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AMC was in reallity 2 seperate corporations. Jeep and passenger cars that were not jeep. AMC (passenger car) dealer network was all but nonexistent for many regions of the US. AMC passenger car was predominately a midwestern and Cali product of any popularity. So any specialty vehicle would have been doomed from the start UNLESS assigned to Jeep.

The problem was theat JEep ONLY dealers did not want passenger car at all. AMC tried everything they could to force passenger car onto the Jeep only dealers as well as I'national sales.

Here in the south eastern US it was almost impossible to even give away a real nice AMC passenger car because dealer network was so sparse. Jeep on the other hand pretty well covered the area for Jeep. We have to keep in ming that Jeep is more or less a specialty vehicle. Therefore any resurection of Packard would have best assigned to Jeep and their rather new brampton plant (IIRC Jeep was built Brampton ont and Toledo) but passenger car was Keno only.

Any Packad resurrection would have competed with AMbassador anyway (remeber AC standard equipment??)

As for ANY resurrection of a legend they are usually short lived and lack popularity with only possible exception of Mustang recently. Otherwise witness, Imperial, Indian, among a few others.

LEgends are has-beens. As much as i hate to admit it, it is probably better they stay that way too. I own a 48 Chief for over 40 years (the SAME bike). Even with eBay i get alot of the resurrected Indian parts on searches (i think there has been 3 independent tries over the last 15 years) among other issues of confusion that arise between the legend and the HD clones.

Legends are best kept as legends.

The best thing that can happen to Packard is the same thing that has happened to HD, Chevy, Model A fords, Cushman and maybe 2 or 3 others. That would be to create identicle/direct replacement parts of MODERN MATERIALS and internal design changes such as adding overdrive. Or good quality kits using PRODUCTION parts. e.g the Olds oil pump conversion kit and 700R4 kits. etc. There has to be a beginning.

I can build a COMPLETE 53 Indian Chief out of a vendors cataloug with ALL NEW PARTS rite down to the accessories and and castings with an OD trans and an engine that will outlast anything that came out of Springfield 1901-1953 and u can't tell the bike apart from an original. Look at Chevy. Look at model A ford. Look at HD. We need th esame for Packard.

What we don;t need is some abortion made from platform cars.

So we've considered T-Birds, Chryslers and AMCs . . . What else have ya got?

One clarification on my Packard thoughts. The idea would have been to sell them in the Cadillac/Lincoln/Imperial price range, maybe a tick higher if the content was better. That's where the business case was, not with higher pricing like the Mk II.

To your question of what else... am not sure there's was much left for Packard in terms of possibilities. I've run out Packard designs using other OEM bodies from Ford and Chrysler from 1957 through the 60s. Also did so for Pierce-Arrow from 1938 through 1989 using first a Studebaker then later a Chrysler linkage (even an Aspen-based body!). In each case the reality of the ever changing luxury market kept coming back to the same theme: high end cars got progressively smaller beginning in the 60s and continuing through the 80s. That's not to say that Cadillac got smaller immediately. It was Mercedes which first began changing consumers' expectations. Rolls-Royce and Jaguar too, neither of which were ever super wide in the first place. There was also the '57 Eldorado Brougham, a less-is-more halo car with a tight rear seat and coupe appearance. I've always felt this was the car that precipitated the downsized '61 Continental, another move towards smallness. Lincolns got bigger and Cadillacs stayed big for another decade and a half but eventually these brands paid the price, losing their youthful image. Elvis loved all those hot Cadillacs when he was 21 but how many 21-year old rockers wanted one in 1976?

It was mentioned in the Kimes book that Packard once had a yon, lean and hungry look. I favor this low body fat in a Packard which is why, for the 1960s, I like intermediate and intermediate/large platforms such as those used for the Rebel/Ambassador and Satellite/Coronet rather than full-sized platforms. Ex's Packard coupe had such linebacker cut lines while his Imperial-based '66 Duesenberg looked like a well-fed lineman. I don't think there were any issues fitting a neo-classic grill between flanking hidden or exposed quad lights in these less than full-sized platforms... the '69 Grand Prix fit them and could have gone with an even wider grill had they tightened up the headlights.

