America’s grandest car company? The Rise and Fall of Packard

Unless you have a particular interest in classic cars, there’s no reason why you should have heard of it, yet this was once one of the grandest of all the American marques, associated – through the term ‘the three Ps’ – with the equally spectacular but now almost equally distant Peerless and Pierce-Arrow.

Furthermore, Packard was famous for its innovations (in-car air-con useful to you?), which makes its eventual fall from grace even sadder to contemplate. In an effort to keep the great name in the public eye for a little longer, we present the Packard story, told in 30 chronological chapters.

PICTURE: 1940 Packard Custom Super Eight One-Eighty Sport Sedan by Darrin – sold by RM Sotheby’s for $280,000 in 2021

James Ward Packard (1863-1928) and his elder brother William Doud Packard (1863-1923) established an electric company in their own name in 1890. Their move into cars is attributed to James buying a Winton eight years later and being frustrated by how reliable it was. He complained to Alexander Winton (1860-1932), who reportedly challenged him to build a car of his own if he thought he could do better, which he did.

The Packards’ sister, Alaska (1868-1934), had no part in any of this, but we’re not going a step further without mentioning that she was employed as an FBI special agent in the 1920s, the agency’s first female in that role.

PICTURE: James Ward Packard, left, and William Doud Packard, right

Packard’s first car was launched, if that’s not too strong a word, in 1899. Only five examples of the two-seater, whose passengers sat above its 2.3-litre single-cylinder engine, were built. The fifth was also the first bought by a customer – businessman George Kirkham didn’t have far to go to collect it after he made his purchase in January 1900, since he lived only a short walk away from the factory in Warren, Ohio.

Several related single-cylinder Packards followed, known as the Models B, C, and F. The last of these, with a larger 3.0-litre engine and a three- rather than two-speed gearbox, was produced until 1903. In that year, a Model F became only the second car to make a coast-to-coast run across the contiguous United States, and the first to do so by way of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

PICTURE: Packard Model A

Packard would later become celebrated for its multi-cylinder cars, but it waited three years before producing an engine with more than one. A mighty 6.0-litre twin was created for the 1902 Model G, one of whose few buyers is believed to have been the extremely wealthy William Rockefeller Jr (1841-1922), co-founder of Standard Oil and brother of JD Rockefeller.

The company would soon move on from this passing phase. The Model G was Packard’s only two-cylinder car (though this type of engine was also used in the company’s trucks), and also the last with its engine mounted underneath the seats.

From 1903 – the year the company relocated from Warren to Detroit – to 1912, every new Packard was fitted with a front-mounted four-cylinder engine whose capacity ranged over the years from 4.0 to 7.1 litres.

The emphasis was very much on quality and luxury, supplied at considerable cost, but in this period Packard also ventured into the world of high performance. Right at the start of 1904, a very light and remarkably aerodynamic version of the original Model K, known as the Gray Wolf, was timed at 76.04mph over a flying kilometre and 77.58mph over a flying mile at Daytona Beach.

Packard boldly claimed in its advertising material that these were world records, though in fact the official Land Speed Record at the time was 83.46mph, and would be raised to 91.37mph within a couple of weeks.

PICTURE: 1908 Packard Model 30

While Packard persevered with its fours for nearly a decade, other manufacturers (such as Ford, Oldsmobile and Rolls-Royce) raised the game by introducing engines with six cylinders. Packard entered the game in 1912, and produced many models collectively known as Six over three widely-spaced generations. Its first engine of this type, available first as an 8.6-litre and later as a 6.8, had a T head (inlet and exhaust valves on either side of the cylinder) and a block consisting of three castings with two cylinders each.

Acceptable though this must have seemed at the time, Packard changed to a completely different design in 1914. The new engine had a pair of three-cylinder blocks and an L head (inlet and exhaust valves on the same side) which made it lighter, more efficient and cheaper to build than its predecessor.

PICTURE: 1912 Packard Model 1-48 Custom Runabout

Packard did not invent the V12 engine (England’s Putney Motor Works did that in 1904), but it was the first company to put one in a series-production car. The 6.9-litre Twin Six arrived in 1915, and created a brief flurry of interest among other US manufacturers, who then largely abandoned the layout for a while before returning to it in the 1930s.

Two years after the Twin Six was launched, 16 V12-engined models were displayed at the New York Automobile Show. At the same event in 1923, only Packard had one on its stand, and even that wouldn’t be around for much longer.

The strangest Twin Six, and perhaps the strangest Packard of any kind, was owned by Russia’s last monarch, Tsar Nicholas II. Mostly standard, it had no rear wheels – these were replaced by bogies with large treaded belts which provided vastly greater traction on soft or rough ground (or, of particular reference in a Russian winter, on snow).

