The Nostalgia of Forgotten Gods: Packard, USA, 1899-1959

Roarington’s journey to discover defunct car brands stops this week in the USA with the story of the brothers James and William Packard. Producers of incandescent lamps in Ohio, they bought a Winton as their first car in the late 1800s and quickly believed they could make a better product. In 1899, they founded the Ohio Automobile Company and built their first car, the single-cylinder Model A, which became a success with several hundred units sold.

In 1903, the company was renamed Packard Motor Car Company and moved to Detroit, a city that would become the automotive capital, immediately positioning itself at the top of the luxury market with impeccable build quality and the V12 Twin Six, the most powerful engine on an American car at the time, and later with the Super Eight's 8-cylinder engine.

The Model A of 1899, the first car by the Packard brothers.

After World War I, with aircraft engine production, Packard resumed its path, confirming its early reputation. In 1929, like all American manufacturers, it had to face the consequences of the Great Depression. Other high-end brands like Pierce-Arrow and Peerless disappeared, while Packard focused on the modularity of the cars produced using a single production line, reducing costs. The idea was to complement high-end luxury cars with a less expensive product to be mass-produced called the 120. The results were excellent, and the company produced over 100,000 cars in 1937.

Packards from the 1930s are highly sought after by collectors, like this 1934 Twelve.

Good financial results allowed the construction of a new wing of the Detroit factory with a modern assembly line to divide production into "Junior" for low-cost cars and "Senior" for luxury models. Sales were booming, but the high-end image lost exclusivity, and the aristocratic clientele began to snub the Packard brand, despite still having handcrafted finishes.

During World War II, there was another pause in car production to focus on supplying military engines. This was a boon for the company, which had the money for new investments after the war. However, investments were not made wisely, and the decline began, mainly due to fierce competition from the Big Three American brands: GM, Ford, and Chrysler. In 1953, Packard tried to reposition itself in the high-end market, remembering that pre-war, it was the brand with air conditioning and power windows. The Caribbean model was meant to relaunch the brand, but it wasn’t enough.

The 1935 model 120 or One-Twenty brought Packard into the mid-range market with excellent sales results but at the cost of brand reputation.

The situation worsened with an attempted acquisition of Studebaker, which was also in crisis. The dream was to create the fourth major American group with a merger with AMC. But nothing went right, and the last model, the Hawk of 1958, exited the scene, albeit introducing a great innovation: central door locking. The company's fate was sealed; it was too small and fragile compared to the giants. As they say, the earthenware pot among copper pots. It was bound to break.

The last model before the disappearance of the Packard brand is the 1958 Hawk, which introduced the central locking system.