Ford was not interested in Packard in the 1960s and was doing just fine with Lincoln. Chrysler still had Imperial and still kept thinking success was just around the corner. Personally I think Imperial's last big opportunity for success was to move to the Coronet platform in 1972, keeping the hidden headlights and rear chrome trim Imperial came up with a few years earlier. With a torsion bar IRS and focus on quality it could have turned its sights to Mercedes.

Here's the Aspen-based Pierce (or Packard or Imperial). Narrowness can have its advantages.

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ANy luxury car (expensive in Pack, Cad, MB, Linc class) MUST hold up to rigorous service, not just trendy prestige.

Problem with Ford, AMC and Chrysler was that they tended toward unibody construction. Especial Chrysler and AMC in the late 1960's an later time frame. The unitbody construction simply will not hold up ( Idon;t care how good an eng'eer is) to the big oil man in Texas, cattle rancher in Wyoming, airport owner anywhwere USA or similar such demands.

GM kept the full frame in their LARGE cars well onto the late 1980's that i know of. Packard would have never made it very long in the high dollar luxuray car market if the unit-body companies (F, AMC and C) tried to resurrect it.

First time some big shot farmer out west had to run across a corn field at 30 to 40 mph to rescue a newborn calf and have the windshield pop out of the car or the front suspension get all twisted up then that would end the Packard ( if unibody) resurrection. He'd leave that piece of shit setting rite there in the corn field and call the local Cadillac dealer to deliver a new Caddillac the SAME DAY.

Any ranch owner sleepy enough to drive his pride and joy across a corn field instead of his pick-up has been swap'n cow chips for his morn'n grits! Hey, Mercedes sailed right through this era selling unibodies and beoming America's No. 1 luxury car. Mid-sized luxury coupe with unibody... the '75 Cordoba sure did pull Chrysler's fat from the fryer, might have helped AMC a half decade earlier.

I think the AMC merger MIGHT have worked in 1954, had George Mason not suddenly died.

There has been endless speculation over the years concerning what might have transpired if the originally proposed Nash-Hudson-Studebaker-Packard merger had occurred. While certain economies of scale and top-to-bottom market coverage (and a more widespread dealer base) would have been positives, there would have been a lot of problem areas, involving numerous people, places and things. Who stays, who goes? Which plants make the cut, which ones don't? And perhaps most importantly, what exactly do you build?

Here's a great mental exercise in automotive historical fiction (Is there such a thing? Obviously this group thinks so.). It's time for the 1955 models to be introduced. The new American Motors Corporation, after months of hard-fought negotiations, consists of Nash, Hudson, Studebaker, & Packard. Give a brief overview of the new company. Who runs what, what plants do they use, and what do they build? For some extra fun, you may throw what's left of Kaiser into the mix as well.

I guess we've strayed just a bit from discussion of the Renwal 1966 Packard model. Should this discussion be broken out into it's own topic, moderators?

Great suggestion. My vote is for new thread, might bring others into the discussion.

I agree with post #42! Those cars that you guys have been putting pictures of on the thread are (all except for the longhood red one) all terrible chop-ups of existing cars that look like something that Al Bundy would have driven to the shoe store. This whole concept is like finding the BEST Elvis impersonator out there and thinking that if we can only get him on tour that he will be as big a cash cow (no pun intended) as the real thing,....NEVER gona happen, and if it did it would cheapen the original. No I think the best thing to hope for is more NEW old Packard parts being on the market so that more people will save barn finds and restore them. I mean if you have ANY PART of the chassis from a '69 Camarrow, not only will it sell FAST, but whoever gets is can just cut a check for all new parts and "ta da" a brand new '69 hits the streets, not the scrap yard.

I am going to start a new topic entitled Continuing the Packard in order that we may keep the "what if" conversation going. Seems only fair, especially to Gator who started this thread intending it to be about the Renwal Revival Packard model kit. My apologies to him for assisting to hijack his thread.

So if you're up for it, let's see where we think Packard might have gone if circumstances had been just a little (OK, a lot) different. Maybe a four or even five-make American Motors could have done it. Maybe not. Or maybe you have an even better idea?

Let's hear it. See you over there.