Debut of the 1957 Packard Clipper.
YouTube is amazing – it really is! Here is a film that I always suspected was out there, but thought I’d never see. It’s the introduction of the new Studebaker-based 1957 Packard Clipper to Packard dealers. Studebaker and Packard had merged, Packard’s Detroit plant was gone, and so all future Packards would be based on existing Studebakers. As a result, “1957 will be the biggest and most profitable year in our history!” Uh huh.
The film starts with a new Packard Clipper sedan revolving on a turntable. The narrator (who sounds like a 1930s radio announcer) enthusiastically describes all the luxurious new styling features: the redesigned Packard cormorant, the bomb-type bumper guards (standard equipment), the full-length bright metal strip down the sides, and the “generously tailored” rear light assemblies.
The interiors are “the finest and most luxurious ever offered in its field!”
The brushed chrome and gold instrument panel is “the best expression of modern functional beauty!” The horn ring is plated in gold.
But this splendid new car is not just about looks. Thanks to a “Jet-Stream” supercharger, the 1957 Packard Clipper goes from 0-60 in only 10.9 seconds! It took the 1956 Clipper 12.1 seconds to reach that speed. The suspension is “guaranteed to turn the roughest road into a boulevard ride!” -(It apparently does this without the fabulous 4-wheel torsion bar suspension system of 1955-56, which is never mentioned.)
There’s a station wagon too, to take advantage of the rapidly expanding station wagon market.
Next, Studebaker-Packard president Harold Churchill addresses the audience of Packard dealers. He tells them that these new Packard Clippers represent a “new approach”. He does not believe that this is the “end of an era” of Packard’s tradition of fine craftsmanship, but a solid new beginning. He states that “size is not a connotation of quality. You can have fine quality, highly crafted cars irrespective of size.” They are now competing in the medium-priced field, which is a bigger market than the luxury car field they are used to dealing with. Finally, he tells the dealers that they have to go out and “sell, sell, SELL!”
Then we hear from Roy Hurley, President of Curtiss-Wright Corporation. C-W has entered into a management agreement with Studebaker-Packard. Hurley states emphatically that C-W does not need “tax gimmicks” to be successful. Furthermore, rumors that his company plans to just keep S-P around for a year or two and then dump it and keep the tax breaks are false. New money is coming in which will be used in automotive development so that S-P can be successful and profitable “on its own two feet.” Hurley does not believe in the “two drunk theory” – that you need one drunk to hold up another. He also mentions that the entire deal was orchestrated by banks, insurance companies, “people in Europe”, the federal government and even the Federal Reserve. Apparently, it was important to get certain defense contracts squared away. There are details in both speeches that I have not read about previously in written histories of Packard.
Here are the dealers in the audience. You have to wonder what they think of all of this.
Despite all the happy talk, Packard sales plunged from 28,799 in ’56 to 4,809 in ’57. Which is bad, but not as bad as you think considering that the break-even point for the “Packardized” Studebaker was about 5,000 units.
So an updated version was released for ’58. It now had a new hood and grille with quad headlights, big fins, a golden streak down the side, and 14″ wheels. A two-door hardtop was added to the line. There was new upholstery trim and the supercharger was dropped. Everything else was approximately the same. You have to give them credit for trying. Sales dropped to 2,034.
New for ’58 was the Packard Hawk, which started out as a custom job for Roy Hurley. 588 copies were sold. S-P gave up–there were no 1959 Packards.
Is there any silver lining to this? If the Packard dealers (who I assumed would have been dualled with Studebaker) held on ’til ’59, they would be selling the all-new Studebaker Lark, which was successful way beyond expectations. 126,156 Studebakers were sold in 1959. However, Packard dealers (who once catered to wealthy, upscale customers) were now selling to a whole different class of people who were purchasing a car in the lowest-priced field. That must have required some getting used to.
By this time, Curtiss-Wright had pulled out of the management agreement.
If you really want to rub salt in the wound, you can watch New Concept in Power (1955) about the new V-8 engine . . .
. . . and The Safe Road Ahead about the innovative Torsion-Level Ride (1956).
When watching these films, you get the impression that the future is so bright. You think about all the work, effort, intelligence (and money!) that was put into designing these concepts. Then creating all the factories, tools, supply chains, etc. needed to actually build these cars. A couple years later and it’s all for naught–the buying public just didn’t respond in sufficient numbers.
