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Steve -

I prefer talking nuts and bolts, but when it comes to history, I actually prefer Ward's well-researched Fall... over the Kimes book. (Forget about any self-serving tripe that's been published by some clubs.)

While the broad array of industry offerings from the days of my youth (during the 1960s and 1970s) actually inspired me to go to work in the business, I now wonder why I even bothered. (Glad I'm now out of it.)

It sickens me to see the vehicles we have to choose from in recent years. Anybody who thinks the 55-56 Packards were a collection of nothing but gimmicks should take a good hard look at their modern daily driver.

Alas, I don't believe there's anything that could have been done to save Packard - the deck was stacked against them. I'm just grateful that they managed to produce the 55-56 lines as it was, but still wish the proposed 57/58 designs would have had a chance to make it into the showrooms.

Mr.Pushbutton and most of us welcome unspun history, just as we embrace vetted tech insights. There's no ceiling on knowledge in either area. None. That's why we're here.

What Mr. PB and i decry are these fanciful what ifs which have as much real world bearing as the fairy castles and unicorns my nieces once revered.

Kindly read Mr.PB's thoughtful post above, #9, which is succinct an accurate, overarching view as you'll find. If history professors in Tennessee want to write wieldy postmortems and conjectures, that's fine. We produce entertainment, diversion, not things in the US today.

Most responsible books about Packard describe the Company's demise. That's part of the story. The end is part of any story.

But all this Monday morning quarterbacking by those either not born or not yet old enough to know the tenor of the times is for the birds; rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Simply: There is no parallel universe in which Packard as
Packard could've been saved. The Packard Alvan Macauley left in April, 1948 was n o t the same company that produced the seniors that still cornered over 40% of the remaining luxe biz in 1934-35.

The GM production men recruited 1933-34 to show Packard how to build the excellent One Twenty, the basis of ALL East Grand's products from 1939 on (other than the 446 leftover Twelves), were running the Company during and after the war and continued doing all they knew how to do:
Build B-O-P albeit with Packard's customary fine threaded nuts and bolts throughout, and roller or needle bearings where GMobiles used a plain bushing.

These former GM production guys were out of their league, hadn't a clue about sophisticated marketing, witness the embarrassing ads for the otherwise fine juniors of the '40s.

The old guard left. There's no such thing as a new old guard, which is what all these nonsensical parallel universe scenarios demand.

"One more once," as Count Basie intoned near the end of April in Paris, read Mr. PB's post #9 above.

All these postmortems focus on saving the Packard name,
which by the 1950s was devalued, even meaningless to everyone but a few coupon-clipping coots, or the few new owners who imagined their '51 200 a "Packard."

Packard ran its course and then, by bleeding their name white, limped along another decade, phoning in the cars while concentrating on their jet engine contracts.

The Company's sole engineering novelty in the '50s, Torsion Level, was from Bill Allison, an outsider.

As Mr. PB patiently, clearly, explains, ALL independents were doomed. Despite the slick marketing of various vehicles that look like angry kitchen appliances, how many basic platforms are there in the remaining auto industry? Eight, nine?

Times change. It's folly to lift Packard out of another, long ago era, and imagine them in business anymore than Apperson Jack Rabbits or Ruxtons. It's silly and has NO bearing on reality. None.

All Cadillacs from 1936-on were downsized, essentially junior cars sharing parts with lesser GMobiles. Rolls-Royce's focus 1935 on was aero engines, the cars a small, shrewdly marketed boutique sideline using bodies by Pressed Steel, who also whacked out panels for Austin and others, akin to England's Briggs. Hispano-Suiza survives today building nuclear power plant pumps. These are facts. What was and is.

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit,
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

More hard history, tech insights, si hable. Bring 'em on.

BTW, i note that concrete engineering questions, like whether Saf-t-fleX IFS was really better than the GM-style IFS used in the 1941-on Clippers,
as it was in the '56-on R-R Silver Cloud/Bentley S-series,

remain unanswered. Same roaring silence when we ask if anyone can find ancient SAE and other hard tech papers from the day looking at various Packard engines contrasted with competing motors.

