Packard Forum Index » General

G'day all, I regret my earlier post which appeared to badmouth the Junior Packards. I never intended this as they really did save Packard for a number of years. I have many wonderful "Junior" Packards, ( Junior, in sayspeak only, not in actuality...they are quality Packards!" and locally they continue to show a clean set of heels to the local Chryslers, Buicks,and Fords. However, going around a flat out late 1940's British "sports car" in my 1939 -120 gives me a really warm feeling.
I would have imagined the post war sales would have been very different if Packard had gone to an OHV V12 in 1951, using the same 1939 bore/stroke engine with OHV cast iron heads, in the 51 body, with a minimum of 127 inch wheelbase, and a vertical truncated veed auto shutter 1938/9 Packard grille. It would not have been very expensive tooling and would have catapulted them to the forefront of engine offerings and body design in one move.
With a reasonable boost in advertising... it would have seduced many of the up market buyers and assured Packard.... " The Twelve cylinder specialist" into a real niche marketing spot. But, as many have said, the Board was obsessed with an attempt to compete with "flashy" GM and Ford middle range products. It should not have competed....it should have specialised and appealed to Packard's Grass roots... The middle/upper class of US buyers. Just my 2 cents worth.( actually 4 cents now) best regards Peter Toet.

I guess I may as well chime in on this topic. Many good points have been presented here, and some good insight into the reasons behind some of the decisions that Packard management made over the years. The sad reality is that any independent automaker faced a significant uphill battle in the postwar era . . . As evidenced by their survival rate. In order to be successful and commercially viable, an independent has to offer "something different" than the Big 3. While we usually equate that to mean smaller, lighter, cheaper, or with more flamboyant style, there's no reason an independent couldn't offer a car a cut above the Cadillac, Lincoln or Imperial. Whether or not that strategy would (or even could) be a winner, Packard was certainly capable of doing so.

In retrospect, and in light of the 1957-58 Packardbakers (which were not intrinsically bad cars, just bad Packards), I'm sure most of us wish they had at least tried. You know, the old "Better to die with a bang than a whimper" thing . . . Which tends to ignore the fact that at the end if either choice, you're still dead. I guess we have to try and forgive Packard for not doing what we as enthusiasts would have liked them to do. I don't think they tried to "out-GM GM", I just don't think the post-war market was willing to support an additional luxury car choice. As postwar Buicks, Oldsmobiles and. Chryslers became more refined and featured Hydramatics and Hemi V-8s, those were the cars postwar buyers spent their dollars on. As Packard went through its downward spiral at the end, I'm not sure any scheme could have saved it. How and where in the postwar timeline that ignominious end could have been prevented makes for great discussion, and talk of villains and conspiracy theories makes for great drama but that's about all. If there had been a clear path to continued postwar Packard profitability, do we really think Packard would have chosen not to take it?

So, to answer the original question, what single factor most contributed to the demise of Packard? In my opinion, there is no one single factor. I feel that the answer lies in the actions of the major manufacturers in a changing postwar economy, and Packard's reactions to their actions. Not having a V-8 sooner was certainly a factor, quality issues and moving production facilities were certainly factors, Some questionable leadership moves certainly didn't help, but over their history GM, Chrysler and especially Ford had their own postwar leadership issues. There are a lot of little pieces to the postwar Packard puzzle (and a few larger ones), and they don't add up to a clear single cause you can point a finger at and say, "That killed Packard".

I guess some if the saddest words are always "It might have been . . ."

Hugh Ferry who made the decision to purchase bodies rather than manufacture them. This decision came back to cause numerous problems both financially and quality related. There were other poor financial decisions but I feel this was the most serious. The dollars saved from these decisions may have allowed for time to recover from styling and other issues.

If I were asked to do a Mulligan for Packard history, knowing what I know about it from several books, here's where I saw mistakes being made. Firstly, Packard was profitable and prudent company with a healthy line of credit when bad decisions started to be made. My over-riding thought was that the untimely death of Nash/Hudson's George Mason doomed Studebaker, Packard and Willys from a merger that would have equalled Chrysler or Ford for production economies and the ability to negotiate with suppliers in volume. Could Mason's love of fine cigars and fatty food have caused the demise of some fine American car names?