According to the film, Packard began designing the new V-8 back in 1946. But it took them almost nine years to bring it to market. Had the V-8 been introduced in say, 1951, I think Packard would have fared much better in the 1950s.
My two takeaways:
- Capitalism, with free market competition, is a harsh system. It’s a rat race. There is a lot of waste, duplication, and going down dead ends. It does, however, seem to give the public the most choice and spur innovation and improvement. Competition helps keep prices down. I will say though that sometimes the best products are not the most popular or the most profitable. Even today, I think that Jaguar, Lincoln, and Buick have made some very nice cars in recent years. But the broader market doesn’t agree, and those makes may disappear soon just as Packard did.
- A sense of optimism just before failure, disaster, and loss is one of the hardest experiences humans have to face. Just when there’s hope everything falls apart. It makes me wonder–can you really believe what experts in the establishment (in media, advertising, government, academia, the medical profession) have to say? When listening to anyone, you have to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Or as Jean Shepherd used to say, “Don’t let ’em do it to ya!”
Here’s the film in full:
Coming up next: Optimism Before Failure, Part 2 (De Soto)
Nice article.
CC effect: I watched the torsion-bar film just last night. It’s a well-done tutorial.
These dealer-aimed films weren’t really meant to fool the dealers. They were meant to give the dealers a set of talking points so they could try to fool the customers. Some of the Chevy films stated this purpose openly.
I like the emcees affected accent in the video “The syupah chahged cah”
It’s a truly smaht cah.
I intend to visit my Studebaker-Packard dealer to-morrow!
Stephen, I can’t bear to watch the film. It’s failure upon failure and we know the end result. I for one am glad Packard didn’t have the $$ to build what WAS to be the `57 Packards–an awful design that would have definitely spelled “doom” instantly.
Love that film. They spent as much time talking about finance as they did about the cars.
If S-P had been paid per pound of superlatives used in the film, they would have been wildly profitable. Long live the 57 Packardbakers, especially with the leather textured vinyl!
I wonder if they did the same thing a few months later for the midyear launch of the ultra-strippo Scotsman. At least that was a breakout hit.
Jeff, be sure to get that Packard so you can pahk yah cah in hahvahd yahd. I can see the salesmen watching the video and wondering if the Buick dealer down the street needs a new salesman.
If the Packard dealers (who I assumed would have been dualled with Studebaker) held on ’til ’59, they would be selling the all-new Studebaker Lark, which was successful way beyond expectations.
I don’t have ready stats for this, but my understanding is few Packard dealers took on selling Studebakers. There was likely a Studebaker dealer in town already. I do know that a number of Packard dealers took on selling Mercedes, and that some transitioned very successfully to that brand, given the upscale showrooms they often had in larger cities.
This film was pretty sad, in more ways than one. Who could have taken the Packardbakers seriously? Hopefully at least the rubber chicken dinner was edible.
Isn’t this around the same time that Mercedes-Benz ended their sales and distribution agreement with Studebaker (and formed their own American sales and distribution organization)?
I had always assumed that some Studebaker dealers that were selling M-B on behalf of Studebaker stuck with Mercedes and became dealers for MBUSA. Perhaps that’s a poor assumption.
M-B began the S-P distribution deal in 1956 or ’57, which gave Packard dealers something upscale to sell just when the real Packards went away. I’ve read different dates for when that arrangement ended, but it was sometime from 1963 to 1965, with Mercedes becoming frustrated at the disintegrating Studebaker dealer network.
I can certainly see Packard dealers being reluctant to sell Studebakers, particularly after Packards became dressed up Studebakers. Perhaps salvation for Parkard dealers was intended to come in selling Mercedes-Benz automobiles, as Studebaker had become the U.S. distributor for Mercedes in 1957. Santa Monica CA.’s Packard dealer, W.I. Simonsen, made the transition to Mercedes and remains so today. There were probably others.
In the immortal words of Chip Diller (as played by Kevin Bacon in “Animal House”):
“REMAIN CALM! ALL IS WELL! ALL IS WELL!”
The management of Packard from the time William Christopher had been essentially moribund, with the exception of James Nance, who did his best (and made numerous mistakes, some due to his own hubris) under the circumstances. The management of Studebaker was even worse perhaps, and at the same time parasitic and underhanded towards their savior Packard. Curtis-Wright threw away their opportunity to survive the jet-engine era in good stead, in their short-term pursuit of early cold war profits and did their best to ruin S-P as well. Three bedfellows that perhaps deserved each other, though probably the management came out ahead, rather the workers and the people of South Bend, Detroit and Buffalo have been picking up the pieces, in Detroit still to this day. Not all stories have a happy ending.