Instead, we get this sci-fi palaver. Mr. PB is right as rain. This horse is beyond dead. He's glue and/or dogfood.

"Just the facts, ma'am."

-- Sgt. Joe Friday, Dragnet

I just wanted to let interested parties know the discussion was on the Hemmings blog. No more, no less.

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And that is probably the only way Packard could have been saved. By that I mean Packard and it's war time bedmate faced the same problem though for entirely different reasons. Rolls-Royce's world was one in whice the post war government of the United Kingdom was taxing the customer base of RR out of existence. Rolls-Royce is in business (two business actually) today because it turned it's attention to the foreign market, specifically America where they could "phone in" RR cars and concentrate on their jet engine business.

If I'd run Packard that, except for the foreign focus, is exactly what I would have done.

In the late 40's and early 50's most every aviation minded person knew that jet engines were the wave of the future and the UK got there first with RR powered De Havilland Comets. Had De Havilland realized that big square picture windows work well in store fronts but not on airplane bodies, the market for jet passenger planes would have belonged to the De Havilland Comet instead of the Boing 707.

Unfortunatly for early De Havilland passengers, the planes had picture windows which no doubt gave terrified people a grand view of their impending deaths just before the fusillage came apart.

By not doing things like buying Studebaker and instead starting post war automobile production by building their own bodies instead of farming them out, Packard could have produced more in-tune cars while perfecting it's own jet engine designs and getting cosy with the American aircraft industry. That way, there would be an excellent chance that when the 707 took off to take over the passenger plane market, it would have done so with Packard engines.

After the money from that started rolling in, Packard could have turned it's attention to cars. By that I mean not trying to play against GM and Harley Earl by going up against Oldsmobile, Buick, Dodge, DeSoto, Mercury, Hudson, Nash, etc. That should have been seen even then as a fool's mission with GMs money and a postwar market that was obsessed with NEW. I would have gone upscale - perhaps with the V-12 that engineering made out of the "small" V8 - to go head to head with Rolls Royce where it in the 50's
had that market all to it's self.

The main flaw in my day dream remains "Engine Charlie" who was blatently still GM's boy when he was appointed head of defense. My idead still needs some defense money to tide the company over until the domestic jet aircraft industry "took off".

I've tried to look toward saving the Packard automoblie as really a bonus in keeping Packard alive as a business - which is the only chance it had. By the '60s the automobile customer was not so obsessed with having NEW. The '61 Continental stayed pretty much unchanged through '65. Plus even GM couln't afford to come up with ALL NEW every year even if that was really just new sheet metal. You can't have the Packard car without the Packard people behind it. The only way to keep them would be to keep the lights on at Grand Avenue in any way you could and make money for the stock holder doing it.

Rolls Royce, as a company, grasped that - keeping the people together. And admittedly, RR didn't really have GM (What's good for GM is good for America) to contend with so my day dream is probably just that. My idead saved RR but only for a while as we now have Rolls Royce by BMW and Bentley by VW of all companys with the actual RR existing only as Rolls-Royce Aerospace Ltd.

I've had that idea kicking around my head for a long time. Now its out and I'm done with it.

su8 - you gotta give hard data if you want to make your case stick because most of what you said is opinion, not fact. Show me a quick & dirty business case with the basics... engineering/design/testing, tooling, facility, marketing, unit revenue, volume, gross margin, amortization and profit/loss... that proves that Packard couldn't make money on a post-war breakeven of 50-80K. Had their breakeven been 300K I wouldn't bother asking, you'd be within a foot of the hole and I'd say pick your ball up. But 50-80K, that's outside 5 feet and you'll need to putt out.

Responsible books stick to describing Packard's demise? No they don't, they're riddled with opinion. There is no parallel universe in which Packard could have been saved? Says who, the historians? How could they or anyone possibly know? The folks running the company in the Forties only knew B-O-P? Then what were the Customs? The company went outside for Torsion-Level, proving that Packard had changed? So did Macauley when he hired van Ranst to investigate FWD. Had it worked nobody would have ever held it against EGB. And finally, the broadest sweeper of them all... all the Independents were (...cue the thunder and lightening...) DOOOOMED!!! Says who, the historians again? They may have been divine in the eyes of the publishing companies that made lots of money off them but sorry, my Ghostbusters's sniffer just isn't picking up anything other-worldly.

