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Those price numbers are very instructive.

You have the Clipper competing against the Oldsmobile V-8, and the Patrician competing against the entry level Cadillac.

If you drive either the Oldsmobile or the Cadillac,the combination of Hydramatic and the V-8 makes for no comparison. The Packard is going to appeal only to buyers who don't care about performance or gas mileage. Probably the Packards were selling to customers who wanted good dealer service the same way as Studebaker customers. Certainly nobody was switching to Packard. As well, the Chrysler Imperial had a fully automatic transmission in 1954.

Had the 1955's been bullet proof Packard would have held on longer, but the recession of 1958 probably would have killed them off. Their best hope would have been to become a supplier the same way as Borg-Warner and Packard Electric.

The motor plant was a step in the right direction, but industrial overcapacity was not in their favor and they did not have the engineering staff to be a serious threat to anybody.

In a 1952 road test Tom McCahill reported that Packard was as proud of their build quality, fine upholstery and appointments,comfort, smooth quiet ride and overall, understated luxury as others were of their performance and gaudy styling.

He reported they were going after the steady, conservative luxury car trade in the upper medium and high price brackets.

This was not a bad strategy. I know in many parts of the country Cadillacs were for characters from the wrong side of the tracks. The real community leaders and wealthy people drove Chryslers and Buicks.

I had a successful real estate broker tell me in all seriousness, that if he was seen in a Cadillac it would hurt his business and his reputation. This was in 1976. He just bought a fully loaded Buick Electra and I remarked that he could have had a Cadillac for the same money.

This is why I said earlier that Packard was willing to concede Broadway and Hollywood to Cadillac, and take the rest of the country for themselves.

So, Packard was smart enough to know they couldn't build a better Cadillac than Cadillac, and offer their customers a real choice.

Unfortunately times were changing and a everybody wanted big V8s, chrome, tail fins, and 3 tone paint jobs. By the time Packard got onto this they had fallen behind the parade.

There was another thing I mentioned in passing and that is the thin choices they offered in the luxury car price brackets. The Pacific hardtop and their convertible were priced in Cadillac territory but were comparable in size and power to Oldsmobile or even Pontiac. Patrician was more like a Buick Roadmaster than a Cadillac.

Could they not have stretched the hardtop and convertible body as they did the sedan, and put them on the senior chassis? They could have reworked the body as they did the sedan to make the senior car out of the Clipper.

This would have required making rear fenders suitable for the 2 door body and possibly a new panel between the rear window and trunk. The floor pan and inner fenders could have been adapted from the 4 door body.

This would have given them a bigger hardtop and convertible more comparable to Cadillac.

Cadillac also had the 60 Special, basically their 62 sedan with 4 inch longer wheelbase and stretched out tail, with fancy trimmings.

Henney was always looking for custom body work to do. I wonder if they could have given Packard some "specials" to draw attention, even if they sold in small numbers they would add prestige to the rest of their cars.

Another thing they did not have after 1950 is a station wagon. Station wagons were hot in the fifties, some experts predicted the way they were growing in popularity by 1960 they would outnumber sedans.

Things never got quite that far but station wagons were best sellers in suburbia.

Packard did good business with their Station Sedans. They used practically all the sedan body and the additions at the back were mostly made of wood which costs very little to tool up for.

Then, the station wagon is a very expensive model in any car maker's line.

A Station Sedan would have been a worthwhile addition to the 51 - 56 line.

Of course it all gets back to the matter of costs. They didn't have the money for new models, or station wagons, or anything like that. Because they did not sell enough cars, to make enough profits, to buy new tooling, or to cut their prices to be more in line with comparable cars.

This underlines my feeling 1) that their problems date back long before the late fifties and 2) that they needed more mass produced cars they could sell, not more hand built super deluxe models.

Packard's best post war year they sold 141,000 cars. In 1951 they sold a little over 100,000 for the last time.

They should have been selling 250,000 to 500,000 cars a year. This would have made them as popular as Buick, not an impossible goal. If they could have done that they would have had the resources they needed to develop new models and features.

it's hard to give just one. If I had to give JUST one I would say that Harley Earl's 1938 introduction of the Cadillac 60 Special was the main reason for Packard's demise. They brought out this beauty when Packard was selling their 115's/Six's, This was "subliminal murder" to Packard's reputation. Even a sixteen year old kid knew who the new luxury leader was now ....and it was now Cadillac.

