(EXPANDED FROM 12/18/2020)
The 1956 Packard Executive has received a recent boomlet of attention by automotive historians. In a Hemmings Classic Car column, Patrick Foster (2021) suggested that this model could have “saved Packard” if it had been introduced a year or so earlier. Meanwhile, Bill McGuire (2020) over at Mac’s Motor City Garage questioned the wisdom of the Executive, which served to blur the already thin line between the Packard and its fledgling junior brand, the Clipper.
So what was going on here? Let’s start by laying out the facts as we know them. The Executive was introduced in March of 1956 in four-door sedan and two-door hardtop body styles. The Clipper Custom was simultaneously discontinued.
For around $400 more than the Custom, the Executive offered Packard rather than Clipper badging, a fancier front end, and slightly revised side trim. Almost everything else about the car was copied from the Custom. This included interior trim, a shorter wheelbase and a smaller V8.
Adding a mid-level series that mashed together the features of a brand’s lower-end and upper-end models would not typically raise eyebrows. However, for 1956 the Clipper had been upgraded from a series to a brand. The plan was for the Clipper to be further distinguished from the Packard when both were slated to be redesigned in 1957. Of course, that didn’t happen because Studebaker-Packard Corporation couldn’t secure funding for its ambitious expansion efforts (go here for further discussion).
Packard came up with a new way to fill a price gap
Foster argued that bringing out the Executive was a good move because it helped fill a major price gap. For 1955, the senior Packards were roughly $1,000 higher priced than the Clipper Custom.
The problem, according to Foster (2021), was that the automaker’s president James Nance “waited too long” to separate the Clipper and Packard brands and introduce the Executive. “If he’d done it in 1955 or, better yet, 1954, it might have made all the difference in the world.”
We will discuss whether the Clipper should have been made a separate brand at the end of this story, but first let’s discuss the Executive.
Foster didn’t mention that Packard was already competing in the Executive’s price class with the 300 in 1951-52 and the Cavalier in 1953-54. Like the Executive, these models were positioned between the top-end Patrician and lower-level models (the 200 in 1951-52 and the Clipper in 1953-56).
Also see ‘Five (arguably) unresolved mysteries of postwar independent automakers’
Packard only offered the 300 and Cavalier in a four-door sedan body style. So to follow Foster’s line of thinking, in 1954 Nance could have added a two-door hardtop that fit between the top-end Pacific and low-end Clipper Panama. That was pretty unlikely to have increased sales more than incrementally.
Foster’s complaint was essentially that Packard did not field any models in the Executive’s price class during the 1955 model year and the first half of 1956.
A key point to remember is that the 300 and Cavalier represented a meaningful step up from lower-end Packards because they had the senior Packard’s longer, 127-inch wheelbase and fancier sheetmetal. In other words, they were decontented Patricians.
In contrast, the Executive was a Clipper with Packard badges and the front end of the Patrician. This underlines McGuire’s (2020) point that the Executive “worked at cross purposes” with the strategy “to market Packard and Clipper as distinctly separate makes. As a Packard/Clipper hybrid, the Executive only blurred the distinction.”
Why wasn’t the Executive based on the senior Packard?
If a Packard/Clipper hybrid undercut Nance’s lofty plans for distinguishing the two brands, why did he go in this direction? It would have been just as easy to decontent a senior Packard.
Also see ‘The 1955 Packard’s styling was an evolutionary dead end’
In addition, an Executive based on the senior Packard would not have confronted shoppers with the prospect of paying $400 more for a car that was very similar to the just-discontinued Clipper Custom, which presumably still populated dealer lots due to slow sales.
For 1956, Custom production fell by almost 77 percent — more than any other Packard or Clipper series. In contrast, the Clipper Deluxe and Super models saw output decline only 36 percent.
Meanwhile, senior Packard production dropped by roughly 55 percent when you do not include the Executive and almost 39 percent when you do.
Of course, the Clipper Custom’s output was constrained by its mid-year demise. What is most noteworthy was that Executive production surpassed 2,800 units. This was only 780 units less than the Clipper Custom despite the Executive’s significantly higher list prices.
Foster was right that the Executive’s price point was a good one for Packard. The 300 and Cavalier usually outsold the Patrician by a roughly three-to-two margin. Abandoning this market niche did not prove to be a smart move.
Did Nance begin to question Packard’s strategy?
George Hamlin and Dwight Heinmuller (2002) noted that bringing out the Executive was a return to the idea of “‘selling the Packard name’ on a cheaper car, an idea that had worked in 1935 but which Nance himself had said was ‘bleeding the Packard name white’ in 1952.”
