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Glad you like it BH and great observations about the Riv. Notice how Seville and Continental picked up the decklid in the early 80s. Wonder if Ex really did light a fire in the design community and it just took a few years for the old guard at GM and Ford, who didn't invent these ideas, to leave and clear the way for them to be implemented. That's cynical, shouldn't think that way. And Ford did pick up the idea with the Mk III although maybe such a design was being bantered about in the design community and Ex simply went with it like everyone else. Jr. would know.

Was thinking about Packard and AMC in those years and how AMC might have finally concluded, once Romney was gone, that a kinship might not be a bad thing afterall. Ambassador went to a longer hood in '69. Here's how the Packard might have looked. Wheelbase is shortened since it is a coupe.

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While the Ambassador body certainly seems to lend itself, my opinion, from working on a friend's 74 AMX decades ago, is that AMC's V8 engine was fairly impressive (if only from a seat of the pants feel), but their body mechanicals left a lot to be desired.

Teague's designs gave AMC something to compete with, but beauty is only skin deep.

Very unfortunate. AMC would have needed to set up a special engineering and design division similar to Lincoln where quality was paramount. It does make one wonder... AMC invested a fair amount trying to make the Ambassador a luxury nameplate. Extended wheelbase limos even appeared but the effort went nowhere. They needed a marquee name like Packard. The '69 Ambassador went for around $3700, Rivera for $4700, Eldorado for $6700. The Packard certainly could have come in at $5700, maybe even at or above Eldorado depending on how it was executed.

Here's a sedan based on the Ambassador to fill out the showroom. Very much in keeping with Ex's Duesenberg with formal roof.

Packard most recently had made a name for itself with torsion level. Maybe bring it back? Or an independent rear suspension, or both. Something to set the car apart and move it up to Mercedes' league, which is where the luxury market was headed. The car's intermediate size certainly would have been aligned.

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In addition to Teague, AMC had another Packard alumnus, but one with a sales background - Roy Abernethy.

Abernethy, who replaced George Romney as President, decided to push AMC upmarket with larger, more luxurious cars, expecting that would also make its compact cars look more attractive to prospective buyers. Yet, despite improved sales and unit profit for the Ambassador line, there were problems with quality control. Overall production actually decreased, and development costs exceeded the return on investment - putting Abernethy in untenable position. He left after only five years in the chair.

So, your choice of platforms does have some additional merit, beyond the lines (including a 122-in. wheelbase). Bill Allison even did some development work with the T-L suspension for unitized body construction for Ford in the late 50s, using an AMC vehicle for prototyping. Although Ford decided not to proceed beyond that, I bet there would have been some licensing issues in bringing that work out of the mothballs. Nevertheless, I have strong doubts that AMC ever had the wherewithal to build a vehicle that was up to Packard standards. AMC was lucky to have Teague, who was able to do so much with so little.

Meanwhile, regarding Ex's 66 Duesenberg (a completely different design than the one in the original Revival Series), the basic lines remind me more of a 67-69 T-bird. Hmm...

Well it's ironic that AMC in 1965 found itself with the opposite challenge that Packard had in 1933. It needed to learn how to build a high quality luxury car in comparatively low volumes with high profit margins. Maybe it would have needed to hire Ex to help guide the effort.

Was thinking about this would-be revival and some of the decisions that got Packard in trouble in the first place. There would have needed to be no short cuts with the specs. Long hood would need to mean long hood. When the Victoria Coupe pulled up to the mansion's circle driveway it needed to shout drama and presence - in size, shape and details. Am thinking about the wow factor that the modern Bentley Continental coupe brought to the market when it appeared 10 years ago. Go big, go bold or go home.

Image below puts the coupe on the 122" wheelbase but not for rear legroom. Instead the extra 4" lengthens the hood even more. I also lengthened the doors and tinkered a bit with details to get closer to Ex's vision. Look at what Pontiac did to make the '68 Grand Prix stand out... a full 6" were added to the hood over the GM intermediate coupes. Made a difference.

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Of the four major automakers of that timeframe, it certainly seems like AMC was the one that needed a luxury brand, like Packard, to hang a halo on. However, it would have taken so much more than a great designer, and they didn't seem to be interested in that direction, especially in the financial wake of the Abernethy years. Heck, their cars were still fitted with tapered rear axle shafts well into the 70s.

The 69 GP that you brought up had so much additional front-end length that they had to add a signficant extension to the stock A-body radiator fan shroud. No wonder that car was picked as the foundation for the Stutz Blackhawk revival.

Meanwhile, FoMoCo had taken the Mustang platform and stretched the wheelbase 3", also ahead of the firewall, to create the 67 Mercury Cougar - the beginning of a new class of sport-luxury cars.