In my opinion the ten main final nail-in-the-coffin demise factors (primarily postwar mistakes/circumstances) were:

1) Packard should have had a V8 ready to roll by 1952 or even earlier, Packard was always the engineering leader, not follower, the 1951 Chrysler Hemi was a marvelous achievement and Packard should have done a similar rollout
2) Packard should have had Henney build hearses and ambulances for the 1946-47 model lines. People want to live in the cars that you die in. Funeral cars are subliminal great advertising. Cadillac had them, Packard also should have in 46-47.
3) Styling- Starting in 1940 the senior and Junior Packard's looked too much alike. Nance realized this and took steps to try to remedy this when he assumed command. The 48's through 1950 models were very well built but not very good looking in the eyes of the hungry to buy postwar consumer, All Eight through Custom Eight models looked very similar to each other also. They still sold well due to the car buying public was still hungry for new cars and Packard had the cars to sell, they should have done a mild facelift to the 41 through 47 Clipper design and skipped the bathtub and invested in tooling a new V8 instead, I remember talking with folks years ago who saw the new 48 Packard's arrive and were not too pleased with their looks, many of them bought Buick's, Cadillacs and Hudson's instead, the strong influence of GM's Styling Master Harley Earl strikes again!
4) Bringing out the 1951 Convertibles and Mayfairs on the 122" junior wheelbase and planning them as "junior" models was downright stupid, only a turdblossom could have come up with an idea this stupid.
5) The loss of valued defense contracts, thus losing key revenue
6) The loss of Briggs as a body supplier and the subsequent error of using the Conner plant for body production
7) Design and production flaws in the 1955's, these cars were "rushed" to production and this error was probably the final hard nail in Packard's coffin
8) The Studebaker acquisition was monumentally stupid, hiring outside firms to audit Studebaker's books instead of their own folks was basically malpractice
9) The 120 was a great idea and a great car, the needed car at the needed time that helped save Packard. However the 110 and six was too drastic of a low priced offering that really hurt Packard's image
10) Cadillac made some wise choices a) their 1938 and onward 60 Special was a styling home run! b) The V-16 sounded more impressive on paper and in conversation than V-12 c) They offered an automatic transmission earlier

Post Mortem: The more I read I believe that Nance tried very hard to save Packard and rebuild their prestige, Reintroducing 7 Passenger models, introducing the glamorous Caribbean, and building some key showcars for the auto show circuit were great steps at trying to rebuild their image. He did make some mistakes and suffered from bad timing on events also. They should have hired someone as energetic as Nance in 1946 though. Christopher and Ferry were asleep at the wheel. They needed a visionary in 1946 and did not have one. The early 50's Ford and Chevy pricing wars are always mentioned as big factors. I don't agree. These brands were not in competition with Packard anyway.

A lot of folks take offense in these posts where they think people are slamming the 120's, 110's, 1951's, 1955's , 1948 - 50's, etc.. Most of these were GREAT cars, a lot of companies in history made GREAT products and still went broke! Your 110 is a great car! Your bathtub is a great car! this is not personal, it's just business, Packard business.... and it's just opinions, and many good ones at that!

C-DUDE

I think you left one out that should not have been left out. The intended merger with AMC that never came about. If that had taken place the Packard/stude merger might not have been as big a deal.

JMHO

Quote:

I looked at that "grand plan" over last summer, from Packard, Studebaker, Hudson and AMC perspectives. imho, the "grand plan" was a myth. It was cooked up years later by James Nance to try and explain away his mistakes at the helm of Packard. Langworth had never heard of it until he interviewed Nance for his book on Hudson in 73. Pat Foster has also weighed in with his assessment that the plan was a myth as he has interviewed several principles from that era and none of them ever heard of it, except for Nance. Additionally, the actions of Nance and the Packard BoD in the 53-54 time frame are not consistent with the plan that supposedly existed.

I give credit for Packard's failure in varying degrees to the BoD, Christoper, Ferry, but I lay the major share on James Nance. Arrogance and incompetence are always a dangerous combination.