Hotpoint's Whiz-Kid Jim Nance came in at a critical time with a flashbang need to quickly improve sales and profitability. Foolishly, no one audited Studebaker before the merger, which saddled Packard with underproduction and declining favor with car buyers. Failure for Nance or the Packard board to do a forensic audit of Studebaker's books probably began the dominoes falling.

The auto price wars of 1953-57 hurt everybody in the industry, but the Independents the most. Lee Iaccoca saved Ford in 1956 with his famous campaign "$56 for a '56" to barely move cars enough to stay in the black for that year. Feeling the need to sell cars, even at a loss, wasn't good for any company.

Finally, not having a V-8 for the Series 54 cars made buyers look elsewhere (although Pontiac and Hudson had only L-head sixes and eights that year, too). Having that good engine a year earlier, along with staying away from the Studebaker merger and resulting Curtiss-Wright ownership,might have made the difference in America having two quality high-priced car companies.

Even if subsequent Packard cars might have eventually faded from the scene ten or twenty years later, Packard might have been a producer of quality jet engines. Unfortunately, the guy who cancelled the critical contract with Packard for J-47 jet turbines at the Utica Packard facility was the Secretary of Defense (Charles W. Wilson), former President of General Motors. Paraphrasing him, what's good for GM wasn't good for Packard.

One thing I kept thinking while reading James A Ward's excellent book "the Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company" is that after Packard bought Studebaker they left two of everything in place in terms of administration, that they didn't get busy and figure out what could be consolidated in white collar positions and realize the savings that might have been.
I wonder how quickly George Mason could have consolidated the front office/engineering/styling/marketing and other departments had the grand merger took effect?
Nance's treatment of Studebaker from a manpower standpoint seems almost crazy by today's (cut throat business) standards.
In reading the book it seems as though he (Nance) was in constant "fireman" mode since before the Stude purchase, running from fire to fire.
Nance stated that he took the Packard job as a stepping stone to running the proposed Mason-envisioned AMC, if he couldn't make these decisions at S-P I wonder how they would have played at a four-brand AMC?

In most markets, Mercedes markets the "A"-class and the "B"-class, both smaller and less expensive than the "C"-class we get as the "starter" model Mercedes in the U.S.

For a photo of the "A"-class, see my post <a href="http://bayphoto.blogspot.com/2013/10/gearhead-tuesday_15.html">HERE</a>.

More on the subject <a href="http://bayphoto.blogspot.com/2013/10/gearhead-tuesday_22.html">HERE</a>.

G'day Packard5687,
to PackardInfo.
And, as I usually do, I'll go and invite you to include your '56 Four Hundred Hardtop Coupe in the Packard Owner's Registry here on PackardInfo!

Hi

Good points all, more so because the discussion is civil and respectful, something not found on many automotive forums. Anyway, dissertation time:

As to the single factor, the loss of focus on the upper series lines after the 120 introduction was prelude to and beginning of the slide into complacency of the postwar years. Had management decided to keep the Senior series up-to-date, completely new, all-steel bodies, exclusive to Super Eights powered by an all-new mono-block straight eight, a 356 ci years earlier if you will, would have been in place for 1937, 1938 at the latest. The Twelve would have been included in the update. Consider that the '38 Super Eight was nothing more than a slightly restyled '35 Eight fitted with IFS, still carrying a composite body and multi-piece engine. Wonderful cars that they are, even the Twelve was an anachronism by 1939.

When management finally reacted to the changing premium/luxury market expectations, mostly driven by the inroads Cadillac was making into their segment dominance, they opted to generally follow the Cadillac model, simply upgrading medium-priced basics, into the 'pocket' luxury car. Rather than creating a new Super Eight which took advantage of the newly-instituted manufacturing economies but presented a specifically designed and engineered line distinctly differentiated from the 120, the 1939 Super 8 was part and parcel an upgrade '38 Eight. It was very much their version of the Cadillac 60 which was heavily based on the LaSalle 50 and Buick Century. What they missed was that Cadillac had also developed a unique product in the 60 Special sharing only the 60 Series mechanicals but unlikely to be confused with those middle-priced shared line-mate models.

