Stéphane Dumas has been displaying his broad knowledge of web-based sources of automotive history for quite a few years. As a case in point, back in 2015 Dumas posted a comment over at Hemmings that linked to a discussion about a proposed Packard based on the 1956-57 Lincoln platform.
A Studebaker Drivers Club discussion included a Richard Teague illustration of the proposed 1957 Packard (Golden Hawk Member, 2008). Aside from the roofline, which was taken directly from the Lincoln, the rest of the car displayed distinctive Packard styling cues.
(Indie Auto respects copyrights, so click here to see the discussion and sketch.)
The 1956 Packard Predictor show car hinted at major styling cues of the proposed 1957 production models, including an Edselesque grille and vertical taillights that were vaguely similar to the 1957 Chrysler’s (Old Car Brochures).
Historians are a little fuzzy about the scenarios
James Ward (1994) stated that Ford CEO Ernest Breech “encouraged” the idea of sharing bodies. That included Studebaker shifting to a Ford chassis.
Studebaker-Packard CEO James Nance also proposed that Ford buy the financially struggling automaker. Knowing that Ford was planning a new brand that fit between the Mercury and Lincoln, Nance pointed to the value of Packard’s dealer network. That idea was plausible but some of his others sound desperate in retrospect, such as naming the Edsel the Studebaker instead (1994, p. 222).
Henry Ford II was reportedly more interested in a merger than his underlings, “and they convinced him to pull back.” By April 1956 all “hopes about Ford, including being able to purchase Ford bodies, had been dashed” (1994, p. 222).
George Hamlin and Dwight Heinmuller also mentioned the idea of Packard using Lincoln bodies but stated that support from Henry Ford II “did not transcend to lower levels” of the company (2002; p. 613). Hamlin (2002) went on to describe how designs for both a Ford-based Studebaker and a Lincoln-based Packard were developed. Drawing upon Lincoln bodies was option three of eight considered by Studebaker-Packard management as late as April 1956. However, Hamlin stated that Ford ultimately declined to furnish bodies.
Meanwhile, Thomas E. Bonsall suggested that Ford offered to “discuss selling the current Lincoln body dies to Packard when Lincoln was through with them in the summer of 1957” (2000, p. 301). One scenario was that distinct bodies would be used for Packard, Studebaker and Clipper — the latter of which would have adopted the Mercury shell (Bonsall, 2002).
In his history of Studebaker, Bonsall did not explain how that brand would get access to a Ford body if it was being carried over for 1958. Nor did he offer an opinion as to why “nothing came of it” in either his Studebaker or Edsel histories (2002, p. 219).
A more recent book by Stuart R. Blond (2021) draws upon earlier sources but doesn’t shed much new light on why a body-sharing agreement fell through. My guess is that even if Ford had agreed to a deal, Studebaker-Packard might not have had the funds to implement it.
At any rate, why would it have made business sense for Ford to have shared its bodies with a direct competitor at the very moment when it was spending lavishly to make inroads in the premium and luxury car fields?
We could speculate as to whether Ford might have been more successful if it had purchased Packard (without Studebaker) rather than launching the Edsel. However, I could see why Ford might have decided that launching a new brand could have been a less complex undertaking than trying to absorb Packard.
In both 1956 and 1957 Lincoln emphasized the lower, longer, wider look of its cars, both in advertising copy as well as distorted photography. Click on each image to see full ad (Old Car Advertisements).
The 1956 Lincoln hints at the road not taken
The Lincoln proposal nevertheless points to an interesting direction for Packard if it had not imploded. Might the brand have better survived the late-50s if its body was relatively light and trim compared to its increasingly baroque competition? The 1956 Lincoln would have been a more reasonable size, particularly for the luxury field. Alas, the brand prematurely ditched this platform in favor of a much bigger one for 1958 (go here for further discussion).
Ford was clearly trying to stay ahead of its Big Three competition in the race to make bigger, glitzier and more powerful cars. While this can be seen most conspicuously in the luxury car field, it was also painfully apparent with premium-priced brands.
The 1958 Lincoln became the largest U.S. car — but sales were dismal. A top-end Premiere model was 6.5 inches longer, 454 pounds heavier and its engine had 93 more cubic inches than the equivalent 1951 model (Old Car Advertisements).
