Packard Dealer, Fort Wayne, IN.
Zell Motor Co., Baltimore, MD.
Vintage Dealers: Packards In The Showroom – 1951-1953
– Posted on April 23, 2024
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Curbside Classics Archives
Packard Dealer, Fort Wayne, IN.
Zell Motor Co., Baltimore, MD.
Back when a whitewall was a whitewall!
And when people dressed like they cared instead of looking like they just rolled out of bed. And when showrooms had some class unlike today’s boring new-age designs.
Those aren’t candid shots though. Even back then people didn’t usually car shop in suits (except maybe if it was after work when of course a suit was typical for a lot white collar jobs like Packard shoppers might have).
I have to agree with you Dan, the curse hit the UK many years ago as well
I was thinking this yesterday, the 1960s Mission Impossible series is broadcast daily at 6pm on a freeview TV channel. I was taken by how smartly dressed everyone is and how glamorous the cars look, yesterday there was a gorgeous Mercedes heckflosse in the episode, a previous episode was a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud and a Lincoln.
I think the early to mid 60s is a highpoint for US style and sophisticated glamour. Back then Europeans really did admire US style, but that is not the case nowadays which is a shame
Couldn’t believe it when I heard students can wear pajamas to school in the US, tell me that is not so.
The wheel plus whitewall is about the size of a wheel today, with the black part of the tire almost equal to a whole modern tire. No wonder they had squishy rides and wallowy handling – also bias plies of course.
A sad visual commentary, showrooms with Packards displaying all of the elegance of a 1953 Chevy, demonstrating the loss of the prior pre-war command and styling presence of Packard, and forecasting the coming future catastrophe….the actual end of Packard. Sad.
I was about to say, they look about the size of Chevys, much smaller than Cadillacs, or even Buicks and Oldsmobiles. That was true of early 50s Lincolns, too. How much of that perception is due to better GM styling?
Trust me, when you saw a Packard back then, you didn’t mistake it for a Chevy. The paint was better, the chrome was better, the heft was there, the silence of the car was noticable, the interior was luxurious and the ride was Packard. Maybe in b/w photos, you get that effect, but if you could, imagine what b/w photos of today’s vehicles would cheapen their appearances as well.
…and that straight-8 purrs.
I would speculate that photos #3, #4, & #5 are the same showroom.
And yes, people dressed up when they went out to meet other people, either socially or on business. This was before my time, but talked with a lady who would dress up and put on her white gloves before heading downtown on Canal Street (NOLA) for department store shopping and lunch with her friends in the late 50’s.
People knew each other on other levels back then. There were more social connections. People attended churches, frat lodges, went to the same stores, filling stations, read the same newspapers, went to school together, and those ties went back generations.
So, stepping out meant you could always meet someone important. Men were to dress like men after age 15, and women dressed like women after age 15 as well. One didn’t have an extensive wardrobe filled with cheap imported clothing – you had fewer, more expensive clothes that often needed to be dry cleaned. Being an adult was to be strove for, not avoided.
Our society is really different today. I can’t say whether it is better or not – (but I wouldn’t have wanted to be Black) – but it was really different in many important ways.
We have lived long enough to have seen many monumental changes in social life. Some good, some bad.
Yeah, I have to remind me of that when I see old photos like these; people aren’t dressing up to go to the Packard dealer, or the restaurant, or to fly on a plane. That’s just how people ususally dressed back then when they went out anywhere that wasn’t a daytine grocery store (where the opposite seems to have occurred – I’ve seen ’50s/’60s supermarket shots where shoppers are wearing what looks like pajamas and have rollers in their hair).
The design was “solid” but very conservative. They made a conservative choice to go with a very Kaiser-Fraser-like straight-thru fender-fender line, which combined with the high sill made them look staid, even budget. It didn’t help that the mid-price “200/250” and the premium price “300/400” were almost indistinguishable. The interiors were also rather plain, the dash for example was shorn of gauges except for the bare minimum + warning lights. Who was responsible? George Christopher, perhaps, since they must have been initiated under his watch, and George Christopher thought Packard should be competing with Buick. Except that Buick’s were flashy at this time. Still great cars if a bit leisurely in the get-up-and-go with the Ultramatic – but better than the Dynaflow!