At first glance that sounds bad, but Nance apparently came to realize that Packard was unlikely to generate sufficient sales if it was restricted to the luxury car field. The Executive returned the brand to competing against high-end, premium-priced cars such as the Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight and the Buick Roadmaster.
The most intriguing aspect of the Executive was that Nance reportedly intended to keep the nameplate as the entry-level Packard if he had succeeded in obtaining funding for a dramatic redesign in 1957 (Wikipedia, 2020).
Maintaining a foothold in the upper reaches of the premium-priced class could have made Packard look less prestigious than the Big Three’s luxury brands. Even so, generating adequate sales was of heightened importance because the proposed Packard redesign would have no longer shared a significant amount of sheetmetal with the Clipper.
Also see ‘1955 Packard Request: Retro styling doesn’t always work’
In a very real sense, the Packard would have had to pay its own way rather than continue to be subsidized by higher-volume Clipper models.
The Executive thus represented one of the few instances where Nance retrenched, which he was generally hesitant to do (go here for further discussion).
The Executive was indeed too little, too late
McGuire (2020) concluded that the introduction of the Executive “brings to mind the familiar trope about rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ocean liner.” That makes a certain amount of sense when you consider how the decision to introduce the series in mid-year was made when Packard’s future prospects were collapsing.
Nance’s timing was terrible. Foster was right that the Packard should have offered models in the Executive’s price class back in 1955. One could reasonably argue (as Geeber has in the comments below) that doing so would have been less impactful than you might normally assume because production for much of that model year was constrained by a problem-plagued switch to a new assembly plant.
That said, a sedan and hardtop in the Executive’s price class might have been at least a wee bit helpful after production issues were ironed out well enough to begin meeting demand in late spring of 1955 (Ward, 1995).
The Executive could have been more important in the first half of the 1956 model year. This is partly because the Clipper got off to such a weak start as a separate brand. That can be seen in unusually slow sales compared to senior Packards. The Clipper represented only 64 percent of total output, which was almost 10 percent below 1954. Perhaps most embarrassingly, a customer backlash resulted in Packard script returning to the deck of the Clipper (Hamlin and Heinmuller, 2002).
The collapse of lower-priced models doomed Packard
Auto historians’ focus on the Executive ignores a much bigger issue: The collapse in sales of Packard’s lower-priced Clipper models. To give you a sense of how badly this hurt the automaker, if you combine Clipper output in 1955 and 1956, it still fell well short of 1953’s total of almost 64,000 units. Senior Packard sales didn’t come anywhere close to making up for this deficit. And if the past was any indication, offering models in the Executive’s price class in 1955 and the first half of 1956 would not have saved the day.
Also see ‘Would Hudson have been Packard’s best merger partner?’
Why did Clipper sales collapse? Historians have pointed to a variety of factors, such as massive quality-control problems in 1955 and media reports about Packard’s mounting financial difficulties. I would add to that list Nance’s focus on reentering the luxury car field in 1955-56, which served to overshadow the Clipper. This was a rather different emphasis than in 1951, when lower-priced models pushed Packard output above 100,000 units. The brand would never reach that level again.
The final nail in the coffin was making the Clipper a separate brand. I would argue that this was never a viable option. In a decade when even the mighty Ford Motor Company failed to establish the Edsel as a new premium-priced brand, the idea that tiny Packard could have done so is absurd. The automaker simply didn’t possess the economies of scale to adequately differentiate the Clipper and Packard.
If Foster (2021) is going to argue that Nance “waited too long” to make the Clipper a separate brand, then he needs to explain how different timing could have penciled out much better.
NOTES:
This is an expanded version of an article originally posted on Dec. 18, 2020. Production figures and list prices are from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006) and Gunnell (2002). The list price graph does not include station wagons and limited-production halo cars; 1956 prices include both the Clipper Custom and Packard Executive. In a previous Mac’s Motor City Garage post, McGuire (2017) shared a television commercial about the 1956 Packard Executive. The banner image is from this commercial.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, Ill.
- Gunnell, John; 2002.Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Foster, Patrick; 2021. “The Executive might have helped save Packard. There’s a good reason why it didn’t.” Hemmings Classic Car. Published in January issue.
- 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.
- McGuire, Bill; 2017. “Video: Selling the 1956 Packard Executive.” Mac’s Motor City Garage. Posted Feb. 2.
- ——; 2020. “Death Rattle on Conner Avenue: The 1956 Packard Executive.” Mac’s Motor City Garage. Posted Dec. 12.
- Ward, James A.; 1995. The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.
