#finsandchrome

Because Packard’s decline was long and public, and because #Packard exited the stage almost a decade before #Studebaker, many people assume Packard was the weaker of the two companies when they merged - but that wasn’t necessarily so. In 1953 Packard was still relatively healthy and debt free - until a series of unfortunate twists of fate culminating in the loss of Packard’s main body supplier, Briggs, to an acquisition by Chrysler. From there on, a merger was the only way to keep the company alive, and Packard’s James Nance negotiated with both Nash and Studebaker (Hudson was considered moribund by Packard’s board, and not worth the trouble). Packard’s board refused to hear Nash boss George Mason’s proposals for merging into the nascent AMC (Nash & Hudson) in 1954, and instead chose to listen to rosy predictions from Lehman Brothers, who arranged the merger between S and P. Packard’s board, if not Nance, were so taken with Studebaker that they never even ordered an independent review of Studebaker’s books - and were shocked to find that Studebaker was a debt-ridden mess that they were now tied to. New Packards with new V8s debuted for 1955, but production delays and quality ills took the rose off the bloom quickly, and while not a bad year, sales were way below expectations. In the next 14 months Nance did everything he could think of to get a new Packard to market, including approaching Ford about buying the tooling for the ’56 Lincoln (unsurprisingly, Ford said no). Production of the big new Packards ended on June 15, 1956. But that wasn’t the end. To make Packard franchises happy, a new Packard built in South Bend debuted in January, #1957 . Packard’s ’55 V8 had cost $20M to develop. What became known as the #Packardbaker - little more than a lightly restyled Studebaker President with #PackardClipper badges - was designed for $1.1M, and it showed. Poorly received, just 4,809 were sold (down 70% from ’56), including only 869 “country sedans” - Packard’s word for #wagon. The Packardbaker was actually not a bad car, but it was way too little, way too late. Packard production ceased on June 13, 1958. #wagonwednesday #ig_autoshow #stationwagon #finsandchrome

f you go to car shows in North America, Tri-Five Chevies (the ’55-’57 Chevrolets) are omnipresent, and there’s always a #ChevyNomad in there even though only 20,092 of the sportwagons were made. Much rarer is the #Pontiac version - the Star Chief Safari, outsold more than 2:1 by the Nomad. But the original #PontiacSafari would never have existed without it’s Chevy cousin. The original idea for the Nomad bowed in January, 1954 at the annual GM #Motorama. That car, the Corvette Nomad, was a #sportwagon version of the original Corvette, part of an attempt to give the tepid sales of the original Corvette a boost. Reaction to the Nomad was good enough to make a production Nomad happen, but not on the Corvette chassis. Instead, the Nomad’s flowing #longroof would be attached to the new 1955 Chevy Bel Air. To lower tooling costs, #Pontiac got a version too - to which Pontiac’s chief stylist, Paul Gillan, applied the styling developed for the also-new and related 1955 Pontiacs. Like the Nomad and the Bel Air, the #PontiacSafari would ride in the top trim level - Star Chief. Both of these stylish #wagons were meant to sell on style and luxury, so despite sharing a wheelbase and components with the Chieftain, the base Pontiac, the Safari was trimmed and labeled like a top-spec Star Chief. The short length and standard all-new V8s made both cars good performers. 1955 was a transformative year for both divisions - but neither the Nomad nor the Safari were big sellers - 3,760 Safaris were sold in ’55, 4,042 in ’56 and just 1,292 in #1957, despite a significant style update and yet more power (from an enlarged 347-cid V8). There were many 2-door wagons in the 50’s but most were meant as base-model utility cars, and in ’58 that’s what the 2-door Safari became (they sold 5,417 of them, so that’s what the market wanted). Pontiac had expanded the Safari nameplate to a four-door in 1957, and it became a trim level of wagon rather than a model. From then on, the Safari name would be applied to a vast array of Pontiac Wagons from big arks like the Bonneville to the 1970s Astre compact before being shuffled off forever in 1989.  #wagonwednesday #fifties #finsandchrome #ig_autoshow