1965 Packard V-12 Prototypes

[Guest Randy Berger]

I like the car without the fin. It's almost as ugly as a 57 Dodge.

YFAM, Randy Berger

[Guest B.H.]

Sorry that my link didn't work, but it did when I originally posted it way back in August 2002. Stuff frequently gets moved around on the 'Net, you know (but no one can hear you scream in cyberspace).

As for the attachment of the fin, keep in mind that this Stude concept car was likely created in "Photoshop" rather than a body shop. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

[WCraigH]

Since the 1965 Packard V-12 is non-existent, I decided to do some "googling" and see what popped up:

1916-12 Packard "Twin Six"

see Packard Twin Six

WWI Liberty Aircraft V-12 (Jesse Vincent designed, 1649 CID, Packard produced 6,500)

see LIberty V-12

1933-39 Packard V-12 (445 CID, 160 HP)

see Packard V-12

WWII Packard 4M-2500 PT Boat engine (based on Liberty above, 3 per PT, 1500HP)

see Packard 4M-2500

WWII Packard-built Merlin V-12 (designated V-1650, 1,695HP, 55,000 produced)

see Packard V-1650

I'm not counting the "what if" V-12 based on the 1955-56 V-8 or the V-12 in the 1999 Packard prototype since I have no info on its details. The above V-12s were certainly something else!

[Guest]

Craig: The links you posted are interesting but realy contain nothing new to people like myself and some others that like to study the history of Packard. Automotive historians say that Packard built the first V12 for automtive use, but they maybe wrong. After doing some considerable research packard may not have been the first to build a V12. An automobile firm named National also introduced a V12 in the spring of 1915, they called thier engine the HIHGWAY 12. During the period that Packard built thier V12 there where a couple of other auto makers that also built V12's. Packard always had a reputation for building marine engines, but there is one person whom nevers gets enough credit for helping make Packard marine engines famous. This person was the great race boat driver Gar Wood. Gar Wood's hull designs had a great influence on the PT boats of WWII. The first twin sixes produced had none detachable heads and under went a redesign in 1917 with detachable heads. In that article it stated that Packard had produced 100,000 cars the year the twin six was introduced. From what I can find from my library Packard production that year was around 25,000 cars.

[Guest John Chapman]

Just for interest, from a Buick guy...

I recently had the great pleasure to embark in the <span style="font-style: italic">SS Lane Victory</span> out of San Pedro, CA for a day cruise. The <span style="font-style: italic">Lane Vicory</span> is the sole surviving ship of the Vicory class built in the mid-1940's as a replacement for the Liberty ships and to form the backbone of the post-war maritime fleet. She is operated as a National Historic Monument and puts to sea about 10 times yearly.

Onboard are several museums and in one of these was a big, alloy-blocked (aluminum ?), turbosupercharged, 600 HP, Packard V-12.

Diesel! Yep. Oil burner.

This engine was used to power the generator on minesweepers to provide electicity to activate the magnetic detonation system. It was chosen because of the low magnetic signature of the alloy engine.

Thought you Packard buffs would find this of interest. I had no idea such a thing existed.

Cheers,

John

[Pontiac59]

I've read in a place or two.. vintage Cars & Parts or SIA maybe.. or Collectible Automobile... an interview with someone from the Packard company said they had one plan for 1957 that involved buying the '56 Lincoln body dies from Ford to use for the '57 or '58 Packard, and that it got as far as the drawing stage but they didn't even have the money for that let alone a restyle. Perhaps thats why the drawings you saw reminded you of the '56 Lincolns - they were based on them!

Bill K.

[55PackardGuy]

Okay, here's my two-cents worth. I agree there are a lot of myths and misinformation out there, but one source I bank on is a book that I think is trustworthy. Many of you have probably heard of it. I've seen it mentioned as the "AQ Book" in one post:

"Packard: A History of the Motor Car and the Company" edited by Beverly Rae Kimes, published 1978 by Automobile Quarterly, produced in association with Princeton Institute for Historic Research.

It covers everything from the startup to the downfall of the company, and includes over 800 pages of text and beautiful, unretouched photos. Black Bess appears in all her glory, photographed outside from two angles with obviously real trees and grass around. The front end looks remarkably like an Edsel. 1957 prototypes are pictured, and engineering data and plans are covered. The book states that no less than 8 plans for future lines were in the works in April 1956, including 3 based on Lincoln body shells. It also mentions a proposed V-12 based on a "stretched" 320 V-8 block that would have had a final displacement of 480ci. President James J. Nance was said to be in favor of it, but the V-12 was killed in a board meeting on July 21, 1955.