- Wikipedia; 2020. “Packard Executive.” Page last modified Sept. 6.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- http://ads.aacalibrary.org (Antique Automobile Club of America): Packard (1956)
- wildaboutcarsonline.com (Automotive History Preservation Society): Packard (1955)
- oldcaradvertising.com: Packard (1951)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Packard (1951, 1954, 1956)
The Executive of 1956 was merely a stepping stone model which was to be continued as THE entry level Packard brand for the all new 1957’s. There are existing mock up photo’s of this model with the all new body for 57. Packard sold every Executive it could build, and it is a shame it could not have been introduced in 55. I doubt a 54 would have made that much difference. The 56 model gave Packard a very good looking car, comparable to a high end Mercury, or in those days a Lincoln.
Packard’s fatal mistake was building taxi’s in 48-50 series, completely abolishing any semblance of a luxury brand, and further eroding it in 51 with a car that looked so cheap it compared to Studebaker’s 58 entry, the Scotsman. I am talking about the 200, which should never have carried the Packard name, NOT EVER. Can anyone imagine such a Cadillac?
Nance tried valiantly to correct these missteps, but they were probably unforgettable to the general public, as we are even now talking about it. Packard should have survived, and the saying it was “the car we couldn’t afford to lose” still rings true.
Neil, thank you for the information on the Executive. Somewhere in the past I thought I had seen reference to an Executive on the proposed 1957 models, but I couldn’t find documentation when I was writing this story.
The meta question that swirls around the post-war Packard is how could the automaker have best generated adequate volume. As a case in point, Nance arguably made a mistake in 1955 by discontinuing the Cavalier, which was positioned similarly to the 1956 1/2 Executive. My guess is that he didn’t want to undercut the senior Packard’s cachet, but in the process he lost important volume.
The 1951-56 production graph suggests to me that the biggest reason why Packard output collapsed in 1954-56 was because of the weakness of its lower-priced entries. Was it realistic for Packard to have made up that lost volume with its more expensive entries?
An American car company had not been able to rely solely on the luxury market since the early 1930s. Pierce-Arrow tried to do so, and was out of business by 1938. Lincoln and Cadillac only survived because they were divisions of a large parent corporation, and even they had to move down market (by different degrees). That is why Packard brought out the 120 in the first place.
The real problem here was that Packard was trying to cover three segments – mid-medium price, upper-medium price and luxury – with one basic body sold under the same parent brand. GM had Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac, which in those days featured distinctive exterior sheet metal applied to two basic bodies (B and C) and division-specific engines. Nobody mistook an Oldsmobile 88 for a Cadillac Series 62. Packard tried as best it could to distinguish the Clipper from the Packard – particularly after 1954 – but the public most likely saw them as the same car sold with different trim levels. The Executive didn’t solve that core challenge.
Even before the sales collapse of 1954 and merger with Studebaker, Packard didn’t have enough money to making meaningful distinctions between the medium-price and luxury-class Packards. It was struggling to find the money just to pay for a modern OHV V-8. That was before the disastrous merger with Studebaker and the sale of its sole body supplier – Briggs – to Chrysler Corporation.
Having an Executive-class car for 1955 would not have solved that underlying competitive weakness – particularly since Packard initially couldn’t even meet the demand for what it was selling, given the difficulties it was experiencing with its Conner Avenue plant.
Agreed. One point I’d add is that when Nance did finally make the Clipper a separate brand in 1956, some customers reportedly demanded Packard insignias on their cars. I also suspect that the Packard Executive sold so well relative to the discontinued Clipper Custom because the Packard name had more status.
I don’t think that Nance understood how difficult it would be to establish a new brand name in the premium-priced class — particularly given Packard’s meager resources relative to its Big Three competitors. He might have been better off buying Hudson, although the new combine would have still struggled to give each brand adequate distinctiveness (much like AMC did when Nash ended up buying Hudson).
Indeed, Packard’s most plausible way forward may very well have been what they tried to do in 1951 — focus on maximizing volume in the mid-medium-priced class while keeping a foothold in the upper-medium and luxury classes. Of course, that goes against the conventional wisdom embodied in many Packard histories, which lament Packard’s post-WWII retreat from the luxury class.
A recent example is Richard Langworth’s story in the Dec. 2021 Collectible Automobile magazine, where he concluded (p. 55): “After the war, when a company could sell anything on wheels, Packard could have reverted to type, rebuilding its reputation as a luxury automaker. Instead it pursued the lower-priced markets that had saved it in the Great Depression. One can understand the reasoning — but there was no Depression now, and soon those markets were engulfed by fierce competition.”
I have yet to see folks such as Langworth articulate how much volume Packard could have plausibly generated with such a strategy — particularly after the seller’s market cooled.
Packard’s survival arguably also depended on developing business relationships that would allow the automaker to field a price-competitive automatic transmission and V8 engine. Selling the Packard’s drivetrain to AMC beginning in 1955 was a step in the right direction, but it was too little, too late.
