was design, the Packard being an improvement on the Lincoln, which I agree. Tried to make the rough alteration look fairly close to what Packard was planning so as to demonstrate that Packard's design strategy could have largely been realized had they hitched their wagon to this horse. The question is, was the Packard design a winner? That I don't know. We know the Lincoln squarebird look didn't fly. How much of that was due to its overall shape and how much was due to the garballygook smeared on that shape is an open question. The fact that the '61 Lincoln did so well might answer the quesiton, but not completely. I went to the Concours at St. Johns in Detroit yesterday and got a good look at a '59 Lincoln cruising around the grounds. It was whisper quiet - perfect for a Packard - but looked extremely low, flat and gargantuan. The '61 Lincoln dimensions were greatly trimmed down. We also know the Edsel front appearance didn't fly, although that car probably torpedoed for a lot of other reasons having nothing to do with design.

On your comment about the '57 Lincoln shell, personally I think it would have been a nightmare to adopt. What exactly was Packard planning to do, mount it to a Packard frame? The only way to make it a straightforward adoption was to use Lincoln's frame, which would have started a chain reaction of borrowing with no end, except probably Ford's and the bankers' patience. And what would it have done to help Packard? The '57 Lincoln design was good but getting old. Might have been throwing good money after bad. My sense it that Packard should have tried to convince the money people that, in return for carrying the company through a very ugly 56 and 57 model year using the 55 car, Packard would then sell Utica, shutter Conner except for stamping outer panels for future products, fire most of the salaried and hourly workforce and become a lean machine with low overhead. Brutal but maybe the only chance at survival.

A 25% markup would have resulted in a $6,000 Lincoln and a $7,500 Packard. The $1,500 would have been large enough to give the Lincoln enough breathing room to make it on its own but not too high to prevent Packard from making 5000 - 10,000 sales in its own right. Am not sure what you meant by Lincoln economy of scale. If both cars were priced similarly and the Packard design went over well while the Lincoln didn't, there would have been real heck to pay in Dearborn.

Fascinating thought but no way Packard could have used the Lincoln body for 1958. For one thing the Packard factory was closed and the Lincoln body was too wide for the Studebaker assembly line.

However it might be someone will make one anyway, using a 58 59 or 6O Lincoln body, suitably reworked, with a Packard 374 and Ultramatic.

It would certainly cause a sensation at any Packard show or get together.

In 1957 58 59 and 6O expensive cars took a pasting in sales. The new compacts from the big 3,plus Rambler and Stude Lark set all the sales records. From this, I would argue that Packard was through no matter what they did.

Rusty - what I was suggesting was that Packards be made in the new Wixom assembly plant that made the Lincoln and T-bird beginning in 58.

The mid priced market collapsed but the luxury market faired much better, taking a brief minor hit in 59.

It is a nice design and think it looks better than the proposed car off the 56 Lincoln body. Sure looks like it would have needed a lot of new stampings though. Stude barely had money to chop off the front and back of the car they based the Lark on so don't know where they would have come up with any more at the time or if fiberglass would have cut it on that scale..

Too bad Ford movers and shakers put the kabosh on the 56 body -- Who knows how that would have turned out and if history would have changed to allow the 58 body to be used. Of course, in hindsight, maybe the somewhat weak unibody 58 would have been quite the challenge to adapt to a frame. Don't know if torsion level was still in the picture with the 56 Lincoln body going forward but if so, adapting to unibody maybe just as well those problems were avoided on top of all the others they were going thru.

good point in the engineering work to mount the torsion bar suspension to the huge Lincoln monocoque.

my point on scale is that Lincoln calculates the unit cost of running the factory based on the Lincoln volume only. They charge Packard at that rate, The overhead absorbtion is Lincoln's gain.

also a good point in smoothing the sides would require stamping dies for fenders and door skins, limiting the savings, Hmm, sounds like the Clipper-bathtub and 55 facelift.

Thanks for the clarification on the unit cost, makes sense.

On the unibody was suggesting Packard go all in... i.e., no more frame. Packards would roll down the same line as Lincolns and be mostly the same car except for what the customer could see and feel. This would really be cutting Packard down to the bare bones but it might have been the only way the money people might have forked over the millions needed to carry the company through 56 and 57 to 58 and pay for the new 58 Packard body panel stampings. Packard's breakeven volume absolutely had to come down. I mentioned that Packard might keep Conner open to stamp outer body panels. Chuck that. Stamp them at the same facility Lincoln used. I think we have to leave open the possibility that although the money people refused to fund Nance's grand plan proposal, they weren't averse to investing in Packard in an absolute sense. They wanted to see a reasonable opportunity for a good return.

If the Lincoln unibody was weak, so be it. The price paid for steering the company to the brink. The key thing by the late 50s would have been that Packard kept control of the elements that made a Packard truly special - styling and ride. By then everything else had reached parody in the industry. Nance said as much when Utica was being built... "ours will be just another V8."

On the torsion bars, Chrysler packaged them up front on their 1960 unibodies, proving it was possible. Packard would have needed to design a new front torsion system to fit the Lincoln unibody. The rear suspension is where the challenge would have been - and I think the big opportunity. Lincoln's low slung unibody might have left no room to package the rear bars underneath the car (am not sure on this) but if Packard could have went with an independent rear suspension they would have freed up about 7 inches above the now fixed rear diff. That's where the rear torsion bars might have fit. Load leveling might have been out though. One of the reasons the second generation Expedition/Navigator went with an independent rear was to drop the floor 7 inches to improve 3rd row seating comfort.