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When I was a kid, there was an olive green '49 Packard around town (I was born in '58 so it was an old car then). I later found out my Studebaker dealer friend (whom I didn't know then) drove it as it was a used car that came back to their dealership at least a couple times. Those 'bathtub' Packards are what I thought Packards were. I was never aware of any Packard newer than that in our town, until I met a kid in high school who was into the '55 and '56's. Although they look chubby to my eyes, and have a too-high beltline, again to my eyes, the '55-56 is certainly an effective facelift of the '51 body and I do truly believe the torsion-level ride beat everything in its class. Sadly, workmanship was not up to the marque and mechanical problems became prevalent and early.
http://www.packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/dealer/pics/php6uD4xP.jpg
Dr. Arby Bailey traded in a '55 Thunderbird for it. The Caribbean wouldn't go into reverse at the Cleveland Clinic when fairly new and my dealer friend and his lead mechanic had to go over at night and tow it home and drive the Doc home. Ironically, earlier, the car was shipped to Cleveland on a boat and they picked it up in Cleveland for the doctor--it was sitting in Packard's inventory in Detroit. The mechanic still says, "I got my first taste of frog legs on that trip to Cleveland". LOL
If I could find a reasonably-priced Ultramatic specialist in my town, and get one with bulletproof lifters (LOL), I could enjoy a '56 Scottish Heather (lightish red) and white Four Hundred Hardtop.
I always used to gently kid my high school friend who liked the V8 Packards, about how "lighter" was spelled "Liter" on the instrument panel switch of those cars.
I knew a guy who had a 51 Nash and he could slow almost to a complete stop in third gear, step on the gas and the Nash would pick up speed like it had an automatic.
I guess I only mean that unlike a stock-appearing Big Three most anything, the chances are way-better, with the low original production and the weeding-out of sixty years time since, plus add in that the owner in NC had it for sale in at least one large national hoidy-toidy auction, stranger things have happened.
The way I even found out the car sold in my hometown existed was pretty serendipitous. I saw the sale-day photos of the car, as the one I posted above, and heard about the car and the original owner, for years, as in our small hometown, selling a $6,000 car in 1956 was a big deal for my dealer friend. I was at Hershey, the enormous show one year, and got talking to a couple brothers from Youngstown, OH (about 25 or 30 miles away from my hometown) who were known as Packard experts nationally, and on their board of cars for sale I saw a pic of a '56 Caribbean. I mentioned the one sold in my hometown to Dr. Bailey. The one brother said, "Wait a minute...that sounds familiar...can I have your address and I'll confirm when we get home?". He did, and I heard from him--he had just sold the car to the guy from NC but the plaque on the dash said "Custom Made for A.L. Bailey, M.D.", plus the original paperwork in the glovebox confirmed the serial number and selling dealer....my friend. He sent me photocopies of both. My dealer-friend's signature was even the same all those years earlier. So you never know.
The Youngstown brothers had bought the car for $500 in 1975 in Orangeville, OH, maybe ten or twelve miles from my hometown of Greenville, PA, and treated it to a good restoration. So all those years it hadn't been very far away; my dealer friend and I never knew it. My friend remembered the Doc trading it on a new Cadillac a few years after purchase.
http://www.rmsothebys.com/am04/vintage-motor-cars-at-amelia-island/lots/1956-packard-caribbean-convertible/16468
My dealer friend and I have both chuckled at the reference to him being an "East coast dealer"--he was in a town of about 9,000 population then, ten or twelve miles east of the Ohio border.
Packard is interesting to analyze. I see them as filling the market position MB has held for the past 40 or so years in the US. Recent downmarket moves keep this parallel alive.
Here's a pretty and famous postwar Packard:
At one time, in the 1930s, Studebaker built some very luxurious, high priced cars. Their reputation in the 1930s wasn't like in the 1950s & 60s, when they were more the underdog.
The bathtub woodies are also interesting:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sjb4photos/7143686819
The car was built to fulfill a customer order for the dealer in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania. Instead, Studebaker saved the car and fulfilled the customer's order by taking a similar car in factory inventory and adding and deleting options.
The last Avanti was assembled (per the build sheet) on 12/26/63. They weren't built on a regular assembly line. This car is owned by the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum in Cleveland and here it was photographed in 2014 on the National Mall in Washington D.C. It's an R3 automatic
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/automobiles/the-note-in-the-trunk-of-the-last-studebaker-avanti.html?_r=0
The last U.S.-built Studebaker of all was a blue Diesel one-ton built on 12/27/63.
I'd bet a fifty that two things that would be heard are "Studebaker used Ford's 289 in these" and "they still build them in Canada".
1956 Studebaker Champion.
Love the exterior colors, but I'm not too crazy about that olive green looking color on the interior seat/door panel inserts. It just seems a bit clashy.
