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Yes, I know many factors contributed to Packard's demise.

And I'm not starting this topic to initiate any sort of fire fight (spirited discussion IS encouraged, however!).

I'm curious as to what ONE factor (in YOUR humble opinion) was the main reason for Packard going out of the automobile business.

I'll start!

NOT having an outside accounting/auditing firm thoroughly examine Studebaker's books.

And not only Studebaker books. I think Packard did some other endeavors relying on handshakes and promises instead of written contracts. Believe there was a shared stamping arrangement with another mfg which didn't work out to Packards advantage or at least last as long as they expected it to.

I think one of the major blows was the loss of defense money. After the large expenditure to build a plant for the jet engines and then thinking they had a reliable source of income to tide them over while they did the other things must have hurt as much as Studebaker.

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Had that defense money been available, do you think they might have been able to keep up car production?

Consolidation of the defense contracts was the idea of Secretary of Defense, Engine Charlie Wilson-former CEO of GM.Gee,I wonder what company he decided to give all those contracts to.

Quote:

I think they could have hung on longer. The Conner plant and Studebaker took a lot of cash and they had no cash coming in to speak of.

Had the defense money been available, that would have been revenue that either could have gone a long way toward tooling the 57 production or, had the banks seen some other revenue besides cars they might have been a bit more willing to extend additional loans for the 57 production.

With 57 production assured then some of the other problems could be addressed and might have had a chance of being resolved rather than the programs they were forced to take. With the 58 recession and other factors, whether it would have made a long term difference is hard to say.

I think the reason was volume competition from the 'Big Three'. In the post-war world, I don't see how any independent car maker could survive. There were only so many car buyers and the Big Three had an appropriate model for all of them.

The first thing is to clarify the question. WHICH Packard
are you referring to? Because the Packard after Alvan Macauley stepped down in April, 1948 was no longer the same company which had earlier stood slightly above and to the side of the fray. By Macauley's departure, Packard was just another also-ran, chasing GM's lead.

Dutch Darrin well summed it in late 1939 or '40: "Packard was so afraid of GM they couldn't see straight."

Packard execs might've had a hollow laugh when Cadillac vindicated them in 1930 after years of crowing over their V-8, as the Cad V-16 was essentially an inline eight with firing impulses halved for less crankpin loading.

But GM's racy new C bodies introduced mid-'40 underscored that Packard's Clipper, which debuted mid-'41, might've come sooner, or Packard might've "Darrinized" the entire 1939 or '40 lines. Or 1938, considering the styling if not sales impact of the '38 Ford and a half Zephyr and Cadillac 60S Fleetwood, which caught Packard already napping, the same year Packard had their first quality issue, casting glitches in some of that year's 319-ci Super 8 blocks.
This latter certainly had no impact on Packard survival, but is mentioned only to show that Packard was starting to slip.

From 1948 on, the cars were almost an afterthought, phoning it in, the Company's previous passion thrown into defense/aero engines, gas turbines, this being Rolls-Royce's mainstay from 1935 on, their cars a boutique, "assembled" sideline, but smartly marketed.
Packard never learnt to market their junior cars as deftly
as R-R/Bentley did, Derby's "small hp" rank and file, Crewe using Pressed Steel---who supplied Austin and half the English car business--even as Packard relied on Briggs from 1941 on.

The immediate postwar R-R Silver Dawn/Bentley R-Type and R-R Silver Wraith were on the same 120 and 127-inch wheelbases as Packard's junior and senior Clippers, which were better automobiles if lesser furniture than Crewe's product. But the former GM men called in to teach Packard
how to produce the excellent, worldclass '35 One Twenty in 1933-34 were now running the Company, and that included the
inept ads playing to Main Street. Main Street does not want to see itself as Main Street. No one wants "downscale."

So the question needs refinement. Because there was no
Cadillac after 1935, and even the 1934-35 Cadillacs shared some body pieces with Buick. All 1936-on Cadillacs were GMobiles sharing components with lesser divisions,essentially junior cars. But Cadillac advertising was crisp, hip, Packard's increasingly lame, inept, trying too hard, junior and senior.

It was some time since Peter Helck's magnificent 1934 "Hush" ad.

Packard lost the last vestige of that special allure, elan when they brought out the 1948 bathtub, which Tom McCahill, dean of roadtesters, called "a goat." Well built, well-engineered, but compare with the crisper, sharper '48 Cadillac. No contest.
Another motoring journalist described Packard's '50s products as looking like "....bigger, gaudier Fords."
Again, following, not leading, the Caribbean was Packard's response to the Cadillac Eldorado, Buick Skylark dreck, 200 more pounds of "sporty" deadweight on an otherwise stock convertible.

An earlier, confident Packard would've anticipated Bentley's R-Type Continental instead.

Packard had no major inhouse engineering breakthrough in the '50s. Bill Allison had to sell the hell out of his Torsion Level to Packard's floundering management after the rest of Detroit passed.

Hispano-Suiza survives making pumps for nuclear power plants. BMW owns R-R, VW Bentley.

So rephrasing MIDan's question answers it.

Otherwise, JD's right. NO independent could approach GM/Ford tool amortization costs, economies of scale,
afford the increasingly "necessary" annual model changes, costly TV advertising.

The final blow (from my perspective, which is admittedly warped) came from the premature failures of the V8s. It was the last straw of confidence being scourged....

Obviously a ton of bad decisions and bad luck preceded it.....

IMHO, Packard's final slide began post-war when it was determined to become a volume car maker rather than try and return to its prior niche as the premiere luxury car maker. After World War 2, Packard was in fairly decent shape financially. Had Packard tried to return to its roots making and marketing well-made, well-engineered luxury cars, Cadillac would have never left them in the dust.

Unfortunately, Nance's efforts to return some of the lost prestige to the Packard marquee by separating the Clipper and Packard brands was a bit too little too late and eclipsed by the dual mistakes of leasing the Connor Ave. plant from Chrysler and buying Studebaker.

Perhaps the biggest irony is that it was Studebaker, not Packard, the was selected by Curtis-Wright in '56 for saving and Packard was resigned to the dust heap of history.

A shame, perhaps, but that is how the market works.

Hi

A long, sliding loss of focus by management of the semimal core strength and philosophy that had been their guiding ethic until a failing economy caused them to seek an avenue for corporate survival. Once that was found, complacently settling for financial stability rather than design and engineering leadership as their driving ethic.

Steve