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Brown Bomber article in The Old Motor.

Generally, in my opinion, an unattractive motor car, and it got worse through the various restylings. Compare it to the Buick Y Job.

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JW:

I am pretty much in agreement with you. An odd car, to say the least!

The landau design was originally designed for carriages and used with cars such as landaulets to good effect. Used on a two-door Victoria, it looks garish -- kind of like the useless, added-on chrome of that brontosaurus of the Chrome Age, the 1958 Buick Century!

This car seems to struggle with its identity. The Darrin 120s tended to be sporty looking cars, with clean lines and their lowered belt line on the doors. You see this influence on the Jaguars of the late 1940s/early 1950s. The landau look is associates with more formal cars. At least the "Y" Job knew what it was and had clean lines.

The second iteration of this car look pretty crude. In striving for modern styling, you'd think Macauley could have a least dropped the vestiges of the running boards, followed the curvature of the front fenders for the hood lines to eliminate that strange panel behind the fender, which he did in the final iteration. The third iteration is certainly better than the second, but I can't understand why he didn't experiment with a single curved windshield instead of the two-piece used in each version.

Finally, who thought up that name? The Brown Bomber? Must have been something that came to Macauley while he was in the bathroom ...

Amen to both your observations, JW & Mr. B. We've all read the Packard histories describing what a nice guy Ed Macauley was, bon vivant, "enthusiastic" jazz trombonist. Well, that's all peachy, but nepotism has nothing to do with talent.
Kid Ory, George Brunis, Jack Teagarden were professional jazz trombonists, but we don't know if they should've designed cars, too.

We can only imagine Packard's old guard shaking their heads at Macauley, Jr's monstrosity, well deserving a scatalogical moniker. Packard had over 40% of the remaining luxe biz in the mid '30s, but that was like saying you cornered the market on imported Peruvian art. Tim Cole is right that Packard peaked in 1929 --thanks to the new LaSalle-countering Standard Eight, a new, smaller 319-ci engine shoehorned into the former volume Six, its firewall indented to accept the longer motor -- and it was slowly downhill ever since, nice as some of the cars of the '30s were. The 1932-39 Twelve was originally intended as a 376-ci FWD upper echelon Buick beater, but when Cad introduced a V-16, Packard had to make the Twelve, not their big, refined 384-ci Deluxe Eight, the top-line.

That Cadillac was fielding an inline eight with the firing impulses halved for less crankpin loading was hollow vindication to Packard execs given the public's perception of more is better. Nonetheless, the Packard Twelve's valve layout cribbed from GM's Oakland and Oldsmobile V-8s, its valve silencers adapted from the 1930 Cad V-16.

For all East Grand's refinement, build quality, we should remember that GM was a master at not only marketing, but making driving ever easier, pioneering the electric self-starter, synchromesh and fully automatic transmission.

As Mr. B describes above, the 1938-40 Darrins were jaunty barouches, but the later ones overblown. Adding a DeVille roof, landau irons and pointless chrome "speed lines" to the fenders did nothing for them. The stock 1941-42 traditional bodies would've looked cleaner without the latter. Packard was more of an international car in the '20s, '30s, overwhelmingly the choice of most the world's embassies, but too cowed by, and run by, GM and former GM production men who may have known how to cost B-O-P product, but nothing of sophisticated marketing.
Can you imagine tacky "speed lines" on a Crewe product?

Have often wondered why so many latter-day buffs feel they must salute everything with a Packard label. You'd think these guys were employees concerned about their pensions or stock shares.

Basing everything from 1939-on (other than the leftover Twelves) on the juniors was no crime, since Consumer Reports each year gave the One-Twenty and Clipper variant their Best Buy rating in its price class, and usually preferred the seniors over the concurrent Cad, Lincoln, which were also "junior" based since 1936 in each case (other than the leftover Model Ks).

Packard still had the finest chassis in the industry through the '40s (Chrysler had it in the '50s), but contrast the hipper '48 Cadillac with the production legacy of Ed Macauley's nightmare on wheels. No contest and game over, though in fairness all independents were doomed. By 1948, Packard was enjoying their fat defense and jet engine contracts, which were less hassle than dealers and the public, increasingly phoning in the cars.

The Clipper was making 1942 Packard's biggest ever production year other than only 1937 until Pearl Harbor quashed everything, including the world's remaining innocence; three percent of the globe's population so perishing. Packard was one of only two automakers to emerge profitable from War II, East Grand's legal counsel Henry E. Bodman rewriting the Merlin contract so that it became the basis for defense contracts for years to come, tho' i don't know if we can hang today's $1.5 trillion F-36 black hole, contractors' feeding frenzy on dear old East Grand and Mr. Bodman.