Buick — the most popular premium-priced brand of the 1950s — illustrates this trend. Between 1951 and 1959 Buick’s entry-level models grew almost a foot in length and more than 600 pounds. The base engine, in turn, increased from 263 to 364 cubic inches. Detroit groupthink assumed that this was what the public wanted. But was it?
Nope — at least not over the course of the decade. Buick production peaked in 1955, before its cars really bloated out. However, in the next four years Buick’s market share fell by more than half and production by a whopping 61 percent. The premium-priced field as a whole had a similar experience.
Packard’s core market collapsed in the late-50s
In 1951 premium brands made up 43 percent of the domestic market. That figure fell to 41 percent in 1955 and 27 percent in 1959. The time period when premium-priced cars grew most dramatically — 1956-59 — was also when market share fell off most steeply. The graph below uses the length of an entry-level Buick (the Special until 1959, when it became the LeSabre) as a representative example.
The 1956 Lincoln was roughly similar in size to its competitors when it was introduced. However, by 1959 it would have been meaningfully smaller than Cadillac, Imperial and — the biggest of them all — the 1958-60 Lincoln.
Studebaker-Packard appears to have been intent on playing follow the leader. The wheelbase for its original in-house redesign for 1957 was 130 inches for Packard, 125 inches for Clipper and 120 inches for Studebaker (Hamlin, 2002). These would have been above average for their respective fields in 1959.
The 1958 Buick Special was six inches longer, 636 pounds heavier and its engine had 101 more cubic inches than the equivalent 1951 model (Old Car Advertisements).
Let’s pretend that Studebaker-Packard had gained the funds to produce the in-house redesign of its premium-priced brands. By what logic would the Packard and Clipper have sold much better than their beleaguered competition, which saw a collective 49-percent drop in production between 1955 and 1959?
That represented a cataclysmic fall in output, from almost three million units in 1955 to just over 1.5 million in 1959.
In the 1955 model year, a total of 55,517 Packards and Clippers left the factory. That was well below the brand’s breakeven point of around 80,000 units (Ward, 1994). Packard could not afford additional sales declines — particularly if they were as precipitous as 49 percent, which would have resulted in production roughly as low as in 1956 — the dying year of Packard’s Detroit operations.
When enough is enough
In a thoughtful postmortem on the Edsel, Bonsall (2002) pointed out that a key moment in the brand’s unraveling was the introduction of the 1958 Ford Thunderbird. He focused on how the T-bird’s switch to unit-body construction dangerously undercut the economies of scale of Ford’s body-on-frame premium and luxury offerings, which included the Edsel.
This is an important point, but I would argue that an even more crucial one was the success of the Thunderbird. The 1958-60 model proved that the public would pay a premium price for a smaller car even in the depths of a recession. Indeed, the T-Bird was much more popular than the Edsel despite a smaller investment.
The 1958 Ford Thunderbird sold well against other nameplates at the top end of the premium-priced field despite its smaller size and minimal number of body styles (Old Car Advertisements).
Packard was far too tiny of an automaker to compete directly against the Big Three. The venerable brand’s only hope was to try something different. In the late-50s the most promising direction Packard could have taken was to offer an alternative to what AMC head George Romney called the “Dinosaur in the Driveway” (Hyde, 2009; p. 186).
At the very least, Packard could have held to the dimensions of its 1956 Clipper, which was under 215 inches long — eight inches shorter than a 1956 Lincoln. However, the most financially sustainable path could have been to abandon the full-sized market and shift Packard to a modernized Studebaker body.
That would have given Packard a more unique niche while greatly improving the brand’s economies of scale. It’s hard to see how Packard could have survived if it continued to build cars in a relatively low-volume plant that only produced premium-priced and luxury models.
Of course, this is similar to American Motors’ game plan. CEO George Romney bet the farm on a new-for-1956 Rambler that was compact on the outside but still fit six passengers. Although the full-sized Nash and Hudson were kept around for a few more years, in 1958 they were discontinued in favor of a Rambler-based Ambassador.
The 1958 Ambassador sold three times as many units as the aging, top-of-line Studebaker President even though it had a higher price range and lacked a typically popular two-door hardtop (Old Car Brochures).
The Ambassador hardly set the world on fire — annual production hovered around 20,000 in the late-50s and early-60s. That said, this was a perfunctory effort utilizing a rather utilitarian body.
The 1957 Packard Clipper sold almost 4,000 units — and generated a profit on a per-unit basis (Ebert, 2013). The sedan was priced at $3,212, which was $143 higher than a 1956 top-end Clipper Custom (Old Car Advertisements).