All this culminated in the 1940 lines which were so poorly differentiated that the general public could no longer tell a 120 versus 160, whether the owner had spent $1,200 or $1,700 for his Packard. A fine new mono-block 356 straight eight and high standard interior were insufficient to differentiate the 160 & 180 when stuffed into bodies the public had been buying in Six/110 and Eight/120 for far less money. People were no different then than now, when they spent the additional money, they wanted others to recognized they had done so to purchased a luxury car. Although, easier with the longer-wheelbase models, the bulk of sales would be the 127" wb 160 models that should have been their volume seller.

Opposite the critical 160 were the new Cadillac 62 C-body Torpedo sedans which took the 60 Special three-box architecture, translating it into a popular, mass market style. It arrived in a market seeming primed to accept new and progressive styling. While it's true that body series was shared all the way down to Pontiac Torpedo Eight, at each price level, there would be no confusion who spent how much to buy their selection.
Even at the upper end, everyone knew a Buick Roadmaster 70 was a step below a LaSalle Special 52 which was below a Cadillac 62. As trivial as those distinction might seem now, they very definitely defined the prestige value of each marque.

Had Packard maintained a sharp enough visual differentiation between their various price segment models, dilution of it Senior cars would not have occurred. Had they maintain those differentiations and distinction, as it entered the fierce postwar market competition, promoting higher percentages of his Supers and Custom Supers might have been far more successful than it was.

Steve

Steve, thanks for a very insightful and nicely articulated commentary; myself and I daresay most serious students of Packard's history would be in agreement with you on many of your points.

I did not intend to add to this thread, these "what ifs" seem to come and go like summer rain and for the most part nothing new is ever said; most folks have their own ideas on the topic and I suspect it's unlikely that anyone's arguments are likely to change someone else's position. A nice companion to your piece, as JW pointed out earlier, is Robert Neal's "History As It Should Have Been" in the current Packard Cormorant publication.

Had I commented earlier, I would have started by saying that in my opinion the SINGLE most significant event that set Packard on a new and divergent path was the introduction in 1937 of the 110. It's success drew the majority of their management's focus for the better part of the next 20 years and spawned a whole series of related down-the-line decisions away from their traditional values to volume for the sake of volume at the expense of their traditional customer base and reputation. Not that the 110 or it's later offspring were bad cars - quite the opposite - they were very good cars. But as the man who just bought a $4000+ 1937 Packard might have said to himself, a PACKARD for $795 - are you kidding me - next time I'll see what Cadillac has to offer.

There are those who say the 110 was essential to Packard surviving the depression; I doubt very much that that is true and it would be an interesting hypothesis to study. In the first case the depression, except for a little resurgence in 1938, was pretty much over. And yes, they sold 65,000 110s and 50,000 120s. The 120 WAS necessary in 1935 to Packard's survival but let me ask - if the 110 didn't exist, how many of those 110 sales would have gone to 120s (at a better profit per car)? and perhaps kept Packard's focus more upscale? If the management time, financial resources and planning/marketing efforts that was spent on the 110 would have been spent in the direction of maintaining and enhancing a more meaningful differentiation between the 120 and the senior cars, I suspect Packard's future would have been more glorious, yet in the end the day of the independents were numbered regardless. But Steve, you said it better!

Would you turn up your nose at a V12 BMW because they also make 4 cylinder cars? Would you refuse to buy a Mercedes V8 because they also make 4 cylinder diesel taxicabs and trucks?

Would you refuse to buy a Cadillac today because they made a 4 cylinder Cimarron in 1982?

Even the dullest witted rube could tell the difference between a $7000 limousine and a $695 coupe. The fact that the same company made both, would add a glow of glamor to the $695 car without taking anything away from the $7000 car.

If that was the trade off Packard made - and I don't believe it was - then they made the right decision. They would have gone broke in a year selling a handful of custom built $7000 cars, same as Pierce Arrow, Marmon and Stutz. The day of the custom built 12 cylinder or 16 cylinder car was over. The new generation of mass produced V8 and straight eight cars was just too good and too cheap. If Packard would not supply the demand, Chrysler Cadillac and Buick would.