Naturally Packard would continue with jet engines. They'd be fools not to.
R-R's principal business 1935-on was aero engines, but they better knew how to market their postwar assembled product, bodied by Pressed Steel of Cowley, akin to England's Briggs, garbing much of the Sceptered Isle's auto industry.

All Derby's products but the Phantom I-II-III traced their engine back to the 1920 Buick Six, and before WWII, R-R was annually disassembling a new Buick Limited to glean the latest Detroit production tips.
The additional knowledge Packard accrued producing the R-R Merlin's largely aluminum engine showed up, if at all in their auto production, only in Ultramatic, East Grand's sole major postwar engineering accomplishment. Torsion Level was from an outside engineer who had to sell the hell out of it to Packard's hidebound management.

I like my warmed over '42 160 Clipper ('47), but its Briggs body is not quite as nice as an upper echelon GMobile's Fisher.

Regarding the "Brown Bomber," the Emporer's New Clothes comes to mind. Am sure some little boy on a street corner laughed when Ed Macauley drove by in that thing, but his laughter didn't reach East Grand's boardroom.

The Brown Bomber hints at Packard "concept" cars to come. Su8 hits the nail on the head with his observation about the "anything from Packard was wonderful" crowd. It is not at all easy to come up with new designs that are a) not shocking to the public's sensibilities and b) within the realm of actually being built in the future. Being able to anticipate trends and convincing buyers that your company is driving (pun intended!) those trends comes around only once in a while.

Ford did it with its Mustang in 1964 and Packard succeeded in 1941 with its all-new Clipper.

Although I have grown to like and appreciate the 1948-50 Packards, I think Packard could have taken a lesson from the 1948 Cadillac. At that time, the Cadillac looked modern; so modern, in fact, that the company continued to use the basic styling through 1957. But in 1958 Cadillac also offered cars with the popular V-8 engines and Hydromatic transmissions.

I have always thought that Packard's answers to GM and Chrysler stylists in the 1950s not directed at moving the company in any particular direction. The Request was an ode to the past, with its antiquated grill cobbled to a 400 body.

The Saga revived the Brown Bomber's deVille roof to an otherwise nice design. Worse yet was the Predictor, which left all subtlety in the dust with its "Jetsons" styling. And look! There is the Brown Bomber's contribution to Packard's posterior -- oops, posterity -- that damned deVille roof once again!

Of all of its concepts that really deserved consideration, I think the Panther was Packard's most appealing.

Too bad Ed Macauley didn't have Edsel Ford's since of style, as evident in the Model A, Lincoln Zephyr, and Continental. While nepotism often results in unforeseen or negative consequences, sometimes genius also occurs.

To try to answer Mr. Bumble's question in post #3, if I remember correctly the name the "Brown Bomber" was bestowed on it by the Detroit motor press.

I agree that the educated criticism shouldn't get you banned from the Packard clan.

The first version seems to try to look like a car with a three position top, or a coupe towncar, and to me does come off kitsch-y. The front of versions 2 and 3 reflects what was going on in the industry and particularly at Chrysler, with wide wrap-around grilles. All three versions suffer from seeming to be pieced together from different designs (which in fact they were).

I don't agree on the 48 Cadillac's modernity - I think it is in fact less evolved. The fuselage bodies from Hudson, Packard, K-F, Lincoln after the war are to me a bolder direction than GM's "2 fenders instead of 4".

Quote:

Ahhh... the internet. I can see we must have a pretty young crowd here... and not from Detroit, either. And I don't mean the Detroit of today, but the Detroit of Packard's era.

No idea how the name "Brown Bomber" got morphed over to the Ed Macauley car, or how the Detroit press supposedly applied it to a car, but the real Brown Bomber was a good family friend and came to visit a number of times. He also once owned a large ranch and farm in Michigan not far from what is now known as Rochester. He was boxing champion, Joe Louis-not a car. And I assure you, Joe wasn't in the bathroom when he got that moniker... from the Detroit and world press. He was in the ring. And with all due respect to Ed Macauley and his car, I can assure you that Joe had one whole lot more celebrity-spread a lot farther around the globe than this ever-morphing car. The arena next to Cobo Hall in Detroit is? Joe Louis Arena. How many arenas are named after the car?

Joe later became part owner and host of a short-lived ultra-modern (for 1955-56) new Las Vegas casino where my dad and uncle were involved in the business. It was called the "Moulin Rouge" and was the very first integrated casino/hotel in Las Vegas. It was famous enough to feature top entertainment and even made the cover of Life magazine. The fave meals in the restaurant (I still have my menus) were "Two-fisted Champburgers" and "Champsteak." And by the way-Joe loved Cadillacs and Packards. Ask me how I know.

