#packardbaker

The 1958 Packard coupe was certainly unique. The double tailfins were definitely different and the headlight pods,well,they had to make the dual headlights work with the design . The unique one year only roofline was sharp.

For 1957 Packard called their wagon the Clipper Country Sedan.

1958 Packard sedan. The PackardBaker.

Because Packard’s decline was long and public, and because the prestige brand exited the stage almost a decade before Studebaker, many people assume Packard was the weaker of the two companies when they merged. 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 not considered worth the trouble by Packard’s board). The board also 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. The board, if not Nance, were so taken with Studebaker that they never even ordered an independent review of its books, and ended saddled with a debt-ridden mess. 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 engine had cost $20M to develop. The entire car that became known as the #Packardbaker, a lightly restyled Studebaker President, 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 wasn’t actually a bad car to look at or drive, future star designers Bill Schmidt (later of Chrysler), Dick Teague (AMC), and chief modeler Fritz Wagner did everything they could for it. But it was way too little, way too late. Packard production ceased on June 13, 1958. https://www.instagram.com/p/CMzsonbl6VR/?igshid=2npbkuxx7z7e

The 1957 Packard Clipper wagon was an attempt to keep Packard Dealers from total revolt, so it was based on the Studebaker President, with a few Packard touches such as 56 taillights. 60 years later it isn't atrocious

This is a 1958 Packard Hawk.supercharged.leather interior.

The top two are 57 Packard Clipper Wagons,the bottom two,1958 Packard Station Wagons all Studebaker based.