Seriously, if we are going to stick to the facts lets all be held to the same standard.

Whipping a dead horse? Nah I don't think so.

There seems to be two prevailing opinions on Packard's decline.

One: If they just kept building super premium cars they would have stayed around. When I was in Detroit I stopped by to look at the Bugatti Royale (I really wanted to see the 626 Speedster but it wasn't there). You really need to see the Royale in person next to the Duesey because it makes the Model J look like a Model A.

Two: If they just copied Cadillac (tailfins and all) nobody would have switched.

Even Turnquist conceeded that Packard would have been gone by 1938 without the 120. And as noted by historians, many senior cars were traded in on 120's.
If anything Packard management gave their brand too much credit because out in middle America the Packard name was pretty much unknown. So the 120/110 marketing was a problem because it assumed everybody wanted a Packard. You can't want what you don't know exists.

Also noted by historians is that GM was very seriously considering dropping Cadillac for 1934-35. Most of GM thought Buick was a better branded car.

Granted Hydramatic and the 49 OHV V-8 finished off Packard prestige, but not by building super premium Cadillacs. Just a better Cadillac. Everybody copied the Caddy V-8. Nobody copied Packard.

I say finished off because when you look at the numbers, Packard's market disappeared with the 1929 crash. After that super premium cars went out of style. The wealthy found out that lower priced cars satisfied their needs. Packard was moving down market since the Twin Six was dropped. The 120/110 was a progression. You might as well blame the fall of haberdashery on bad management.

If Ford had taken over Packard for the nameplate they would have avoided the Edsel, but the companies would not have gotten along very well. And by now the modern Packard would be built on the Ford Mondeo platform a'la the Jaguar S.

The failure of the US car makers was a long time coming and I remember being told that "you aren't as smart as you think" for lambasting GM stock at $100 per share. Heck when the Germans visited Ford and told Henry about the Volkswagen his reponse was - nobody builds a cheaper car than Ford - and he had ready a new low priced car for the post war market. After he died it was killed. Later McNamara had the Ford Cardinal to sell below the Falcon and it was killed.

The challenge today is for the carmakers to figure how to sell transportation again. The more gadgets you can get rid of without people noticing the higher the profit. You just have to convince them they would rather spend money on steak dinners and vacations than operating costs. It's a hard sell. If I had to buy a new car today I don't know what I would do because I want reliability and don't give a hoot about gadgets.

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Have you cracked open Ward's The Fall...? It contains nearly thirty pages of bibliographic references and annotations. If his isn't a responsible book, I don't know what is.

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Historians "know" this because history is littered with companies who, like Packard, were unable to compete in America's post-war consumer marketplace. Have you been shopping for a Caloric range lately? How about a Crosley refrigerator? Can you point me to a new Philco radio? For that matter, can you buy a soda at the local drug store or a pound of nails at the local hardware? No, no and no...Ample evidence exists which suggests that Packard's demise wasn't unusual, unexpected or difficult to explain and seeking any alternate outcome places you directly adrift in a parallel universe.

Look, if Packard's demise was an anomaly, I would fully support the continuing effort to dissect this specimen because the Packard brand really did represent something unique in America. But it's failure wasn't an anomaly and it's death was presaged during the early post-war era in the failures of other companies with similarly once-strong brands. What's more, Packard's death was then repeated by other fine firms that simply couldn't compete as the American economy continued to evolve toward the 21st century's "global marketplace."

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All of the independents are gone. Packard, Nash, Hudson, Studebaker, Crosley, Kaiser, Willys. Am I missing any? Even the valiant AMC, which soldiered on into the 80's is gone. That, alone, would suggest any historian using the term "doomed" isn't far off the mark. Of course if you know of any independent automaker that still exists, I would encourage you to write your own history refuting this conclusion.

