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If Ford would have put a little fur around that horse collar grille they might have sold more to the male and lesbian segment....

"driving a urinal"

I agree Teague did well with what he was given and what he was told to do within a limited budget, and the proposed vertical grill was far handsomer than Edsel's, though it was incongrous with the overall design imo. The Request might have made serious sales inroads. And while almost universally acknowledged by auto designers nowadays as mobile works of art, quite unlike the clownish fins of, say, the 59 Caddy, or the gaudy kitsch-wagons of Olds and Buick, the '57-8 Chrysler and DeSoto with full frame did have poor body integrity in hardtop form...we have a '58 DeSoto Sportsman 4 dr hardtop, leaks, rattles and all. However, this was not at all true of the UniBody 1960 and later Mopars, they were far better in torsional rigidity and body strength than any body & frame Ford and GM product, a fact easily confirmed by reading auto reviews of the time.

I agree that the Packards were built and engineered way better than the average car for the time. My 48 steers, stops, and handles bumpy roads much better than my 59 Edsel.
While the 58 Edsel went too far in styling, I thought the 59 was just right. Compared to most, the 59 Edsel was one of the more conservative cars. Just look at a 59 Buick! Yuck!

They weren't gaudy enough. Look at the 57 Chryslers that broke all sales records, or the 57 Cadillacs and Mercuries that were their main competitors.

I mention Chrysler, Cadillac and Mercury specifically because they were best sellers that year and they were the gaudiest cars on the market.

Olds and Buick had a more conservative style with small tailfins or no tailfins at all and they suffered sales losses that year.

In 1958 high priced cars were not selling at all except for the new 4 seater Thunderbird. It resembled Buck Rogers in a top hat and outsold the previous Tbird handily.

The proposed Packards resembled the Mercury silhouette but with much more restrained detailing.

If they had gone hog wild on chrome, fins, 3 tone paint jobs and 4 headlights they might have had something that would sell.

Maybe it's just me, but that proposed 400 looks like a '58-'60 Lincoln with an Edsel grille grafted onto to its front fenders. Given the sales flops that both of those cars were for FoMoCo, I can't imagine that a vehicle sharing similar styling themes would have done any better with Packard emblazoned across its hood.

Aesthetics notwithstanding, it's unlikely that it, the proposed Clipper or anything else S-P could have fielded in the mid-price segment would have sold well given the economic recession that was rearing its ugly head in the late 50's. In fact, I would venture to say that that economic downturn played as much a part in swallowing up the Edsel as did the car's unusual styling, the media assault it faced, or its relatively high price. Remember, we lost DeSoto- another mid-price player- at the same time.

While it's nice to think about "what if," it's probably for the best that Packard ceased to exist by 1958. Whether sporting a vertical grille, a horizontal grille, or no grille at all, could anybody imagine a proud, innovative company like Packard building cars in an industry that today is essentially governed by actuarial tables and college mis-educated Federal bureaucrats?

I regret to say Scott G is right. By 1957 it was too late no matter what they did.

Sales were already falling for the whole industry in 1956 especially in the upper price brackets. The big sales sensations were the Rambler and Studebaker Lark in the late 50s and early 60s, not to mention economy imports like VW Beetle and Renault Dauphine. Followed by the compact Corvair Valiant and Falcon.

Then the next big fad was muscle cars in the mid to late 60s followed by the gas crisis 70s.

Cars of the Packard type were out of date and out of demand. Lincoln and Imperial never sold enough cars to keep the doors open, only the support of Ford and Chrysler kept them alive.

Packard might have made it but only by changing out of all recognition and only if they made their move starting in the early 50s.

if they had merged with Studebaker in 1950 or 51 and the combined company really moved in the right direction they might have stood a chance.

I know this is purely a matter of personal taste but I think JW is correct that if they had used a Request-type center grille it would have sufficiently differentiated itself from the Edsel and done considerably better. However, I think the grille should have been thinner and less heavy than the Request's, perhaps the size of the 41 and 42 grilles, or maybe the size of the 41-47 Clipper grilles. Some of the models for the 57 were done that way. If you will remember, Packards 41-50 had vertical grilles and horizontal elements. I think the flat surfaced chrome grille was too modern for the times and less reflected Packard tradition.

On the Ford and GM cars you could slam the door and not hear the glass rattle inside the door cavity for the next 3 seconds. Chrysler may have had structrual rigidity, but they were stamped in inferior presses that were purchased from GM when they were through with them, and the company had a prelidicition for steel that liked to rust, and fast. I know too many veterans of Chrysler's body building efforts, and have heard their stories firsthand. I am really chagrined that a late 60s Chrysler B-body muscle car is worth as much, if not more than some '32-'34 Packard 12 cars, some as much as Duesenbergs. Those muscle cars were some of the most marginal vehicles to be built. Walter Chrysler learned and knew that the race was won by the fastest, and that included production time, which was always a paramount concern at Chrysler. That, and they were totally green at body engineering prior to 1955-57, having farmed that work out to Briggs until it became absolutely necessary to take that on themselves. Then "the engineering company", a term that does apply to engines and trasmissions and chassis' proved how poorly equipped they were to integrate all areas of engineering of the complete package.

I loved the '55 Request grille from the moment I first saw it, but it would have been impractical anywhere outside the show circuit. By the time Larry Dopps rediscovered the show car in the 1970s, only two grill bars were left unbroken. I don't believe that was merely the result of abuse under previous drivers. Even if the one-off front bumpers had been made of stamped steel rather than cast bronze, they offered insufficient protection. Yet, I can't envision how they could have changed that without spoiling the long full look of that grille.

While the vertical element of the proposed '57 might seem large, take a look at the Predictor in profile, and you'll see the '57 proposal is actual a bit more subdued. If you can find a close up detail, you'll see that the top of that vertical element embodies the familiar ox-yoke shape, and I believe the familiar crest would have been placed just below.

While the Predictor has what some people here are now calling "basket handle" fins, I don't believe that exact detail ever appeared on the full-size clays of the proposed '57 Seniors or even "Black Bess". The leading edge of the fin on those cars had an embossed area gvies the appearance of it being scooped out, which could have been accomplished through in the stamping press. While I can't provide pix, there are a few in some of the better Packard books to support that position.

Meanwhile, I think Teague did a masterful job of working on a limited budget in everything he did. While I am not particularly a fan of AMC products, I think a lot of Teague's styling kept people coming into AMC showrooms and kept the company afloat a lot longer than they might have been otherwise. Look what happened after Renault got involved.