The system is known as the Kégresse track after its inventor, the French engineer Adolphe Kégresse (1879-1943), who was employed by the Tsar and fitted his device to several other vehicles in the imperial garage.

In addition to the Twin Six, Packard built two V12 race cars known as 299 and 905 after the very different capacities of their engines in cubic inches (4.9 and 14.8 litres respectively). In 1919, 299 became the only V12-engined car to finish the Indianapolis 500 race. The following year, it was saved from destruction during a speed trial on the beach in the Danish island of Fanø when Baroness Maria Antonietta Avanzo (1889-1977) reacted cool-headedly to an engine fire by driving into the sea.

In February 1919, Ralph DePalma (1882-1956) drove 905 through a measured mile at 149.88mph. This did not count as a Land Speed Record, because LSR rules demanded that the car be driven along the course twice in opposite directions within an hour, which DePalma didn’t do. However, the official record at the time was a more modest 124.09mph (and did not exceed 150mph until 1925), so it was reasonable to claim that 905 was, in its day, the fastest car in the world.

PICTURE: Packard 905

Another Twin Six was more conventional than the one owned by Tsar Nicholas, since it had the usual four wheels, but also much more famous. In March 1921, it became the first car ever to transport a US President - Warren G Harding - to his inauguration, a duty which had until then been performed by horses-and-carriage.

Harding did not own the car, and nor did the White House. It was supplied by the Republican National Committee, whose action was described at the time as probably sounding “the death knell of the carriage as the presidential conveyance on Inauguration Day”.

As the V12 engine temporarily fell out of favour in the US, manufacturers selected the straight-eight as the best unit for luxury vehicles. Packard’s first model with such an engine, introduced in 1924, was known as the Straight Eight, a slightly more straightforward name than the previous Twin Six.

Other names were later introduced, but in any case the Eight took over from the Twin Six as Packard’s top model. During its long run, which ended in 1936, it became available with synchromesh transmission, a variety of bodies and engine sizes, and – a very modern idea, this one – shock absorbers whose stiffness could be controlled by a lever on the dashboard.

PICTURE: 1934 Packard Super Eight

With the Great Depression in full swing, Packard introduced a less expensive model in 1932. The Light Eight was powered by the now familiar straight-engine, but was smaller and lighter than other Eights.

The experiment failed, and the car was withdrawn from the market after just one year. One suggested reason for this is that attracted existing Packard customers who now had less money than before, and therefore stole sales from the regular Eight rather than from rival manufacturers, but this has been disputed.

V12 engines became fashionable again among US manufacturers in the early 1930s. Packard’s version of this era was originally designed for a very fast front-wheel drive prototype, but when that project was abandoned the engine was carried over to a new model initially called the Twin Six but renamed Twelve in 1933, its second year of production.

The Twelve was much heavier than the prototype, so in order to give it reasonable performance Packard had to increase the capacity of the engine from the original 6.2 litres to 7.3 litres. In 1935, it rose again, this time to 7.8 litres (now good for up to 180 hp), and stayed there until production ended four years later.

Also in 1935, President Roosevelt presented his Russian counterpart Joseph Stalin with a Twelve as a diplomatic sweetener. Stalin apparently loved it, since he liked cars in general and Packards in particular, and had previously owned a Twin Six. Ironically perhaps, the communist dictator rather admired the fruits of American capitalism, and during WW2 - fearful of flying - he preferred traveling in US-built airplanes like the Douglas C-47 transport supplied to Russia under the Lend-Lease agreement, distrusting Soviet-built licence-produced equivalents.

PICTURE: 1934 Packard Twelve Sport Coupe with LeBaron body

After the failure of the Light Eight, Packard made a far better job of creating another entry-level model. The One-Twenty, launched in 1935 and named after its 120-inch wheelbase, was inexpensive by Packard standards, yet technically adventurous with its independent front suspension, and exceptionally well-built. It’s credited with saving the company during the Depression years, but also with dragging the brand downmarket, to its eventual cost.

Although the One-Twenty was a mass-market model, at least by Packard standards, one of its buyers was King Leopold III of Belgium. On a family holiday in Switzerland, the car went off the road near Lake Lucerne. Leopold, who remained inside, was injured, but survived and lived into his 80s. However his wife Queen Astrid, who was thrown out of the car, was killed, aged 29.

PICTURE: Packard One-Twenty serving as pace car for the 1936 Indy 500

The third and final Six, introduced in 1936 and also known briefly as the One-Ten, was a natural response to the success of the One-Twenty, and the first Packard in nearly a decade with a straight-six engine. While the company’s first motor of this type represented, back in 1912, a step forward in luxury and refinement available only to the very rich, the new 3.9-litre unit was the exact opposite – an attempt to bring in as many new customers as possible.