One could argue against this direction by pointing to the failure of the Studebaker-based, 1957-58 Packard. But to be fair, these were hastily contrived, badge-engineered and overpriced cars primarily designed to avoid lawsuits from Packard dealers that would have had no cars to sell if the brand had been discontinued at the end of the 1956 model year (Ebert, 2013).
To make matters worse, the Studebaker body was lacking in modern styling and compelling innovations, such as the Ambassador’s unit-body construction and fairly advanced air-conditioning.
Yet the basic idea of a downsized Packard was a sound one even if it went against the “bigger = better” groupthink of that time. A relatively compact car had the potential of a brighter future than even a Lincoln-based Packard, which arguably had little more hope of survival than the Edsel due to the dramatic contraction of the premium-priced, big-car field.
NOTES:
This story was originally posted on Aug. 15, 2015 and expanded on July 30, 2021 and April 4, 2024. Market share for brands are calculated from figures listed in Wikipedia (2013). Production figures for Clipper and Packard are from the Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975 (Gunnell, 2002). Dimensions are from the Classic Car Database (2014).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
Hamlin, George; 2002. “The Last of the Marque: The Fifty-Seventh and the Fifty Eighth Series, 1957-1958.” In Kimes, Beverly Rae, ed., pp. 622-634.Packard: A History of the Motor Car and the Company. Automotive Quarterly Publications.
Hamlin, George and Dwight Heinmuller; 2002. “The House Falls: The Fifty-Sixth Series, 1956.”In Kimes, Beverly Rae, ed., pp. 602-621. Packard: A History of the Motor Car and the Company. Automobile Quarterly Publications.
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11 Comments
It seems that Packard’s last real hope was a merger with Ford in 1954. For the 58 model year Ford was trying to move the Mercury upscale and shoehorn the Edsel into where the Merc used to be. On top of that, they hived off Continental into a separate marque, to really go head to head with Cadillac. Such a merger would be a win for Ford, and make their marketing easier. The 56-57 Packards could be badge engineered Lincolns like the Teague drawings. I imagine the Packard V8 could be dropped in it, maybe even the torsion suspension. If there is money and projected interest, a Clipper on tbe Merc platform, sharing as much sheet metal with Mercury as the customs of the day could take, with a tweaked V8. This is just for something for the dealers to sell until 1958 when the complete reorginization takes place. For is unchanged with the Custom on the 116 inch wheelbase, and the 118 in wb Fairlane. Mercury remains wbere it belongs, with tbe Fordish Montclair, and the Park Lane more Mercuryish on a longer wbeelbase. Now, Packard drops in next. A Clipper with a wheelbase somewhat shorter than the Park Lane, but witb a hefty engine. This is something to go against the Chrysler, Olds Starfire, etc. Imagine a Turnpike Cruiser with Predictor features. BTW, around this time Mercury briefly had a two door hardtop wagon, the Nomad/Safari fighter no one heard of. Sounds right up the Clipper’s alley. Ford went with two luxury boats in 58, the Lincoln and the higher priced Continental. Po tay to, Potahto. For the Patrician, adopt as much as you can from tbe Predictor, and use a T Bird platform to do a Caribbean. Lincoln would then position itself as a true Cadillac Fighter.
That’s an intriguing idea, Kim. The Packard name would have had more street credibility than the, um, Edsel. I could see Ford keeping James Nance in charge after purchasing Packard; he might have worked out a lot better with a larger automaker, where he would have meaningful resources to work with. The Predictor’s styling would have fit in quite well at Ford given its penchant for more squared-off styling and reverse-slanted rear windows.
“49-percent drop in production between 1955 and 1959?
In the 1955 model year, a total of 55,517 Packards and Clippers left the factory. Forty-nine percent of that total is only 27,203 units.”
Your math is terrible, here. A 49% drop means you’re left with 5!%, or 28,314 (28,313?).
You should note that the Rambler got a new restyling for 1958. The Ambassador photo looks wider than the Packard, even though the Packard was a painting. It kept some nice touches, like the old Hudson “V” in the grille. The Packard was clearly a badge engineered Studebaker on a four year old body, with sheet metal interchangeable with the Studebaker effing Scotsman. Neat. Ask the man who owns one what the hell he was thinking.
