In 1953, Packard brought back the Clipper name to stake out a place in the mid-priced field competing against Buick, Oldsmobile, and Chrysler.
James J. Nance (1900-1984) came to the Packard Motor Car Company in May of 1952 not as an engineer or an automobile man, but as a marketing specialist who’d transformed the Hotpoint brand at General Electric into a major player in home appliances. In his new role as president, he had a clear mandate to perform the same magic at Packard, which was then rapidly losing ground against the major manufacturers of the Motor City.
As Nance saw it, while the lower-priced junior models were Packard’s biggest sellers, they were bleeding away image and prestige from the premium products that had made the company’s reputation. His solution was to split the automaker into two separate brands: Packard for the top luxury market and Clipper in the mid-priced range. When dealers balked at the plan—it was the small-ticket models that kept their doors open and the lights on—Nance compromised. The new product line would be called Packard Clipper, with plans to completely separate the two brands at some point down the road.
Introduced in November of 1952, the new mid-priced line was essentially the former 200/250 series of 1951-52 rebadged as the Clipper, a familiar Packard name from 1941-47. “Big car value at medium car cost” was the slogan, and it was a fair description of the product’s mission as well: Take the prestigious Packard name into the mid-range market to face off against Buick, Chrysler, and the rest. Prices ranged from $2,544 to $2,745, in contrast to the senior Packards where pricing began well above $3,000, and directly on top of the Buick Special.
Two trim levels, Clipper Special and Deluxe Clipper, shared a pair of body shells, a four-door Touring Sedan and a two-door post Club Sedan, both on a 122-in wheelbase chassis. Powering the base Special was a 288 cubic-inch L-head straight eight with 150 hp, while the Deluxe received a 327 CID straight eight with 160 hp. The senior Packards that year also featured a 327 CID eight, confusingly, but this was a different engine with nine main bearings rather the Clipper’s less costly five main-bearing unit.
The Clipper series sold nearly 64,000 cars in 1953, a solid improvement over the old 200/250 series and more than 70 percent of Packard’s volume that year. However, it was far less than required to support Vance’s plan to carry the company on lower-priced, high-volume products. In 1954 Packard sales tanked, Clipper included, and also that year came the unfortunate buyout of Studebaker. In 1956 Nance finally got his wish to spin off Clipper as a stand-alone brand, but by then Packard was nearly finished in Detroit. The 1957 Packards, rebadged Studebakers assembled in South Bend, Indiana, all wore Clipper emblems, and there the Packard Clipper story ends.
