Reviled by Packard purists, ignored by the collector car world, the final Studebaker-based Packards of 1957-58 have earned the unfortunate name “Packardbaker.” Here’s their short, sad, and interesting story.
There very nearly was no Packard for 1957.
On June 25, 1956, the last of the Detroit-built Packards rolled off the assembly line on Conner Avenue. On the following day, company president James Nance resigned, unable to persuade the bankers to advance any more funding for new products and tooling. On August 20, with all the other possibilities exhausted and time running out, the Studebaker-Packard board elected to throw together a skeleton lineup of ’57 Packard models. These cars would be closely based on existing Studebaker products and built in the Studebaker plant in South Bend, Indiana.
This last-ditch, last-minute effort was attempted mainly to satisfy the few remaining dealer commitments, keep the Packard name alive in the marketplace, and buy time for a reorganization that, as things turned out, never arrived. The Studebaker-based Packard lineup—soon to earn the name “Spackard” or more commonly, “Packardbaker”—made its debut on January 31, 1957.
There was but one model line for 1957 and it was designated the Packard Clipper, a tacit admission that these were not true senior Packards. Only two body styles were offered: the four-door Town Sedan (lead photo at top) and the Country Sedan, a four-door wagon. The four-door was a mildly facelifted Studebaker President, of course, while the wagon, based on the Studebaker Broadmoor, gave Packard its first wagon model since 1950. Just one engine was available and it was Studebaker’s most powerful, the 289 CID V8 with McCulloch supercharger usually found in the Golden Hawk, and it was good for 275 hp.
With barely 90 days to work with and virtually no budget, the styling team, led by Richard A. Teague, tacked on classic Packard design cues wherever they could. Among other imaginative tricks, somehow they managed to graft the fabulous ’56 Packard tail lamp assemblies to the aging Studebaker sheet metal. But if you look a little more closely, the wagon’s 1953-vintage greenhouse is all too evident.
Priced near $3,000 and carrying more standard trimmings, the Packards sold for around $400 more than comparable Studebaker models. Sales amounted to only 3,940 Town Sedans (Model 57L-Y8) and 869 Country Sedans (57L-P8). But given the shortened ’57 model year and the rapidly vanishing Packard dealer network, maybe it’s a wonder they sold as many as they did.
For 1958, the Clipper label was dropped and two more body styles were added to the line, a two-door hardtop (above) based on the new-for-’58 Studebaker Starlight roof, and the Packard Hawk, a variation on the Studebaker Hawk theme (below). The previous sedan and wagon models continued largely unchanged except for the addition of awkward fender extensions to house quad headlamps, the hot Motor City styling trend of 1958. The normally-aspirated version of the 289 CID V8 was now standard on all models except the Hawk, which retained the McCulloch VS-57S blower setup.
The Packard Hawk (58L-K9) is known in some parts as the “Hurley Hawk” after Roy T. Hurley, Studebaker-Packard chairman and CEO at Curtiss-Wright Corporation, which effectively controlled S-P at the time. Hurley admired a Maserati he saw on a visit to Europe and asked Duncan McRae, S-P design chief, to work some Italian styling flourishes into a Packard-badged Hawk design. As the story goes, McRae assumed the request was for a one-off special and was as surprised as anyone when it turned up on the production schedule. Along with a wide, Italianesque grille, McRae added upholstered door tops and a faux spare tire to the deck lid. (See our separate feature on the Packard Hawk here.)
The addition of a Hawk model to the lineup did little to boost sales. Only 588 units found buyers, for a total of 2,622 cars in Model Year 1958 and a grand total of 7,431 for the two years of South Bend-built Packards combined. Volume was far too miniscule to carry on, obviously, and the Packardbakers were discontinued on July 13, 1958.
Actually for a 1957 car this was a pretty nice mid rahge car. Sure it shared its body etc with the Studebaker President, no different that the base Buick or Olds did with a Chevy.
Perhaps the mistake or the marketing mistake made by the company is they should have continued the senior Packards, and made them in East Grand Blvd . That would have given senior buyers their own body, the first since pre war, and would have given the company a chance to really sell enough Packards to keep the line going.
The way they did it made the whole deal look like a fire sale effort to end the line (which it was) instead of a well organized effort to expand the line. The senoir stuff out of Detroit could have been the start of a semi custom line of high end cars while the Clipper could have added to the volume in South Bend, rumor is even the short run of low volume Clipper made money in 1957, the “Packardbaker should have been a road back for Packard, not a start of the end…..looking back it was a good effort and a nice car.
In 1957, Buick and Oldsmobile did not share bodies with Chevrolets. They used GM;s B body while Chevrolet and Pontiac used the A body. Big Buicks and Cadillac used the C body.
a great story re Studebaker and Packard, and while there were design similarities in tandem alternating years at times at the GM plants, the Buick and Olds were one, and Pontiac and Chevy were distinct from them. And, it is true that Cadillac and the larger Buicks shared much.
Thanks for the enjoyable post. James A. Ward’s book, The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company, is an excellent history of the company.
As someone who has an unhealthy obsession with defunct American makes I am always grateful to read posts like this.
https://disaffectedmusings.com
A nice article on these Packards. I owned a 1958 Packard hardtop sedan for nine years. We liked it. One comment/correction, the base greenhouse for wagon dated back to the 1954 model year as there wasn’t any Studebaker wagon for 1953.