“Had the V-8 been introduced in say, 1951,…”, chances then some things would have been different at Packard for the 1950s that’s for sure. The same question could be asked about the automatic transmission, what if Packard had bought some Hydramatic transmissions from GM instead of developping their own?
But still, it could be interesting to know if there was some early drafts and/or mock-ups clays of proposed 1959 Packard just like there was for the once proposed 1962 DeSoto?
I like that guy in the front left of the dealer audience photo doing a facepalm, probably the thoughts of just about everyone in the audience.
Interesting to see Harold Churchill and Roy Hurley talking; they have always been just names to me. Neither strikes me as a charismatic leader.
That’s certainly an enlightening video. Reading accounts and discussions of Studebaker/ Packard’s financial problems is one thing, to hear the president of the company trying to calm the passengers of a sinking ship is quite another. Packard, even with a history of being one of America’s premiere makes, couldn’t compete successfully in the post War market dominated by GM. Moving down to the medium priced field seemed like a good idea. Lincoln had done the same, but they had the resources of the Ford company to buoy them up. I think the move hurt Lincoln in a way that they never recovered from.
Here’s time’s profile of Churchill.
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,811241,00.html
That is quite some video. Harold Churchill’s speach is pretty much the expected rah-rah sales motivation program for the dealers, but Roy T. Hurley’s talk was really interesting. He speaks of becoming involved with Studebaker-Packard when Curtiss-Wright was looking for a ‘merchandising outlet’ for automotive products from some ‘European friends’. I take that to be Mercedes-Benz. This lead to a request by the U.S. government and banks for C-W to take a closer look at Studebaker-Packard. No mystery there, by that time it was common knowledge S-P was on the ropes. Naturally the government would be concerned about the fullfillment of defense contracts by a failing corporation, but I wonder if there was also some government influence over the Mercedes distributorship as well. Remember we are deep in the post-Marshall Plan Cold War period, and the success of West German businesses was a prime concern of the State Department. From that point of view, a revitalized S-P may have represented a win-win for the U.S. Government, defense contracts fullfilled and nation-wide distribution of Mercedes automobiles I am not exactly sure what defense contracts Studebaker was having trouble with, but I know they had at least one large contract for M35 2.5 ton 6X6 military trucks. Interesting to note after S-P left the automotive business the military truck operation was absorbed by Kaiser-Jeep, and eventually became AM General.
As for Roy T. Hurley, he earned a reputation at C-W as a ‘slash and burn’ business turn-around expert with a taste for diversification. He joined Curtiss-Wright in 1949 when they were just about out of the aircraft business (not by choice). Hurley got C-W into other businesses (industrial, aerospace, and defense) where they enjoyed much success that continues to this day. Given that, I wonder what those S-P dealers were thinking when Hurley took the podium.
Roy Hurley was a World War I Era airplane mechanic and aficionado, which would explain why his custom-built Packard Hawk had “outside armrests” on the doors–to make it look like the cockpit of vintage airplanes (Jennys and such).
Having owned both a ’56 Patrician and ’56 Clipper, comparing these Packardbakers to the real thing was a sad joke. Churchill was an eedjit.
Note the ’70 Nova in the background, my daily driver at the time, bought new by my uncle in April of 1970 and left to me. Quite a switch from the Clipper.
I am late to this, but thanks for finding this great film!
This is the first I have heard that S-P was losing money on the defense contracts. I can certainly understand that the government was concerned that a major contractor might go out of business and leave the military in a lurch, so C-W involvement made a lot of sense at the time. Perhaps S-P was so desperate for revenue they signed on to contracts that they could not perform profitably, or perhaps this was C-W’s public relations explanation for taking over those contracts and leaving S-P with nothing but an unprofitable automobile business.
As for the cars, I continue to maintain that the car would have been a great Studebaker President, but it was a poor substitute for the Packard that buyers were expecting. I also think that the car, with some styling improvements from the 58 model, might have been a modest success in 1959 (as a Studebaker President), the way AMC offered the Ambassador as something to cater to loyalists who wanted something larger and nicer than a Rambler.