No doubt about it - the long-hood/short-deck look was an attractive style.

Sports/luxury and luxury coupes were definately where the action was throughout most of the 60s and 70s. Packard might have done just fine for AMC as a one model brand (well, throw in a convertible version too) based on Exner's vision. Sounds like AMC needed to pull a Packard circa 1933 and raid GM (or Ford, but not Chrylser!) for not only a production genious but a chief engineer, both of whom specialized in quality luxury cars.

Had Abernathy played things differently he might have been able to keep the product simple and the costs down for the AMC line and pay for a new Packard Victoria Coupe, which appeared in Esquire magazine less than two years after he took office. Why groom an AMC-badged car to be your luxury car when you can sell a Packard instead? AMC could ask at most maybe $5000 for a 1969 Ambassador. A Packard with many of the same mechanicals could fetch thousands more while only costing hundreds more to produce.

Tooling costs for body sheet metal are a big factor, which is what did Abernethy in with the Ambassador redesign. The losses amounted to over $12M.

I can only guess that, having been with Packard, Abernethy didn't want to move to far too fast, yet he still wound up in over his head. I also question whether the existing dealer body would have been prepared to deal with such a market niche as Packard.

Yet, could be some old stigma followed, from ten years earlier, when the marque was shopped around, and nobody wanted it, then.

Perhaps short-sighted and arrogant on their part, on all counts.

Yet, I still question whether a company that found itself between a rock and a hard place for most of its 33 years would have ever committed to (or succeeded with) anything like a Packard revival.

Jeep was more to their liking.

Am not sure it was the tooling outlay so much as what they got in return for it. The cars weren't selling, that seems to have been the main problem. Part of the reason they weren't selling appears to be because the styling wasn't as good as the Big 3. There was no running and hinding by the early 60s. Everybody got in to the compact car race. Romney's strategy of staying out of the Big 3's way was no longer an option, the Big 3 got directly in AMC's path. AMC had to compete and it all came down to quickness to market and execution.

Looking at the sales numbers it is pretty clear that the Marlin was a complete waste of tooling. Even more so were the Javelin and AMX. It wasn't just the Ambassador... all these programs drove the company into the red as well as lower sales on the American and Rambler. The Ambassador, imho, was not the way to go for AMC, they needed a prestige brand that could command high prices. They also needed to do a better job with styling and - from what you have said - quality, across the board. Teague needed help from Exner or someone of his ability.

Here's a quick look at the '69 sales of luxury coupes. The numbers are quite telling:

Mark III - $6700 - 30,000
Eldorado - $6700 - 22,000
Riviera - $4700 - 52,000
Ambassador coupe - $3100/$3600 - 13,500

The AMC sales numbers stink, there is no other way to put it. An Exner Packard selling at $6700 could have sold as many, maybe twice as many, with a lot higher profit per unit, and set the stage for expansion of the Packard line into the 70s to include 4-doors and other products as the opportunities arose. AMC needed to get off their rears and get with it. Jeep was fine but the company needed to learn how to be more sophisticated, it would have helped all their cars not just the Packards.

WRT to tooling cost vs. return, there's always that risk of using sales projections to justify the development outlay. Wouldn't be the first time that an automaker found itself upside down on that count, eh?

You have to also consider that the company may have painted itself into a corner WRT to its target customers - that there wasn't a sufficient number of AMC customers interested in that kind of car. Consider it "Romney's Legacy".

As for the Javelin, I don't have the talent or resources to analyze financial performance model by model, but I've read that, in some years, it outsold Plymouth Cuda and Dodge Challenger. Today, the Javelin is highly coveted among AMC enthusiasts. Body mechanicals (and rust issues) aside, the 74 AMX that I referenced earlier, though equipped with only the 360 V8 (but 4-speed gear box), really hauled ass - would have given the Camaros, that I preferred, a run for their money.

With the Ambassador, it seems to me that Abernethy was targeting full-size models from Chevy, Ford, and Plymouth. I'd go a step further and hold that model up against full-size offerings from Pontiac and Dodge. Yet, in spite of some luxury trim packages, ads featuring chauffeurs, and even that limo, I wouldn't carry it much farther.

So, I'm NOT saying that a Packard revival could not have been executed, technically, by AMC, but in spite of any gaping hole for a luxury brand, I don't believe that it would have succeeded with the the prevailing mindset of management and customer base that had been cultivated. The diversity of new models, as developed, seems to indicate that they weren't interested in that niche.

AMC may have missed a great opportunity, but you know the old saw about leading a horse to water.