I always return to the same question whenever I see this discussion arise: "Why would you want Packard to have survived?" Would you want to see a 1975 Packard with 5mph bumpers, a vinyl roof and opera windows? Would you want to see a 1985 Packard compact ala the Cadillac Cimmaron? How about a 2010 Packard electro-green-thingy that you plug into the wall? Really? That's what you want?

As much as I love Cary Grant, James Stewart and Grace Kelley, I realize that none of those folks would be revered in today's culture. And to change them to fit today's expectations would destroy the essence that made these individuals so unique in their time. Packard is no different. It was truly unique and meant something special in the context of its era. Things, however, have changed (for the worse, in my opinion) and, had Packard lived, would have been just as vulgar as a new Cadillac, Mercedes or BMW. If that's what you're after, fine. But I'll stick with the story of a classy marque that was the best of her era and whose name will forever represent the ultimate in American industrial craftsmanship.

SG

When the Ward book came out I bought it. After I read it I threw it away. That guy is crazy. I still have Turnquist's book and the Packard compilation "A History of the Car and the Company".

Also gone are a few non-independents DeSoto, Plymouth, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Mercury, and Dodge Truck. I think I got them all.

New to the market are Honda, Toyota, Datsun/Nissan, Suzuki, Kia, Hyundai (spelling), Acura, Infinity, Daewoo. I hope I got them all. Time will tell if Acura and Infinity can survive, but nobody will notice if they are dropped. And whatever happened to VW in the American market? In the premium end Mercedes and BMW occupy a curious combination of ethnic affinities including Westport Connecticut and Washington DC, but I only notice when I read the nameplate because they are indistinguishable brand X.

All of those Asian brands moved up market, but started out by filling the markets abandoned by the USA. The very markets that Ford twice planned to retain, but dropped due to a corporate decision.

You can bet your boots that right now China and India are looking at the American market and trying to figure out what kind of basic transportation and marketing will sell enough to knock out a few of those brands.

The market hasn't really changed much since the Model T. It got knocked out by Chevrolet and the little Willys Whippet. Willys was knocked out by the Plymouth. The demise of Willys was a sad lesson in economics because it showed that rational decision making is not part of the human condition.

One can't say all the independents were doomed simply because they all eventually went out of business, there simply isn't enough data. It takes 30 data points to make a group statistically relevant.

What we do know is that not all the Independents failed in the Fifties. Nash made it. That in and of itself negates that statement that all were doomed.

We also know that Chrysler would have failed had it not received government loans in the early 80s. How does one explain that? Not big enough? It was one of the Big 3.

We would have lost both Chrysler and GM in 2009 had the government not intervened. How does one explain THAT??? Not big enough again? GM was the largest auto company in the world!

If anything, the data more clearly than ever shows that good management has always kept a car company afloat, bad management has always toppled it.

I was a bit rough on some but not all of the historians. I rank Kimes and her team very high. They did offer opinions at times, but I like opinions, they enrich life. As for Jim Ward, am biased because he is a friend. I am in awe of the info he unearthed and the storyline he laid out but I do not agree with certain of his opinions. He seemed taken with Nance. So did another person who at one time interviewed Nance. I worked at Ford in the 2000s. The first auto exec I heard speak left me thinking "what a spellbinder". Then he failed at his mission and his replacement displayed the same spellbinder effect, then failed, then was replaced and I started seeing a pattern. It was then that I started getting bored (which the old timers had long been) with auto execs and their smooth talking blabber mouths. Nance was of this mold and I never bought any of his homespun stuff. His ego led him to Packard then led Packard to ruin despite a lot of good things he did. Many have come since him to ruin good car companies.

I read reciently that Walter P. Chrysler was interested in buying into Packard in the phase of his life between leaving Buick and acquiring Maxwell-Chalmers (which he converted into Chrysler) and that he was interested in a Nash-Packard merger. It would have been interesting to see how that would have played, and would have given him a terrific foothold from which to launch his other brands.
The acquisition of Dodge into Nash-Packard would have given that enterprise what it gave Chrysler--volume capacity, a great mid-level product and an established dealer network. And it would have gotten Packard married off while she was young, and set up to survive as the luxury marque of a multi-price bracket conglomerate.