Packard Clipper
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The Packard Clipper was a model of the Packard Motor Car Company from 1941 to 1954, and the Studebaker-Packard Corporation for 1955 and 1957. Clippers built for model year 1956 are considered a stand alone make, not a model of Packard.
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[edit] 1941-1942
The Packard Motor Car Company introduced the Packard Clipper model, as part of Packard's Nineteenth Series of automobiles. The car featured "fade away" styling, which means that the front fenders melted into the front doors, and was powered by the same engine used in the Packard 180 series. The Clipper was lower and wider than previous Packards, and was the first streamlined Packard. One body series was offered (model 1951), a four door sedan. The Packard Clipper was priced between the Packard 120 and the Packard 160. Packard advertising encouraged consumers to "Skipper the Clipper!"
For its Twentieth Series (1942), save for its Packard Six and convertible models, all Packards (models 2001, 2002, 2003 "Eight" models 2003, 2023, 2004, 2005, 2055 "Eight" and models 2006, 2007 and 2008 "Super-Eight) became "Clipperized" and adopted the styling cues introduced by the 1941 Clipper.
[edit] 1946-1947
For 1946-1947 all Packards used the Clipper styled bodies and the "Clipper" name.
[edit] 1948-1952
The Clipper nameplate was dropped for 1948 as Packard issued its Twenty-Second Series automobiles, which, while proclaimed by the company as "all-new," were actually restyled Clippers. At a time when the company could have sold virtually any car it built, Packard's president, George Christopher, insisted upon concentrating on sales of the company's lower-priced cars, while longtime competitor Cadillac focused its attentions on the upper end of the market.
The Twenty-Second and Twenty-Third Series (from mid-1949) cars wore the "upside-down bathtub" styling that was briefly in vogue in the late 1940s. Unfortunately for Packard, Nash and Hudson, the three manufacturers who embraced this type of styling, General Motors introduced designs that were lower-slung, more tightly-drawn and less bulbous at around the same time. GM's designs quickly caught the buying public's fancy, while the "bathtubs" quickly fell from favor.
Following a round of bitter corporate infighting in 1949, Packard management finally decided to phase out the "bathtubs" and create the all-new Twenty-Fourth Series for 1951. The new "high-pockets" design (so called because of its high beltline) was much more modern and impressive. However, Packard continued to push hard into the lower end of the mid-priced field with its new "200" and "250" models, which was dominated at the time by Oldsmobile, DeSoto and others. James J. Nance became the company's president in 1952, and he immediately set to work on divorcing the lower-priced cars from the higher-end Packards. To this end, he decreed that the 200 and 250 would be consolidated into a new line of Clippers for 1953.
[edit] 1953-1955
Nance originally had hoped to introduce the new "Clipper" as a stand-alone marque, targeting the mid range price field which he felt was dragging the Packard image down. When word was leaked to the Packard dealer network that they would be losing their best selling Packard model to "Clipper", they balked. As an appeasement, Nance rolled the Clipper out as a Packard, and worked to transition the cars toward their own make. Thus, the Packard Clipper name was reintroduced and applied to the company's entry-level models, previously known as the Packard 200, beginning in 1953. Clippers were available in Special and Deluxe trim models, as two and four door sedans.
For 1954, the "Clipper by Packard" was given its own unique rear fender trim and tail lights to further differentiate it from traditional Packards. The cars were also available with a distinctive two-tone paint pattern. For 1955, Packard became a marque in the newly formed Studebaker-Packard Corporation.
The Packard Clipper Constellation was a two-door hardtop automobile produced by the Studebaker-Packard Corporation in model years 1955 and 1956. The 1955 model was a Packard product and sold as part of the Packard Clipper line; for 1956, Clipper was divorced from Packard, becoming a make in its own right.
[edit] 1956
Model year 1956 finally saw Nance's dream of Clipper as a separate marque realized, although by this time, most experts would later agree, it was too late. The Clipper was now its own separate registered marque, manufactured and sold by the Packard-Clipper Division of Nance's Studebaker-Packard Corporation.
