Ralph Kalal’s take on Packard raises useful questions but can be dogmatic

If you are inclined toward nuanced shades of gray, you may be frustrated by Ralph Kalal’s stark, white-and-black take on Packard’s decline. That essentially forces the reader to decide: Which side are you on? I don’t find that to be a satisfying choice.

For example, Kalal (2023a) declares that Jay Leno was wrong to argue in an Octane magazine column that “one of the final nails in the coffin [of Packard] was bringing in James Nance – a man with absolutely no experience of automobiles who came from a background of selling appliances.” In fact, says Kalal, “Nance didn’t kill Packard. He saved the company, even though he couldn’t save the brand.”

That narrative has a similar tone to Stuart R. Blond’s contention that Nance didn’t put Packard “out of business,” but rather that “they just stopped manufacturing automobiles” (2021, Vol. 1; p. 64).

That’s technically true, but so what? Even if Packard had stayed independent and subsequently gone bankrupt, there’s a reasonable chance that it would have been absorbed by someone.

At least Blond’s narrative is grounded in an abundance of factual details. In contrast, Kalal can be thin in backing up some of his key contentions. For example, he states that a tie up with Studebaker was “Packard’s only chance. . . . If it did not combine with Studebaker, Packard would be bankrupt – probably within the year” (2023c).

I can appreciate the rhetorical value of presenting a simple binary choice, but it goes against research by other automotive historians. For example, James Ward (1995) documented attempts by Nash-Kelvinator CEO George Mason to draw Packard into a merger. And Patrick Foster has argued that Mason’s successor, George Romney, “was in full agreement with Mason’s ideas” (2017, p. 124).

If Kalal does not think that joining American Motors was a real option, it would help his argument to explain why rather than ignore this obvious alternative.

Kalal rejects criticisms of Packard going downmarket

Kalal (2020) strikes me as being on safer ground when arguing in another essay that Foster (2020) was wrong to say that “Packard’s problems began when the company moved into the medium-price bracket in 1935.  .  .  The new cars sold like hotcakes, but, because the company didn’t create a separate marque name for its lower priced cars, the Packard brand was devalued.”  

Variations on Foster’s narrative have been repeated so often that it has become a truism in U.S. auto history circles. Yet Kalal (2020) quite rightly challenges it by noting how all of the surviving luxury brands went downmarket in the 1930s.

Also see ‘Did African-American car buyers save Cadillac in the 1930s?’

Cadillac even followed in Packard’s footsteps by killing its LaSalle junior brand in favor of a lower-priced Sixty-One series. Just as significantly, “the cars they would build in the 1950’s were direct descendants of those pre-war lower priced models.”

I would add that Cadillac didn’t start to seriously challenge Packard in sales until 1941, after it had discontinued the LaSalle.

The graph below shows how the introduction of the Packard One-Twenty in 1935 and six-cylinder models two years later transformed the automaker into a mass-market producer, with output almost reaching 123,000 units in 1937.

By that point production of Packard’s “senior” models had fallen to under 6,000 units per year. On the graph below you can barely see the output of top-end Twelve models because only 1,300 were produced in 1937.

Should Packard have killed its luxury models earlier?

Kalal (2020) goes on to offer an even more provocative idea — that the seeds of Packard’s demise were planted when it waited too long to ditch its lineup of money-losing, custom-built luxury cars. This is a key reason why the automaker did not have the capital needed to keep up with the Big Three after World War II.

Where Kalal (2020) steers closer to conventional wisdom is in arguing that after the war ended, Packard focused on maximizing volume with lower-priced cars “even though Packard could have sold as many expensive cars as it could produce and, had it done so, would have realized higher profits per car.” This is similar to Richard M. Langworth’s take. He argued that “Packard could have reverted to type, rebuilding its reputation as a luxury automaker” (2021, p. 55).

Also see ‘Lincoln Zephyr was a first step in Ford surpassing Chrysler’

That idea sounds good in the abstract, but I have yet to see anyone articulate how that would have been a sustainable strategy for such a small automaker in the postwar period. The closest that Langworth gets to explaining how is to point to Nance’s goal of making Packard the luxury brand of a larger automaker.

Kalal is squishier on this point, but he notes that Nance’s attempt to move Packard back into the luxury-car field was made more challenging because the automaker would still be dependent on premium-priced cars to achieve adequate volume.

Kalal doesn’t address one of Nance’s biggest mistakes

All in all, Kalal makes a useful contribution to Packard history by shining a light on management’s questionable decisions about its capital spending. He also does a good job of sketching how the auto industry — and American society — were changing before and after the war. His criticisms of Packard’s early postwar decisions strike me as reasonable but I think that he goes too easy on Nance.

As a case in point, shifting production to the Conner Ave. plant in 1955 was a huge — and arguably fatal — mistake. That cost a chunk of money that Packard couldn’t afford to spend, it restricted production during a crucial time period and it led to quality-control problems that undercut Packard’s reputation.

Also see ‘Did the 1956 Packard Executive represent a strategic shift?’

I would go as far as to suggest that if Nance could have magically gone back in time and changed one decision, he should have kept the final assembly of Packards at the existing East Grand Boulevard plant. That could have helped to keep Packard’s financial situation from spiraling out of control in 1956.

Here we have an example of why it mattered that Nance didn’t have prior background in the auto industry. Kalal is quite harsh in his criticism of Nance predecessor George Christopher, but I doubt he would have made the same mistake because of his manufacturing expertise.

My punchline: Packard’s decline is a more nuanced story than Kalal would apparently like for us to believe.

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RE:SOURCES

• Blond, Stuart R.; 2021. Spellbinder: The Life of James J. Nance — Volume One, 1900-1954; Volume Two, 1955-1984. Kindle Direct Publishing.
• Foster, Patrick R.;  2017. George Romney: An American Life. Waldorf Publishing, Grapevine, TX.
• ——; 2021. “The Executive might have helped save Packard. There’s a good reason why it didn’t.” Hemmings Classic Car. Published in January issue.
• Kalal, Ralph; 2020. “Pat Foster and the myths of Packard’s demise.” Automobile Chronicles. Posted Nov. 30.
• ——; 2023a. “Why Jay Leno is wrong about James Nance and Packard — Part One.” Automobile Chronicles. Posted March 26.
• ——; 2023b. “Why Jay Leno is wrong about James Nance and Packard — Part Two.” Automobile Chronicles. Posted March 26.
• ——; 2023c. “Why Jay Leno is wrong about James Nance and Packard — Part Three.” Automobile Chronicles. Posted March 26.
• Langworth, Richard M.; 2021. “1951 ‘Senior’ Packards: The Song was Over But the Melogy Lingered On.” Collectible Automobile. December issue: pp. 46-57.
• Ward, James A.; 1995. The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.