One of the Robert J. Neal books on Packard – I believe it is the one focusing on the 1948-50 models – contains a memo from a Packard executive written in the 1948-49 timeframe. The memo noted that, even if Packard managed to capture 100 percent of the luxury market, it would not be enough to keep Packard profitable.
Thank you for the reference; I’m adding this book to my “to-get” list.
It’s a good book. I also recommend his book on the 1951-54 models. Unfortunately, Mr. Neal has passed away. He never wrote a book on the 1955-56 models.
” Packard tried as best it could to distinguish the Clipper from the Packard – particularly after 1954 – but the public most likely saw them as the same car sold with different trim levels” Usually by grafting last years taillights on the body. In an era when all the independents were living a hand to mouth existence, this bit of cheapness just screams “We’re in trouble”. The real theme of all these articles is “how could Packard have remained a viable marque well past the 50s?” To answer that, you have to go back into the 20s and 30s. Packard then was a player in marine and aircraft engines, and during WWII license built Rolls Royce’s Merlin aircraft engine, redesigning it to SAE standards. They had the know how and the background. If they remained a player in aero engines in the late 30s and on, with their own designs they could have become a major aerospace manufacturer like (wait for it) Rolls Royce with enough funds to keep Packard going, and maybe coming out with a modern OHV V-8 in 48 or 49, not in 55 when it was too late.
I’m curious about 3 things:
1) How confusing was it for buyers that series names changed so much from 1951-54? It seems to me Cadillac was very consistent in this period with their Series 61, 62 and 60 Special. Did the lack of continuous series nameplates further damage prospects for 1955?
2) What was Packard print advertising like from 1951-56? Cadillac had memorable ads but I am not familiar enough with Packard’s to know. Other than the ads featured in the article, was there a consistent theme that Packard promoted? I saw the tag line in the Executive coupe ad from the article, where it said “Ask the man who owns the NEW one” and that struck me as akin to “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile”.
3) How deliberate was Chrysler’s purchase of Briggs? They surely knew it would hurt Packard. How much notice did Packard have of the impending sale? It wasn’t long after that Chrysler went on to create Imperial as a brand, ironically, and of course, that never was the success Chrysler hoped for.
CJ, you raise a good question about changing nameplates. Packard had a habit of redoing its nomenclature every two years. My own bias is that it is typically better to improve one’s products than to change their names, which — as you point out — can create confusion. The new names for 1951 seemed to have been primarily designed to highlight an expanded lineup and a much more modern design. Then Nance came in and revived the Clipper name with an eye toward eventually spinning it off as a separate brand. I can’t imagine that it helped the sales of Packard’s high-priced two-door hardtops when their names were changed so frequently.
Regarding advertising, I’ve included a number of ads in the above story that give at least a small flavor for Packard’s approach. Nance apparently wasn’t very happy with the advertising campaigns . . . but it’s always easy to blame the ad agency when sales are tanking. The general tone of the campaigns evolves over time, e.g., the 1954 brochure has a rather stately but old-fashioned quality whereas the 1955 brochure looks trendy (and shouts about the “New Packard”). A specific story on Packard’s post-war literature would be interesting.
Regarding Briggs, according to Wikipedia, Walter Briggs died in January 1952 and Chrysler bought his firm in December 1953. Packard wasn’t the only automaker impacted; so were Ford’s European operations. Chrysler ended up leasing to Packard the Conner Ave. plant that Briggs had used to make Packard bodies. That wasn’t the problem, but rather that Nance decided to also move the final assembly of Packards to Conner. This proved to be a huge mistake — and it belonged to Nance rather than Chrysler.
Some historians have bestowed Nance with a get-out-of-jail-free card under the assumption that he was given bad advice. I don’t because it showed Nance’s terrible judgment on one of the important aspects of managing an automaker. Of all the mistakes he made, this may have very well been the biggest.
If, for example, Nance had leased the Briggs plant to continue producing bodies but kept final assembly at the Grand Boulevard plant, Packard could have produced considerably more cars in 1955 with a lot fewer reputation-damaging assembly defects. That could have translated into the Packard Division generating a healthy profit in 1955 and less of a downturn in 1956 sales due to bad publicity about Packard’s quality problems (go here for further discussion).
Does the tombstone of James J. Nance have an epitaph that reads: “The Hotshot Hotpoint salesman who had major role in tanking Packard and sealed the deal on the Edsel!”?
Agreed. You did get me wondering: Was there anything that could have been done to save the Edsel after the dismal 1958 launch? For example, might it have made more sense to move Mercury back down to its traditional role of competing against the Pontiac and more narrowly focus the Edsel on its higher-priced models (the Corsair and Citation)? Trying to turn the Mercury into an upper-premium brand seems like such an uphill climb.