The rounded rear fender blob was another styling mistake for a new design in 1951. The design didn’t look sharp and fresh anywhere.
Packard spoiled the straight-through look with wrong proportions. I can’t really define what’s wrong; it feels too blunt in some places and too circular in others. Ford made it harmonious in ’52, Chrysler followed Ford in ’53, and GM followed in ’54.
The beltline’s a little too high. The designer of the car wanted it to be lower, but that would have increased costs (more glass.)
It does seem proportionally incorrect; you get the feeling as though you walked into a cluttered room. Slightly agitated.
Which was not what the market was going for by 1951. Ford had made V8s cool many years earlier, and then Cadillac and Oldsmobile made the modern OHV V8 the thing several years before this edition of Packard came out. Yes, there were still Buick flathead straight 8s until their V8 came out in 1953. 1952 for Lincolns. Packard should have bought Hydramatics or B-W automatics and spent the money on a V8 instead. But the independents were all on thin ice by then and all also made big mistakes.
Three of the photos are of the same dealer at the same time. Here’s a current photo in what was a Packard dealership on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco. Not sure what it is now but it was a British cars dealer (RR/Bentley, Lotus) for years.
It’s an Indian car dealership now – Jaguar Land Rover.
dman,
You and I may be the only 2 who understand your Indian car dealership reference!
If Jaguar-Land Rover’s parent company was in financial trouble and needed some help, might they suggest we save the Tatas?
Buick never made a flathead. Always overhead valve or valve-in-head as they called it, no matter how many cylinders.
Really neat photos of a super solid brand.
Back in the ’70s I worked for a guy who had a 1948 Packard. He was a commercial fisherman and spent time down around Ventura or Turlock or Half-Moon Bay in California. He somehow spotted the Packard from the interstate, abruptly pulled off, and bought it on the spot.
I got to ride in it after he’d done a light restoration, and I will never forget the sound and feel of that huge car door closing. What a great thunk! Just like a bank vault (to re-tread an old cliche). Cool car, but it felt like an anachronism even way back then.
I concede the basic point that back in the early 1950s, people dressed more formally than is certainly the case nowadays. Nevertheless, I think that all of these are promotional photos and not candid pictures of routine customer traffic in Packard showrooms.
Those are certainly some mighty whitewalls on these cars.
The lady’s fox stole in the last photo is quite something.
Yes, that snapshot word in the title doesn’t really go with these shots. I updated the post’s heading accordingly.
Ma’am, there’s a dead animal on your shoulder.
Finally, a dealership post that makes me feel young. As a late 1956 model myself, I have no recollection of ever seeing an active Packard dealership.
Two things I noticed:
Both dealerships in Fort Wayne and Baltimore had greenery nicely displayed around the showroom. That feature was common in the 1930s – even in showrooms of more common brands. Wasn’t this pretty much gone by the ’50s?
As a child I was in a Packard/Studebaker/Mercedes showroom in around 1957/’58 with my dad – only two or three times. I can only remember it was dingy and on the wrong side of the tracks and certainly no plants/flowers were on display.
Second – the two door sedans at both showrooms look good to me. It is a body style I still like. Sort of surprising that an upscale brand like Packard had the two door sedan; it must have been a small percentage of their production.
With Packard out of the picture, I wonder what brand these dealers shifted to?
Or did the family just give up, sold the property for what it was worth, and retire.
Lots of a family discussions at the dining room table one Sunday afternoon.
Studebaker-Packard picked up the distribution agreement for Mercedes-Benz around the time of the last Studebaker-based Packards, so if the dealership survived that long they would have had a growing if initially small volume product line that had a similar customer base to Packard. But those middle years would have been tough.
Charlie Wilson may regret having helped to kill Packard he helped Mercedes-Benz.