You sure won't win any stoplight races with that little flathead six. But they often won the Mobilgas Economy Run back in those days.
For some reason, I'm thinking I've seen that car before...not necessarily in an ad, but maybe at a national meet or something. I like that two-tone better than that zany two-toning the Presidents had that year.
I like how the '56's taillights sort-of resemble a flare.
I do like the low beltline on Studes of that era.
One might think the dealer would've closed the hood for the photos!
The '57 and '58 Scotsman were surprise sales successes for Studebaker, paving the way for the '59 Lark which made Studebaker its historical greatest-ever one-year profit in its 107-year history. They made a profit again in 1960, but with the market saturated with Big Three compacts...you know the rest. Part of it is my age, but I think the Studebaker products made for the '62 through '64 model years were the most imaginative in their history.
It's been ages since I've seen "Chico and the Man"...TVLand used to show it back around 2001-2002. But I seem to recall the Stude being a black 2-door sedan?
It's a shame that Studebaker waited until 1958 to come out with the Starlight hardtop coupe. I think they would have looked great with the '56-57 styling.
I could enjoy a '58 Studebaker President Hardtop. Even at a Stude national meet, they are a rare sight.
It is remarkable, though, that Studebaker hung on so long, with not a lot of product and non-competitive pricing. They pulled off a couple of neat tricks. But everyone in the auto business gave them long odds at the time. The shooting was really over by 1964 or so.
I think in hindsight Studebaker was actually a mistake for Packard--well obviously it was because look what happened.
Studebaker's high breakeven point, because of their overly generous labor contracts and many (but definitely not all) old factory buildings, hurt Packard for sure, but so did quality problems with Packard's V8 cars. Stude's sales were down 33% in '56, but Packard's were down "a thumping 67%" per Business Week. When the board came to make a decision, they picked Studebaker to save.
I saw a picture in the Packard Club magazine some years back, of the Conner Ave. plant in Detroit, which they leased, and where V8 Packards were built. It was so small, the pic showed employees' coats hanging overhead.
I go to South Bend each May for an annual weekend meet there, and every fifth year the international Studebaker Drivers' Club meet is there. I enjoy South Bend--it's the only place where everyone you encounter knows what a Studebaker is..LOL. I'd imagine Kenosha, WI is probably the same except for AMC's. Folks in restaurants and hotels in South Bend seem to be nice to Stude visitors, which is appreciated. The Stude Museum is a beautiful building and they have a bow window with a car on a turntable, which is floodlit at night. Gives a nice "showroom" feel when you drive by.
The National Packard Museum is only maybe 30 miles from where I live now. It's a nice building, but not in the same league as the Stude Museum IMHO. I know there's another Packard museum in Dayton, OH which I visited probably 25 years ago and enjoyed it too.
Yeah, I don't think Packard would have lasted too much longer but they might have made it to 1960 with a little luck.
The Independents were doomed anyway, even in 1946, although they couldn't know that at the time. The Big Three were the elephant in the room that no one in the "little 4" wanted to face. Even AMC, the best managed and probably best financed of them all, had to use Renault as a crutch to survive, and they too were gobbled up by the D3---but remarkably, not until the late 80s.
I think the '55-56 Packards are attractive looking cars, but the bodies seem a bit narrow and upright, and the beltline is kind of high, so to me that sort of betrays their "modern-ness", although the wraparound windshield does help them seem mostly up to date.
Anyway, I think these cars would have been hard-pressed to compete in their market by 1957, with just about all of the competition in their market being all-new. And for '58 especially...I don't know of that body style would have been able to make the jump to quad headlights with any dignity.
My guess is that Packard would have started running out of money, and wouldn't be able to afford to come up with an all-new car that was competitive. Or, if they did, it would've ended up coming on the market at the wrong time...something along the lines of the '62 shrunken Dodges and Plymouths, the all-new '74 full-sized Mopars (about the worst possible year to blow your wad on big cars), etc.
Packard was more of a "niche" builder, and while I think Packard could have taken on Lincoln in the 1950s (an ugly car of little merit in my opinion), they would have had to run head to head with Cadillac, and 1955-1970 were sort of Cadillac's Golden Years. And even if Packard had somehow staggered into the late 1960s, they would have had to deal with the emerging Mercedes line of cars.
Packard was in a much-better cash position than Studebaker at the time of the merger/buyout. Stude spent a lot on new cars in '47, new trucks for '49, and two completely different bodies in '53--coupes/hardtops and sedans were two completely different cars--not a single piece of sheetmetal or glass interchanges between one and the other. The '53 is a beautiful car IMHO (there's a nice white Champion two-door post coupe on eBay as of a couple days ago, bid to $20K-something), but why they would've built two completely different cars is a mystery to me. Packard's '48 was a facelift of the prewar car, the '51 was new, the '55 was a reskin of the '55, and in their price range, they were dead-last to the party with a V8.