Existing Packard dealers were required to execute a Clipper dealer franchise sales agreement, but once again, most cried foul and, not long into the model year, "Packard" script emblems began to be placed on the decklids of new Clippers that rolled off the company's Detroit assembly line. In a complete reversal of Nance's strategy, the emblems were also made available for placement on already-built cars that were languishing on dealers' lots across the country.
By the summer of 1956, Studebaker-Packard was in deep financial trouble. The Packards and Clippers were not selling at anywhere near a profitable level, and the company's creditors refused to advance any further money to the company for new tooling that would have allowed Nance to finally realize his ultimate goal of sharing body components among the company's three lines of cars. In late July, the final Packards and Clippers rolled out of the Conner Avenue factory. No one knew what the future might bring.
[edit] 1957
Following the closure of the Detroit, Michigan Packard plant, Studebaker-Packard entered into a management contract with the Curtiss-Wright Company. Under C-W's president, Roy T. Hurley, S-P's new president Harold Churchill approved production of a new Packard, to be built in Studebaker's South Bend, Indiana plant. The new Packards, originally to continue the Packard Executive nameplate, were to share the Studebaker President four-door sedan body and new four-door station wagon body as well. The total tooling cost of the new Packard was estimated at roughly $1 million. At some point, however, the Executive name was dropped, as all of the Packards produced for 1957 carried the Packard Clipper name.
In order to keep the tooling cost as low as possible, trim components from the 1956 Clippers were used. This was done to make the 1957 model differ in appearance from the President; outside, this included a narrower Packard-style front bumper and 1956 Clipper taillamps and wheelcovers. Inside, the cars' dashboards were fitted with the same basic instrument cluster as used in the previous two years. On the whole, the effect was that of a glitzy Studebaker.
Sales of the new Clippers were not great; historians differ as to why, although the cars' obvious Studebaker origins (which led the new Clippers to be derisively nicknamed "Packardbakers" by many people) certainly didn't help. Only about 4,600 were sold for the year.
For 1958, the Clipper name was discontinued, and the few Packard automobiles that were produced (four-door sedans, station wagons, and two-door hardtop coupes) were simply known by their marque name. The only exception to this was the Packard Hawk, which was based on the Studebaker Golden Hawk.
[edit] What might have been
Had Studebaker-Packard's creditors not cut off the flow of money to the company in early 1956, James Nance and his underlings had some grand plans for their three lines of cars for 1957 and beyond. However, as time and money slipped away, these plans died without coming to fruition.
As planned, Studebaker and Clipper cars would have been built around a shared chassis and inner body structure, but both cars would have had distinctly different outer styling. Photos exist of a proposed Clipper with modest, tasteful tailfins, a flat, taut roofline, crisply-drawn lower body features and even slight fins over the headlamps that extended back, flowing seamlessly into the tops of the long front fenders.
All in all, the proposed look was thoroughly modern and would certainly have made an interesting contrast when compared to the bulky, rounded 1957-58 Oldsmobile against which it would have competed. One is led to wonder, however, how the proposed car would have fared in the market given the "Eisenhower recession" that began in late 1957 and extended through much of 1958, when so many other established marques such as Oldsmobile, Buick and DeSoto had a tough time selling cars.
It is all very much a situation where one wonders "what might have been."
[edit] References
- Maloney, James H. (1994). Studebaker Cars. Crestline Books. ISBN 0-87938-884-6.
- Langworth, Richard (1979). Studebaker, the Postwar Years. Motorbooks International. ISBN 0-87938-058-6.
- Gunnell, John, Editor (1987). The Standard Catalog of American Cars 1946-1975. Kraus Publications. ISBN 0-87341-096-3.
- Kimes, Beverly R., Editor. Clark, Henry A. (1996). The Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1945. Kraus Publications. ISBN 0-87341-428-4.
- Packard-Clipper division, Studebaker-Packard Corporation,Clipper dealer sales agreement, Studebaker-Packard Corporation, 1956, forms 80-698 & 59
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