I seriously doubt that any significant attempts to resurrect the marque in the mid-sixties would have escaped the researchers of this book.

All the noodling around and scheming during the last years of Packard seemed to serve one purpose: it kept management's eye off the ball, that is, building cars and making money. They didn't even have a decent manufacturing plant for their workers! Fortunately for us all, many great engineers and craftsmen kept working in spite of directionless management, and produced some great cars.

Sincerely inviting feedback,

Guy Strauss

[Guest B.H.]

Guy -

Yes, the Kimes' <span style="font-style: italic">History...</span> is truly a must-have for anyone genuinely interested in Packard. I've had a copy since 1986, but it is so overwhelming in scope that I never could completely read it, cover-to-cover. Another must-have is James Ward's <span style="font-style: italic">The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company</span>. Though there is much less emphasis on the product and far fewer pictures, it focuses on the many factors that contributed to the downfall and in much greater detail - very compelling reading. The two books actually serve to complement each other, painting a more complete picture of the marque - unless you happened to have worked at PMCC.

(Hmm, there have been similar works on Studebaker, but it's funny how none of them ever mentioned such a "resurrection.")

Certainly, the ideas for a V12 engine based on the Packard V8 have plausibility within the context of their 1955 origin and are documented in the corporate record, but it is doubtful that Packard engineers ever got as far as the changes they would have to make to the body and chassis to accomodate that new engine, before the idea was tabled.

Instead, they were working on many great things for '57 (next-gen torsion bar suspension and Ultramatic, fuel-injection, etc.) and not just last ditch efforts (like those involving the use of Lincoln shells). While "Black Bess" is generally regarded as a pretty ugly car, too many people don't understand that it was just an engineering "mule" - genuinely real, but not a fully finshed car. Yet, you'll see a lot of Packard styling cues in other cars that followed - not just Edsel, but Lincoln (heard that's where a lot of talent went, rather than South Bend) and others.

I always felt that the problem for Packard under Nance was that they had bitten off more than they could chew and were fighting battles on too many fronts - trying to play catch up after years of being "adrift." Regardless, I am grateful that the '55 and '56 Packards were produced as they were (too bad they didn't make the Deluxe in a club coupe). They are awesome vehicles for their time, and they are well-worth the effort required to repair and maintain.

The Packard name was certainly an image boost for Studebaker, but it seems like the management in South Bend did nothing but try to milk what was left of that once-great image for '57-'58. Having worked for Avanti (though only in Youngstown from 1987-1990), I studied enough of the Avanti's design and evolution to see that Studebaker was working on a shoestring by the 1960s. While they were still doing things by the book, they had little time or money left to develop fully functional prototypes of a completely new car. The Avanti was built on a modified Lark convertible chassis. Even prototypes of two Avanti-inspired Studebaker products that I had the opportunity to study had never been genuinely roadworthy cars. Heck, Studebaker was spread so thin by then that they resorted to using pickup boxes from Dodge to produce their "new" Champ truck.

In my humble opinion, the nonsense in the subject fairy tale about making a V12 was nothing more than a rehash and extrapolation of what Packard had considered nearly a decade earlier. I have not seen one piece of tangible, irrefutable evidence to support the existence of the subject vehicle.

Thanks for your support on this.

[55PackardGuy]

Brian,

Thanks for the tip on the "Fall" book. In my own mind, after the great mistakes of buying the Conner plant and Studebaker, Packard STILL had another chance in the spring of 1956: Do a facelift of the '56s (including a "Request") keep the dealers reliably supplied with them, and promote them aggressively. Keep the new chassis/body/engine refinements in the works and debut some of them in '58, if they managed to make money with the '57s. Look at Chevrolet, they offered the same cars from '55 through '57. Why try to top that? The '56 Packards were still way ahead of the competition engineering-wise. The Packard History notes that Auto Age judged the car the best handling of 1955 and the "best car of the year" for brakes, handling, steering and suspension. Other magazines also had high praise for them. When a company has an engineering edge and is strapped for cash, the last thing to worry about is "improving" things that are great already. It's like they couldn't resist bettering their last effort, which is commendable but not practical in the company's situation. What I'm tacitly saying here, of course, is that if I'da been there I coulda saved Packard. That's my conceit. The main thing now is to know what actually did happen, and to think about how best to keep the marque alive with the cars that are out there, and maybe even come up with some contemporary concepts based on the last generation. The suspension, in particular, still begs for development. Things like the Packard Panther Project (where'd it go?) are very exciting. If I had money in my old age, that's the direction I'd think about going.