I find this ironic to say.As a child of the Sixties and all that connotes to most of us post war early fifties babies, I yearn for the very thing I dismissed as a teenager. We have gone way too far down the road of slovenliness and a relaxed attitude in public behavior from dress to vehicle design.. Leaving aside the obvious progress in safety and engineering in vehicles, the acceptance of our culture of vehicles as nothing more than toasters on wheels, with plug and play diagnostics and about as boring a design culture as could be imagined. So next time you see some woman or man for that matter in sweats driving a Kia electric toaster , think of the Packard showroom and the folks standing there. .
The fact that I now find these car’s design as quite tasteful and attractive, probably says more about me, than the cars. Their styling is in step with the times but minus all the flash and chrome. The straight eight was no longer considered a modern powerplant, but I bet it was smooth and quiet! I guess that appreciation for such things happens when you’re looking at your 70th. birthday.
Picture #3 : the unhappy woman thinking ‘? you want me to be seen in this dumpy looking thing ?!’ .
Those “pontoon” fenders were tricky to make look okay and Packard failed miserably .
Yes, not only foolish children wear pyjamas in public these days .
The super trendy ‘croc’ slip on 1/2 shoe was made popular because it wears like iron and has no laces for lazy people to tie or use as garrotes so the jails liked them, now all lazy people like them .
I tried hard to teach my foster boys (all Ghetto kids) how to tie their shoes and wear nice shoes that won’t fall off if you need to move quickly, sadly they’re all enthralled by loser Ghetto / jail culture and my Sweet allows them to have these worthless and dangerous foot wear .
Thanx V.D. ~ well said .
BTW : _Pontiac_ still have the Flathead 8 until 1955, Buick was overhead valves .
No one who likes to drive likes the ‘Dynasquish’ slurpy drive slush boxes .
Where I live in South Central Los Angeles many men still take the time to dress very well in deed including suits, vests, hats and so on .
-Nate
Packard was known for arranging various contests that asked for dealers to send in photos of the dealer facilities and cars on display.
The Fort Wayne photo suggests the dealership had recently renovated their parts department customer counter areas, then staged a car in the lobby for a professional photo to send into the factory. If the photos were exceptional, they might get published in the company magazine.
The last 3 photos were probably taken on a special “invitation only” event, showcasing the new cars for 1953. These special events involved sending out special RSVP cards by mail to select Packard customers, as a way of enticing them to come in for a visit. Some of the larger dealers would stage more than one event, each one tailored to a specific social income group, and the cars on display might be staged for that group’s income level.
The upper level of society might find a Patrician 400 on display, along with a Patrician limousine, and perhaps a sporty convertible for the wife.
Middle income events would feature the Clipper lines, and possibly a Cavalier sedan.
These photos suggest it might have been a single special viewing for a range of upper income customers. The photo taken from above shows 3 groups of people, probably potential buyers with a salesman for each group. This photo looks to have been staged, with 1 group for each car.
I’ve seen many car dealer photos over the years, and my gut reaction for the photo of the white Packard Mayfair hardtop is the people all around the car are actually employees of the dealership, clerical staff, salesmen, management, etc. They simply don’t appear to be customers, and they are just posing around the car for the photograph.
Concerning Michael Allen’s photograph of the opulent dealership, I believe that’s the Earl C. Anthony Packard showroom in San Fran. Anthony was the first Packard dealer on the West Coast.
It all started when British mopheads started showing up here in the mid 1960s.
Standards have steadily declined since.
As a kid growing up in suburbia in the ’50s, we’d occasionally see a Packard lumber by. As these photos show, the first visual impression was “heavy”. Small wonder the tires had to be huge! But according to our Dad, and other parents, they were ‘solid and reliable’ machines. Just not very snazzy at all. In spite of several engineering innovations, I’m guessing the out of date styling ultimately did them in, while other US manufacturers brought jazz and sizzle to the market. Then the imports started a complete revolution in performance, style, and quality. These photos are a wonderful look back to a unique era.