Watch the pages of upcoming The Packard Cormorant magazine for an article on "brown" and Mr. Macauley.

As for the DeVille style roof with Landau Bars on the exterior... like it or not on the Macauley car... a similar roof on Dutch Darrin's Kaiser Darrin created a sensation with it debuted... and this was years later. Why was it bad on the Packard, but "good" on the Kaiser-Darrin? Should I mention it was also considered "good" design feature on late 1940s Jaguar 3-position drophead coupe? The girls sure liked them!

As for Predictor... Ohhhhhh! Another time when we can safely say, "Ya had to be there." Whether anyone today can look back kindly on Predictor or not, the facts are it was one of the most imitated dream cars ever... AND it was the most popular car shown at the Chicago Auto Show when it debuted... and Chicago was one of the nation's more premier car shows back then. When a retrospect story appeared in 1978 in a magazine, I can assure you that of all the cars in that story, Predictor drew the most mail from fans... and I mean... a lot of it! So dislike it if you will in 2016... but in 1956 it was a different story. Today, Predictor and dream cars like it are either... ya get it... or ya don't. But that still doesn't change the facts.

Joseph Louis Barrow (May 13, 1914 - April 12, 1981), best known as Joe Louis, was an American professional boxer. He held the world heavyweight from 1937 to 1949, and is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time. Nicknamed the "Brown Bomber", Louis helped elevate boxing from a decline in popularity in the post-Jack Dempsey era by establishing a reputation as an honest, hardworking fighter at a time when the sport was dominated by gambling interests. ...

Hi

The transition from separate body and fenders to full envelope configuration was a styling minefield. A company was just as likely to present a dud as a hit. That Ed Macauley didn't navigate it well, selected themes which aged quickly or were less than appealing, he wasn't alone.
As cited, the through-fender, fuselage configuration, which reflected the general styling trend proposals seen during the war years, were followed by all the independent carmakers and Ford Motor Company. More incremental approaches were practiced by GM with vestigial rear fenders and Chrysler actually retaining them as separate entities.

What will surprise many is Cadillac actually flirted with the full-fuselage treatment. The video is of a GM film made after production was in place for comparison of the 1947 and 1948 Cadillacs, a 1948 Hudson and the running prototype Cadillac C.O. (Commissioned Officer):

youtube.com/watch?v=gbmPrYhwsCA

In the discussion found in A Century of Automotive Style: 100 Years of American Car Design by Michael Lamm and Dave Holls, page 110:

"Before that, though, while Hershey was interim head of the Cadillac studio, he'd designed what came to be called the "Cadillac C.O." The C.O. was very much an expression of what GM had envisioned a postwar car to be: rounded, high, fat beltline, pontoon fenders, wraparound windshield, coved headlights. In 1946, Cadillac made a running metal prototype of the C.O. and tested it at the GM proving grounds near Milford, Michigan. While the C.O. performed well, Harley Earl and the Cadillac people weren't at all taken with the styling. What Earl didn't like was the high beltline. It made the body look overweight and bulky. According to Bill Mitchell as interviewed by C. Edson Armi, Earl came in one day and said, "To hell with that big, blown-up, thing [meaning the C.O.]." and he started in a totally different direction. "If he [Earl] saw something wasn't going," Mitchell told Armi, "he wasn't a diehard."

At some point, Ed Macauley stood at the same crossroads as Earl when it came to the Clipper restyle being prepared for their new 1948 line. His experience as head of Packard styling, his familiarity with industry trends, and his taste (or lack hereof) lead not only to the various 'Brown Bomber' styling iterations but also the decision to approve the proposed 1948 restyle developed in conjunction with Briggs. If he couldn't recognized the doughy, poorly-defined fender-lines of his 'Brown Bomber' giving a bottom-heavy look, then the Briggs styling clay which had that feature equally poorly-defined, certainly looked acceptable.
What Earl realized was owing to the relatively tall section height, in order to avoid the bottom-heavy, bulky look, one had to establish something of a visual ladder with long horizontals to relieve that undesirable affect. Although the approach wasn't as progressive as the full-straight-through-fuselage, it produced a very appealing look in the interim, one which also aged well.

Of the 'Brown Bomber' project itself, one wonders why Macauley didn't leave it as the Darrin it was, simply select a 20th Series Custom Super Eight Club Sedan as basis for his styling experiments? Who knows, maybe the results would have been much better....

Steve