The 1958-1962 Rambler and Ambassador used the 1956 body shell with new fenders with trendy curve fins at the rear and dual headlights upfront, but the same unit
underbody. The 1961-1962 Rambler and Ambassador slightly modified its roofline, slimming down the “C”-pillar. In defense of Duncan McRae (1919-1984), whose 1956-1957 Presidents, sedans and wagons were vast improvements of the chrome snouts of the 1955s, when there is no money in the till, what else do you do ? The S-P’s board of directors could have shut the company down instead of borrowing from Curtiss-Wright after the bankers turned Nance and S-P down for loans to make new bodies for Packard and Studebaker, but I think the board members wanted to milk the company for what they could legally loot, while keeping the S.E.C. and the dealers “happy”.
Had Ford bought both Studebaker and Packard and use em as divisons (like Studebaker be above Ford but below Mercury and Packard be above Mercury but below Lincoln) instead of creating the Edsel divison as well as the Continental divison then Ford would’ve had a much better success in competing with GM and Chrysler with all of they’re 5 divisons, not only that but it would’ve at least take the stress off the Mercury brand as well.
I rather suspect that all the internal Ford naysayers had a strong personal reason to be against any Packard acquisition. The internal politics at Ford were known as the worst in Detroit and they did not want any new introduction of “outsiders” messing up their playing field. It is hard to imagine that the management level outsiders would have done well. Reinhart who was already at Ford after being at Packard was being ostracized even though he did the brilliant Mark II design.
Yet, the idea that Ford would have gotten more manufacturing capacity with the fairly modern assembly plant might have been enticing. Unmentioned/unknown is if the Packard plant was tooled in a way that would be a problem to manufacture the Ford products (sizes, tolerances, etc.). Still a full-on modern production plant on the cheap should have been an enticing thought. A dealer body might have been interesting too, if they were strong enough.
The one correct item is that Packard desperately needed a dance partner when no one particularly needed them.
Part of the missing narrative in the demise of Packard story is that Packard thought Studebaker had cash and other assets to bring to the merger in 1951-1952. Whoever was pouring over the financials before the merger with Studebaker, somebody badly misread them. Yes, 1954 was a bad year for Packard, but it was a disaster of epic proportions for Studebaker. Studebaker needed the dance partner worse than Packard. Packard then had Briggs go to Chrysler and had to absorb the tooling for the new V-8 AND the torsion-bar front and rear chassis suspensions.
The very early issues of “Collectible Automobile” covered the saga of the proposed 1957 Packards and Studebakers based upon the 1955-1956 Lincoln body shells. If Hank the Deuce was in favor of this, I imagine this would have been on the front-burner in 1955, as 1956 was the year of the Ford public offering, and the I.P.O. would have been the most important item on the Ford agenda. H.F.II would have wanted to do everything to maximize the Ford share price and with the 1957 Lincoln still based on the 1955-1956 body shell, giving the bodies to Studebaker-Packard might not have gone over very well at that time.
It seems that Packard’s last real hope was a merger with Ford in 1954. For the 58 model year Ford was trying to move the Mercury upscale and shoehorn the Edsel into where the Merc used to be. On top of that, they hived off Continental into a separate marque, to really go head to head with Cadillac. Such a merger would be a win for Ford, and make their marketing easier. The 56-57 Packards could be badge engineered Lincolns like the Teague drawings. I imagine the Packard V8 could be dropped in it, maybe even the torsion suspension. If there is money and projected interest, a Clipper on tbe Merc platform, sharing as much sheet metal with Mercury as the customs of the day could take, with a tweaked V8. This is just for something for the dealers to sell until 1958 when the complete reorginization takes place. For is unchanged with the Custom on the 116 inch wheelbase, and the 118 in wb Fairlane. Mercury remains wbere it belongs, with tbe Fordish Montclair, and the Park Lane more Mercuryish on a longer wbeelbase. Now, Packard drops in next. A Clipper with a wheelbase somewhat shorter than the Park Lane, but witb a hefty engine. This is something to go against the Chrysler, Olds Starfire, etc. Imagine a Turnpike Cruiser with Predictor features. BTW, around this time Mercury briefly had a two door hardtop wagon, the Nomad/Safari fighter no one heard of. Sounds right up the Clipper’s alley. Ford went with two luxury boats in 58, the Lincoln and the higher priced Continental. Po tay to, Potahto. For the Patrician, adopt as much as you can from tbe Predictor, and use a T Bird platform to do a Caribbean. Lincoln would then position itself as a true Cadillac Fighter.