Hi

The grand merger of the four independents concept was originally George Mason's idea, which although he tried to bring it to fruition in those flush immediate pre-war years, keep kicking around until the proof of the concept arrived with their individual corporate Waterloos.....

By the Nance era, Mason likely still held onto the idea but with immediate problems of survival, any further mergers was just a notion. When Mason died, the plan lived on only as a distance idealized friendly port-in-the-storm. Decades later, Nance could still dredge it up as cover to justify one of his massive mistakes.

But as unqualified as JJN was to lead Packard, the actions of Ferry and the BoD makes one wonder about them too: generous dividends to stockholders in 1950 and 1951, right at the time the funds were needed for V8 engine development; a lackadaisical approach to that engine and its market entry timetable; continual dithering whether and when to returning body production to EGB in the face of continual problems with Briggs; creating a larger geographic 'footprint' for manufacturing and assembly while surplus EGB facilities stood empty;.....all this before the merger with Studebaker.

Steve

I do also agree that the "grand merger plan" was a myth cooked up posthumously by Nance to explain some of the failings of the Studebaker Merger that should have never happened. Mason also used merger plan "conversations" to get more parts out of Nance and Packard like engines AMC vitally needed until they could produce their own. The #2 AMC guy George Romney (Mitt's daddy) was NEVER behind ANY merger plan and said this also was just a ploy by Mason to buy more needed parts from Packard. Romney and Nance hated each other from their first meeting which ended any possible chance of any merger. They both wanted to be King and there was only room for ONE King. Nance reemerged for interviews back in the 1970's and 1980's to save his legacy, which in turn was very effective. Nance was shrewd and intelligent and he wanted his legacy to be safe and protected.

<i>Mason likely still held onto the idea but with immediate problems of survival, any further mergers was just a notion.</i>

Mason may well have had an idea, but Nance told Langworth, in 73, that it was a done deal, that the only reason Nance took the Packard job was to get the four way merger done.

Apparently, Mason had approched Barit a couple times, starting in 46, but Ed wasn't interested until the Jet failed. If it was a done deal, why did Hudson approch Packard about a merger, before doing the deal with Nash? It it was a done deal, why did Packard turn down Mason in spring 54?

<i>...generous dividends to stockholders in 1950 and 1951, right at the time the funds were needed for V8 engine development;</i>

A lot of companies gave away their war profits. Studebaker paid fat dividends in the late 40s, when Harold Vance was pleading for new plant and equipment for South Bend. Curtiss-Wright paid out fat dividends, instead of developing jet engines.

<i>...a lackadaisical approach to that engine and its market entry timetable; </i>

The oil aeration problem was easily detected. Packard tried selling V8s to the government as truck engines, but they failed the 500hr durability test, because of the oiling issue. Some time ago, there was a thread here about the "25,000 mile durability test" that noted that the engine that started the test failed due to lifter failure, which iirc is a symptom of the oiling issue that engine had.

<i>..dithering whether and when to returning body production to EGB in the face of continual problems with Briggs; </i>

The problem was lack of capital to buy or build a body plant. They sank $20M into building Utica instead. A problem easily solved by merging with Hudson.

Even as late as spring 53, the situaton might have been salvageable, with a merger with Hudson, using Hudson's body plant, retention of E Grand for final assembly, sale of the Utica plant to recover capital. That alone would probably have not gotten Packard to the present time, but it could have gotten it past 56.

In comparison, my analysis says Studebaker was doomed by the late 20s, with their factory building program of the 20s resulting in a laughably inefficient plant complex, and Erskine's determination to pay out fat dividends. Erskine drove the company bankrupt in 33, and it never really recovered.

Quote:

Langworth interviewed Nance and Roy Chapin in 73, unfortunately Chapin wasn't high enough at Hudson to have known anything about the "grand plan", if it existed. George Romney declined to be interviewed.

Here's Pat Foster's article from 2005 totally debunking Nance's delusion/excuse of the "Grand Alliance"

hemmings.com/hcc/stories/2005/08/01/hmn_feature25.html

Anything Pat Foster writes about Packard should be taken not with a grain, but a whole box, of salt. He has a very anti-Packard and extreme anti-Nance bias. He is as bad as the New York Time in distorting the facts to fit his narrative. IMO, Hemmings should not publish anything Foster writes about Packard.