This may not fit the original thread very well--I think it was something about a 1965 V-12? (I was sure the year was a typo when I first logged onto it).

Maybe continue this on a new thread, like '55-'56 Packard Inspirations... any interest?

[Guest]

Guy: The sad fact there were many great mistakes made by Packard starting around 1939 that started the down fall of Packard. The first of whic in my opinion is getting involved with the tooling and building cost of the Rolls Merlin airplane engines. This took away money that could have been used in the research and developemnet and refinement of the new Clipper line. As it turns out this same mistake was made about 10 years later again. The second mistake before WW II was getting out of the body building business and letting Briggs build Packard bodies. I will continue this talk with you and Brian on saturday night when I have more time.

[Guest]

If I may jump in I think that the Packard/Rolls Merlin business was a good choice for Packard considering the company's experience with building Marine and aircraft engines. Packard was a company renown for it's engineering expertise and I doubt whether any other American manufacturer would have had the skill to accomplish what they did. We must not lose sight of the fact that victory in World War 2 was very uncertain until well into 1943 and those engines played a big part in the war being won by the Allies. I agree that the Briggs body decision was not a good one.

[Guest B.H.]

Guy -

No, that was no typo, but (as you probably gathered) the the topic refers to a story published by both a Studebaker and a Packard club. I was highly suspicious when I first read it, but it has become a rather hot topic for some. What disturbs me (and several others here, as well as many more in the Stude rank and file) is that the article has been effectively challenged, but remains unsupported and unretracted by its publishers.

When it comes to the 1957 redesigns, the '55-'56 V8 Packards were already the result of a facelift on an aging platform. I think Packard knew that they had pushed the envelope as far as it would go with the 1951 body and chassis. Also, Chrysler-Plymouth-Dodge-DeSoto cars would be all-new for '57. Mercury would have a completely new look for '57, and Lincoln would follow in '58. I believe that Cadillac, Buick, and Olds had some models with new styling for '57 that foreshadowed '58 (though much of GM's 1958 styling ranks among my least favorite ever.) In contrast, the lines of the proposed '57 Packards look low and long enough to fit in with 1959 styling , which might have put PMCCC ahead of the game, and Packard needed a trump card to weather the coming Eisenhower recessions.

For me, that the still-born 1957 Packard line-up looked so promising makes the subject article - with its fabricated photos - even more controversial.

While the Packard Motor Car Company appears to have had a long history of maintaining healthy cash reserves, the changing face of the post-WWII industry and marketplace pushed their costs up dramatically. As such, I think that the single biggest problem facing Packard was securing funds needed to make it through some sort of transition during the 1950s. Yet, if I had one wish for Packard it would be that they had never been lulled by the "siren's song" to merge all the independents and entered that "shotgun wedding" with Studebaker, but found some other healthier short term solution to get them through 1954-56 and build those '57 cars that "should have been."

Well, I've often felt that I was born too late to "save" Packard (one reason I went to work for Avanti - though that proved to be something of a mistake). Now, having worked for years in various aspects and levels of the auto industry, I wonder now any one person or group of persons could have done much better. While it's nice to reminisce and speculate about what might have been, as you point out, the priority has to be keeping the surviving cars on the road.

By all means, feel free to start a new thread if you want to discuss a broader aspect than that of this one thread, and others will likely follow. While technical issues are popular here, they are - by no means - the only topics of interest in this forum.

[Guest B.H.]

Dave -

Good points on the Merlin work. Yet, surely, the re-engineering/-tooling work had to have been subsidized by the US government.

[Guest]

Brian, I am reasonably certain that Packard was paid by the US and British governments for work on modifying the Merlin to permit mass production. Not unlike most other car makers assembly line and plants were modified for production of war materiel. Where I live a railroad passenger car plant was converted to make Hurricane and later Hellcat aircraft. My feelings about Packard's demise is that the company after the war pursued the market for midpriced cars and taxi cabs diluting the cachet of the name and repuation of Packard as a luxury car maker. Shortening the hood on the beautiful Clipper design and installing 6 cylinder engines and small eights was not a good move in the long run. There was just to much competition in that price range and the name Packard did not belong there. I think that after the war the Clipper was still as good a design as any available and could have been continued into the 1950's without the bathtub redesign. Pursuing big production numbers and going toe to toe with the competition with the resources of GM and Ford wasn't a good idea. I do however think that the merger of Packard with Nash, Hudson and Studebaker would have created a big enough company to stay in business and be competitive as a full line company with Packard being an exclusive high end car to compete with Cadillac. After all GM itself began as a collection of small companies formed into one was it not?

