Packard Was a United States Based Brand of Luxury Automobile Built By
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Packard was a United States based brand of luxury automobile built by the Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan, and later by the Studebaker-Packard Corporation of South Bend, Indiana. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899 and the brand went off the market in 1958. Packard automobiles are highly sought after by collectors today, and the marque enjoys an active collectors club system. Packards were advertised with the slogan "Ask the Man Who Owns One". Packard was founded by brothers James Ward Packard (Lehigh University Class of 1884), William Doud Packard and his partner George Lewis Weiss in the city of Warren, Ohio. James Ward believed that they could build a better horseless carriage that the Winton cars owned by Weiss (An important Winton stockholder) and James Ward, himself a mechanical engineer, had some ideas how to improve on the designs of current automobiles. By 1899, they were building vehicles. The company, which they called the Ohio Automobile Company, quickly introduced a number of innovations in its designs, including the modern steering wheel and years later the first production 12-cylinder engine. While Henry Ford was producing cars that sold for $440, the Packards concentrated on more upscale cars that started at $2,600. Packard automobiles developed a following not only in the United States, but also abroad, with many heads of state owning them. Throughout the nineteen-tens and twenties, Packard built vehicles consistently were among the elite in luxury automobiles. The company was commonly referred to as being one of the "Three P's" of American motordom royalty, along with Pierce-Arrow of Buffalo, New York and Peerless of Cleveland, Ohio. Packard's leadership of the luxury car field was supreme. As an independent automaker, Packard did not have the luxury of a larger corporate structure absorbing its losses as Cadillac did with GM and Lincoln with Ford. However, Packard did have a better cash position than other independent luxury marques. Peerless fell under receivership in 1929 and ceased production in 1932; by 1938 Franklin, Marmon, Ruxton, Stearns-Knight, Stutz, Duesenberg and Pierce-Arrow had all closed. During World War II, Packard again built airplane engines, licensing the Merlin engine from Rolls-Royce. The Packard engine powered the famous P-51 Mustang fighter, known as the "Cadillac of the Skies" by G.I.s in WWII. It was one of the fastest non-jet fighter planes ever built, and could fly higher than any of its contemporaries, allowing its pilots a greater degree of survivability in combat situations. They also built 1350, 1400, and 1500 hp V-12 marine engines that powered American PT boats (each boat used three) and some of Britain's patrol boats. After the war, Packard President James J. Nance was struggling with what he felt was the only way to reestablish Packard as a luxury car brand, which was to divorce the lower priced models from the luxury models. To do this Nance applied the model name Clipper to the least expensive Packards starting in 1953. Ultimately, Nance planned to spin Clipper off as its own automotive brand targeting Oldsmobile and Mercury, while a target date of 1956 was set for the new automotive brand. On October 1, 1954, Packard purchased Studebaker creating the Studebaker-Packard Corporation. Initially, Packard's executive team had hoped Studebaker's larger network of dealers would help increase sales. Packard's up-again and down-again sales continued, with a profitable year in 1955 thanks to the introduction of Packard's first V-8 engines that model year—although a complete retooling for the 1955 models resulted in products so poorly made that hundreds of cars had to be repaired by dealers before they could be sold to the public. The company severely in debt, its creditors ordered the old Packard plants to close on August 15, 1956. In 1957 and 1958, a Studebaker President-based car bearing the Packard Clipper nameplate appeared on the market, but sales were slow. These badge engineered Studebakers were derisively referred to as Packardbakers by the press and consumers and failed to sell in sufficient numbers to keep the marque afloat. After 1958, Studebaker-Packard pulled the Packard nameplate from the marketplace in 1959 to focus instead on its compact Lark..