That’s an intriguing idea, Kim. The Packard name would have had more street credibility than the, um, Edsel. I could see Ford keeping James Nance in charge after purchasing Packard; he might have worked out a lot better with a larger automaker, where he would have meaningful resources to work with. The Predictor’s styling would have fit in quite well at Ford given its penchant for more squared-off styling and reverse-slanted rear windows.
Exactly. Also, the vertical bumper theme would play a lot better than the horsecollar, I think.
“49-percent drop in production between 1955 and 1959?
In the 1955 model year, a total of 55,517 Packards and Clippers left the factory. Forty-nine percent of that total is only 27,203 units.”
Your math is terrible, here. A 49% drop means you’re left with 5!%, or 28,314 (28,313?).
Thank you for the heads up. I’ve fixed the error.
There.was.a.major.recession.in.1958.!..Mercury.bsrely.survived…How.Packard.make.a.go.of.it.?
You should note that the Rambler got a new restyling for 1958. The Ambassador photo looks wider than the Packard, even though the Packard was a painting. It kept some nice touches, like the old Hudson “V” in the grille. The Packard was clearly a badge engineered Studebaker on a four year old body, with sheet metal interchangeable with the Studebaker effing Scotsman. Neat. Ask the man who owns one what the hell he was thinking.
The 1958-1962 Rambler and Ambassador used the 1956 body shell with new fenders with trendy curve fins at the rear and dual headlights upfront, but the same unit
underbody. The 1961-1962 Rambler and Ambassador slightly modified its roofline, slimming down the “C”-pillar. In defense of Duncan McRae (1919-1984), whose 1956-1957 Presidents, sedans and wagons were vast improvements of the chrome snouts of the 1955s, when there is no money in the till, what else do you do ? The S-P’s board of directors could have shut the company down instead of borrowing from Curtiss-Wright after the bankers turned Nance and S-P down for loans to make new bodies for Packard and Studebaker, but I think the board members wanted to milk the company for what they could legally loot, while keeping the S.E.C. and the dealers “happy”.
Had Ford bought both Studebaker and Packard and use em as divisons (like Studebaker be above Ford but below Mercury and Packard be above Mercury but below Lincoln) instead of creating the Edsel divison as well as the Continental divison then Ford would’ve had a much better success in competing with GM and Chrysler with all of they’re 5 divisons, not only that but it would’ve at least take the stress off the Mercury brand as well.
I rather suspect that all the internal Ford naysayers had a strong personal reason to be against any Packard acquisition. The internal politics at Ford were known as the worst in Detroit and they did not want any new introduction of “outsiders” messing up their playing field. It is hard to imagine that the management level outsiders would have done well. Reinhart who was already at Ford after being at Packard was being ostracized even though he did the brilliant Mark II design.
Yet, the idea that Ford would have gotten more manufacturing capacity with the fairly modern assembly plant might have been enticing. Unmentioned/unknown is if the Packard plant was tooled in a way that would be a problem to manufacture the Ford products (sizes, tolerances, etc.). Still a full-on modern production plant on the cheap should have been an enticing thought. A dealer body might have been interesting too, if they were strong enough.
The one correct item is that Packard desperately needed a dance partner when no one particularly needed them.
Part of the missing narrative in the demise of Packard story is that Packard thought Studebaker had cash and other assets to bring to the merger in 1951-1952. Whoever was pouring over the financials before the merger with Studebaker, somebody badly misread them. Yes, 1954 was a bad year for Packard, but it was a disaster of epic proportions for Studebaker. Studebaker needed the dance partner worse than Packard. Packard then had Briggs go to Chrysler and had to absorb the tooling for the new V-8 AND the torsion-bar front and rear chassis suspensions.
The very early issues of “Collectible Automobile” covered the saga of the proposed 1957 Packards and Studebakers based upon the 1955-1956 Lincoln body shells. If Hank the Deuce was in favor of this, I imagine this would have been on the front-burner in 1955, as 1956 was the year of the Ford public offering, and the I.P.O. would have been the most important item on the Ford agenda. H.F.II would have wanted to do everything to maximize the Ford share price and with the 1957 Lincoln still based on the 1955-1956 body shell, giving the bodies to Studebaker-Packard might not have gone over very well at that time.