In the pre-war years Packard was among America’s top prestige cars, outselling Cadillac until the early 1950s. Like most automakers, Packard came out of the war years with plenty of cash from lucrative military contracts. Unfortunately for them they weren’t able to retool in time to bring all-new models to market for 1948 as almost all other Detroit manufacturers had done. Instead Packard was forced to re-body an existing platform. The new shape was not particularly well received. Nicknamed ‘the bathtub’ due to their resemblance to an upturned bath, the new models were polarizing, and without a new V8 to compete with Cadillac and Oldsmobile – Packard began to slide down the sales charts.

All new styling didn’t come until 1951 but Packard still had to rely on their ancient flathead 6 and straight 8 engines. One ace up the Packard sleeve was the Ultramatic transmission, which when combined with the big, lazy straight 8 made for smooth, quiet performance. Interestingly – John Z. DeLorean worked for Packard around this time and was responsible for improving the design of the Ultramatic. Despite improvements it couldn’t match the General Motors developed Hydramatic for performance and reliability.

In 1954 Packard bought Studebaker without performing sufficient due diligence. Only after merging to form The Studebaker-Packard Corporation did it become clear that Studebaker was heavily in debt. Despite well received all-new 1955 models with contemporary design and a spanking new 352 cubic inch ohv V8, production issues and reliability damaged Packard’s reputation further.

With a fish-like, fiber-glass nose tacked on to the front of a Studebaker Golden Hawk - not many were buying a Packard branded car by 1958

For 1956 the Clipper became a separate make from Packard for one year, but Packard too was gone by 1957 as a standalone marque. A Packard-Clipper badged model appeared as part of the Studebaker lineup. For 1958 a re-bodied Studebaker Golden Hawk with modified styling appeared as the Packard Hawk. Sales were almost non-existent, and so the demise of Packard came as no surprise to anyone, a sad ending nevertheless for the marque that made some of the finest pre-war cars in the world.