And it worked. In the car’s first model year, Packard sold more than 65,000, beating all previous records.

Produced only in the 1940 to 1942 model years, the Custom Super Eight took over from the Twelve as Packard’s ultimate luxury car. Its 5.8-litre straight-engine was reputed to be the most powerful of its type available in the US, with an output of around 160bhp.

The car bristled with new technology. It’s notable as being the first series production car to be available with air-conditioning, delivered via a very bulky unit that took up much of the trunk. Another first for this remarkable car was the option of power windows. It also had overdrive (previously branded as Econo Drive but now as Aero Drive) and an electromatic clutch. The last of these made the transmission seem like an automatic, though in modern, and slightly inaccurate terms, it would be referred to as a clutchless manual.

PICTURE: 1941 Packard Custom Super Eight One-Eighty

The first Packard to bear the Clipper name was produced only briefly from April 1941 until the US entry into the Second World War brought almost all civilian car manufacturing to an abrupt halt by government order in February of the following year. Despite this, it was a significant model. Packard had realised that conservative body styling was not going to help its future fortunes, and came up with a more modern design which included headlights recessed into the front wings. It also meant that once the war was over the company had a relatively modern-looking design to put back into production.

There would be more Clippers once peace returned, and in fact Clipper became a separate brand in 1956. Other manufacturers, notably Ford and General Motors, were not shy about creating new brands, but this was the only time Packard tried it.

During the Second World War, Packard along with the rest of the auto industry switched the production lines to making items to help America win the war – in Packard’s case, it mainly devoted itself to the production of V12 engines for the military. While there are various production estimates, it's well established that the company built nearly 55,000 Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engines under licence, along with close to 13,000 motors of its own design for boats and an unknown number (but possibly over 4000) of marine gearboxes.

The Merlin transformed the performance of the General Motors-built Mustang fighter plane; it was originally equipped with an Allison unit, but the Rolls-designed engine performed much better at altitude; together with the employment of drop-tanks, this helped deliver air superiority in Europe to the Allies from spring 1944 onwards, virtually guaranteeing the demise of Nazi Germany.

Packard revised its line-up substantially in 1951. The lowest-priced of the new models introduced in that year was the 200, which had far more modern styling than Packards of the late 1940s (often referred to derisively as ‘bathtubs’) and was powered by a 4.8-litre version of the familiar straight-eight engine. The 250 was more or less the same car, but it had a 5.4-litre engine and slightly different body styles.

Both were available with Ultramatic, an automatic transmission which Packard had, unusually, developed itself, rather than buying one in from a supplier. The 200 and 250 were sold under those names only in the 1951 and 1952 model years. They stayed on the market after that, but were now known as Clippers.

PICTURE: 1951 Packard 250 Convertible

The 300 four-door saloon looked similar to the 200 and 250, but was several inches longer and had slightly different styling details. The only engine offered was the 5.4-litre straight-eight fitted to the 250.

Like the smaller cars, the 300 was sold only in 1951 and 1952, but continued for a few years longer with a different name.

The last of what are known as the ‘senior Packards’ was another model introduced in 1951, and replaced the earlier Super Eight. It was known as the Patrician 400 for two years, but the number was dropped in 1953.

Early Patricians were powered by the 5.4-litre straight-eight engine, but in 1955, along with a restyle, Packard introduced its first – and, as things turned out, only – V8, several years after its rivals had adopted that layout. Having led the way with V12s four decades earlier, Packard was now a long way behind the curve.

PICTURE: 1954 Packard Patrician Sedan

Packard’s early-1950s policy of including numbers in all its model names was suspended in the case of the Mayfair. American buyers were no doubt impressed by the reference to the upmarket district in far-away London, which added some glamour to the car.

And glamour was definitely appropriate here, because the Mayfair, a close relative of the 250, was Packard’s attempt to cash in on (rather than lead, as it might once have done) the new fashion for two-door hardtops. Unfortunately, there were many of these to choose from, and Mayfair production does not appear to have reached five figures in any single model year from 1951 to 1953.

The Packard 300 became the Cavalier in the 1953 model year, and was once again offered only as a four-door saloon with the 5.4-litre straight-eight engine.

Sales were very low, and the car was discontinued after 1954, just before the introduction of the V8 engine which might have helped its case.

Even by the standards of 1950s Packards, the Pacific was on the market for an extremely short time, begin sold only in the 1954 model year. Replacing the Mayfair, it was another two-door hardtop, but in this case the usual straight-engine was larger than before at 5.9 litres. Exactly the same unit was also used in the ‘54 Caribbean convertible.