[55PackardGuy]

Good points, all. Once again, my initial post has disappeared without a trace just as I was finishing it. Am I being punished for being long-winded?

Here's the gist of it:

No doubt Packard lost some ground due to WWII sacrifices, as a lot of companies did. However, they seemed to get the short end of contracts or help after the war. According to the Kimes book, Defense Secretary Wilson and Treasury Secretary George Humphrey didn't give the company the time of day when it asked for some help. (I guess they just weren't Chrysler.)

It seems that Packard management had made an assumption that they had to have new cars for 1957. Once again, according to Kimes, they felt their "dealer organization would not hold together" without a new car. I'm not so sure they were right about this. Their dealers may have been more in need of reassurance that cars would be readily available, which was not the case in '56. Also, there was likely to have been "pent-up demand" among Packard customers who would have readily accepted delivery of face-lifted '56s. Many saw the '55s as new cars, in spite of the use of main body shells dating from '51. In some ways, they were new cars--engines, suspensions, transmissions.

One big stumbling block was the acquisition of the cramped Conner manufacturing plant. However, building the same basic cars for the third year might have allowed for manufacturing efficiencies and better quality control (Ask the Man Who Tried to Build One there).

An anecdote about Packard customer relations of the day:

After purchasing a new 1955 Clipper Custom, my father was irritated by a noisy, loose windshield. He was visited by a field rep (no dealers near our small town) who offered this advice: "what do you expect when people have to have those big heavy windshields--they're gonna rattle." My dad was not optimistic about how long the manufacturer of his new car would be in business with customer relations like that.

Perhaps Packard could have reduced the pessimism in its dealer ranks, but management seemed to be concentrating more on getting an all-new car out in 1957.

I think the next generation Packards would have been great, but it may have been better in the long run to plan for their debut in '58.

I'll give this a rest for now, and ask once again--anybody out there have some "Packard Inspriations" for torsion bar suspensions and modernized mechanicals?

Last night, I got to thinking (it can happen)--what a natural for a stable, durable SUV platform. Or a shortened version with a light body for a sports car. How would a lighter body affect handling, and how could the "spring rates" of the torsion bars be modified to accomodate it?

Are you out there, Craig? Do you know what happened to the "sectioned" Executive shown on your website? That thing looked like it would be very sinister. Lower and lighter. And, of course, the Panther...

[Guest imported_PackardV8]

The 1965 Packard V12 title IS NOT A MISPRINT!!!!!! IT IS 1965 as in nineteen SIXTY FIVE. It is regarding a HOAX article that was RECENTLY published. Let there be NO confusion about the year in question as a misprint.

I will repeat: it IS 1965 (nineteen SIXTY FIVE) EXACTLY and precisely as written in the title.

[WCraigH]

Guy:

Yes, the Packard Panther project is still alive. A few months ago I posted a new inovation for T-L Packards which was an [color:"red"] adjustable front link which allows one to compensate for torsion bar sag over the years. Do a search on this forum for details.

Also almost finished is a significant oil pump, etc upgrade, but it's been heck getting it finished due to fitment issues.

I have demurred updating my website until these two [color:"blue"] Special Projects are finished. Should be any day now. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

[55PackardGuy]

Sorry, PackardV8, but I guess I didn't make it clear in my post that AT FIRST I thought the title MIGHT be a typo (y'know, reversing two digits). I read the entire thread before responding, so I was up to speed on the controversy--and the year in question. I just thought it was worth noting that Packard had considered the idea of a V-12 back in '55, and that this may have lead the authors of the article to start what-if dreaming. Which is fine if you don't start presenting it as fact. I prefer to what-if dream about the future rather than the past, anyway. What if Craig gets the Panther going and takes it to an auto show and someone from Detroit notices what a great retro look it has and how well it handles and drives...

[Guest B.H.]

Dave -

Well then, I'm thinking that if the gov't subsidized that work, then PMCC probably didn't lose money from it, and perhaps the only real "drain" on them, from continuing with defense work after the war, was the allocation of engineering talent on defense product. After the war, I believe they had set up separate plants to continue with defense work - the big enticement for Curtiss-Wright to get involved in 1956.

