The modest 1937 Packard Six didn’t exactly save the proud Detroit luxury car maker, but it helped to keep the assembly lines running.
To recognize the impact of the 1937 Packard Six on the fortunes of the Packard Motor Car Company, we need only to look at the sales figures. In its very first year, the Six sold more than 65,000 copies—more than half the Detroit car maker’s total volume. The new model’s attraction, of course, was the price: $795 to start, hundreds of dollars less than the nearest Packard and comfortably in Oldsmobile territory. In real terms, this was the first truly affordable Packard in history.
Built on a 115-inch wheelbase chassis (hence the factory model designation 115C) this was the first six-cylinder Packard in a decade, powered by a 237 CID inline six that was derived from the Packard 120’s L-head straight eight. But while it was smaller and blessed with a more modest powerplant, the Six was in other ways a real Packard, with four-wheel hydraulic brakes and Packard’s distinctive Safe-T-fleX independent front suspension. A full range of body styles was offered, from a business coupe to a sporty convertible coupe and a five-passenger touring sedan.
To this day, Packard loyalists are of two minds about the economy-priced Six models. Some say they tarnished the Packard brand, reducing the demand for the premium-priced senior models. Other enthusiasts note that the Six, with its tidy, almost Ford-like proportions and lighter engine perched over the front wheels, is an easy and enjoyable car to drive. And there is no question that the Six (and the mid-priced eights as well) kept the assembly lines on East Grand Boulevard humming through some tough years. Packard would continue to produce the six-cylinder models under the names Six, One-Ten, and Clipper through 1947.
That’s a really nice car for $800 in 1937. It’s a shame none of these smaller manufacturers were able to survive in the long run.
Snobs like to pile on the cheap Packard, but the company could not go on building a few thousand tanks per year and barely breaking even on each one.
In ’38 and beyond, Packard management lost its way, failing to understand that GM was carefully placing Buick to compete with Packard, so the Packard name and quality and styling would be downgraded compared to Cadillac, and this strategy worked well for GM. The Packard board also let management piss away 10 million on the hopeless Ultramatic gamble, then in 1954 hired a fast talking exec from an appliance maker, who probably did recognize at the time that Packard’s days of fortune were on the skids, but in order to fulfill his management contract, including a healthy exit payment to him, he cobbled together a last ditch effort to make himself look good, thinking, as most high management people, ” how do I get out of this with the most $ to me,” all the while producing a quickly made up vehicle, not even of the Oldsmobile/Buick quality that GM had finally put Packard grovelling down into . People who bought new Packards in the late 40’s, have said buying one was a mistake, the cars were crappy compared to what Cadillac produced then. Several of those Packard buyers I know of, quickly traded off their recently bought Packard, for a Cadillac. And so it went, Cadillac had finally dominated the luxury car market in North America. And good on them, too !