The Ultramatic auto transmission was fitted as standard, but this didn’t help sales. Only 1189 Pacifics are believed to have been built.

While the V8 engine introduced in 1955 was a case of Packard catching up with the opposition, the Torsion-Level Ride suspension of the same year re-established it as an innovator. In this brilliant system, 111-inch long torsion bars connected the front and rear corners on each side, while an electric motor compensated for load by raising the back end when necessary.

As a result, although ‘55 Packards were very softly sprung (and therefore rode very comfortably), pitching was almost completely eliminated, and their ride height was the same whether they were empty, fully loaded with passengers or something in between. Torsion-Level Ride was a major step forward in suspension design, and it’s one of the minor tragedies of the US auto industry that even this was not enough to save Packard.

Having dropped the 400 from the Patrician name in 1953, Packard brought it back two years later (using words rather than figures this time) for its latest two-door hardtop.

Like other Packards of the time, the Four Hundred had the advantages of both the new V8 engine and Torsion-Level Ride, but they didn’t help much. Only a little over 10,000 examples were built in the two years of Four Hundred production.

What might be called the last ‘true’ Packard model was created as a step between the Clipper (now marketed as a brand in its own right) and the considerably more expensive Patrician. It was essentially a Clipper, with a 5.8-litre version of the V8 engine, but had enough styling alterations to make it resemble the more senior car.

Its production life was one of the shortest in Packard history, similar to that of the Model A. The first Executive left the Detroit factory in March 1956, the last just three months later.

As the previous slides may have suggested, Packard was not a healthy company in the early to mid 1950s. The way forward seemed to be a merger with Studebaker, which had less money but a larger dealer network. Packard’s Detroit production ended in 1956, and the last models were all built at Studebaker’s plant in South Bend, Indiana.

They included a new Clipper, now once more branded as a Packard rather than as a separate marque. The 1957 car was a reworked Studebaker President, powered by Studebaker’s supercharged V8 engine rather than the one Packard had designed itself. This and other cars of the final years are often referred to, dismissively and without affection, as ‘Packardbakers’. For some, the Packard story was already over.

PICTURE: 1957 Packard Clipper Country Sedan

From 1956 to 1964, Studebaker produced a number of sporting models with the word hawk in their names. The outlier among them wasn’t marketed as a Studebaker at all, but as the Packard Hawk.

The styling of the Packard, sold only in 1958, was distinctive, but structurally and mechanically it was identical to the Studebaker Golden Hawk, which was in its third and last model year. It was a plausible alternative to the more powerful second-generation Ford Thunderbird, but in contrast to the T-bird’s success only 588 Hawks were ever built.

The Hawk was the only ‘58 Packard with a distinct model name. The other three were named simply Hardtop, Sedan and Station Wagon (pictured), after their body styles, and had styling which could be described as complicated even by the standards of US cars in the late 1950s.

Including the Hawk, Studebaker’s entire production of Packard-badged cars in 1958 amounted to just 2622 units.

As might have been foreseen two years earlier, the last Packard left the South Bend factory in the summer of 1958. The name lived on for four more years in the title of the Studebaker-Packard Corporation, but this reverted to simply Studebaker in 1962.

The merger had not helped Studebaker any more than it had helped Packard. Having started manufacturing electric vehicles in 1902, the Indiana company built its last car in 1966.

PICTURE: Packard Detroit factory, 1905

A final Packard emerged in the closing years of the 20th century. Its specification was perhaps similar to what the original Packard company would have come up with if it had survived that long – aluminium construction and an 8.6-litre V12 (of course) engine driving all four wheels.

Called the Twelve (which, you’ll remember, is what the Twin Six was renamed in 1933), it was a one-off prototype which did not lead to a production model, but that’s no reason why it shouldn’t be included in the Packard story. It was sold at auction in 2014 for $143,000.

The gradual failure of what had once been one of America's most respected manufacturers can be attributed to two decisions which must have made perfect sense at the time. The One-Twenty was a great success, and allowed Packard to survive beyond the 1930s (which its former rivals Peerless and Pierce-Arrow could not), but it also diluted the image of a previously exclusive brand.

By the 1950s, it was clear that Packard would have to join forces with another company in order to survive. Studebaker became the only option, but it was also the wrong one, and when Packards became nothing more than Studebakers with different badges and styling, it must have been clear to everyone involved that the end was coming soon. And the combined company was up against  - especially - General Motors and its vast economies of scale in riotous form, with an extraordinary 51% US market share in 1962.

PICTURE: The famous ‘Packard bridge’ over East Grand Boulevard in Detroit, pictured in 2015; sadly the bridge collapsed in 2019.