I think Packard's entry into a lower price field was aimed at acheiving higher volume to make more effective use of production capacity and spread costs over more units, ultimately allowing them to compete better with the big boys - though it obvously didn't work well in the long run. That move is a lot like the strategy that that metro area dealers have pusrued successfully for years, selling more cars at lower prices. Mind you, I'm not saying it was the best move, but Packard was often seduced by easy ways out. Getting blind-sided by so many short term problems, perhaps they lost sight of the bigger picture - it's just human nature.

Yes, the mega-merger, in theory, should have been a formidable marketing force to be reckoned with; the Studebaker-Packard product line-up alone should have covered a very broad spectrum. Yet, I doubt if just lumping those four very different independents together could have written a more favorable history - even if they had the leadership to become truly fully-integrated as one company - not three or four.

Yes, the GM conglomerate was formed from a group of companies - many of which them were losing money or adrift in their own markets at that time. However, that group was more than a bunch of carmakers, it included many suppliers of critical components. In my humble opinion, it was GM's (and Ford's) high level of vertical integration, supported by a great volume of total car production, that made them successful and protected their future. (Yet, notice how the trend is just the opposite today - scary.)

Alfred P. Sloan's plan for GM was brilliant, but mainly in hindsight because it happened to work out well in the end. Yet, I wonder how many people scoffed at his ideas back then. Still, how many years did it take to turn that rag-tag bunch of companies around and make a solid profit? The independents didn't have the luxury of time in the fast-changing market of the 1950s, but I even have to wonder if Sloan could have pulled it off in today's market.

[Guest B.H.]

Guy -

Sounds like you found a real problem with Packard's field support.

I worked as a District Manager for Chrysler for a few years in the '80s, but as marginal as their product and organization were (though I'm not saying that I'm perfect), I never would been caught in that situation saying anything like that - especially when there was a series of factory bulletins covering windshield fitment issues in the '55 cars!

[Guest]

Brian, This topic has been thrashed around for as long as I can remember and the reasons for Packard's demise, I guess, will be a constant source of speculation and conjecture for many years to come. I think it's partly what keeps the memory of that great company alive along with those of us fortunate to own it's product. We all have our theories and we are all likely partly right. I sort of subscribe to the admittedly snobbish opinion that Packard should never have built the 120 or rather should not have made it and sold it as a Packard. I recall my grandfather who was a big fan of Packard tell me as a child that it was the 120 that ruined Packard's name and that was in the 1940's which was closer to the era that we are at today. Easy enough for me to say since I wasn't around then and if I was I wouldn't have been in the financial category to afford a Packard anyway.

[Guest B.H.]

Dave -

Yes, we could spend years discussing what Packard might have done differently, but that's really not what I come here for. The Ward book sums it up best (though many will still argue its points), but I think the deck had already been stacked against the independents by the time they moved on any thoughts of merger.

Beyond the shutdown of Packard's Detroit operations, Studebaker stopped producing automobiles in 1966 (though some vehicle production may have continued beyond that to fulfill gov't contracts). While the Nash-Hudson merger faired a bit better than S-P, American Motors products quickly evolved to bear little resemblance to their lineage, but they, too, eventually fell out of step with the market. Chrysler, who almost didn't make it into the 1980s, was mainly after the Jeep (a product that American Motors had acquired in the late '60s from what was left of Kaiser) when they "merged" with AMC in 1987, and they proceed to level the Kenosha facility just a few years later. Ironically, Chrysler is being slowly assimilated by Daimler. Even though the Avanti keeps popping up from time to time, it is a mere shadow of its former self - little more now than a cosmetic conversion of a Camaro/Firebird.

Looking out over that wake of carnage, it's hard to imagine what will be left of any of the American car companies in another ten years, in this new dog-eat-dog, global economy.

As such, I simply think that if it had ever been <span style="font-style: italic">feasible</span> to build a new Packard V12 and revive the image of the once grand marque, the Packard people in Detroit would have been the ones to do so, with the best time being 1957 - not Studebaker and several years later. I can't imagine anyone being able to revive it from scratch in today's highly-restrictive, highly-litigious economy.

Well, I am glad that I at least have real Packards in my garage. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

[Guest imported_PackardV8]

resurrected ONLY because someone RECENTLY said to forget it.