The story
1941–1947
By the end of the 1930s, Packard president Max M. Gilman realized that efforts to improve the company's profitability during the previous decade. The Packard One-Twenty model was introduced in 1935 and its success in the marketplace helped save the company. The One-Ten had followed, achieving even higher volume. Despite a strong performance during 1937, Packard sales plummeted during the recession in 1938. The automaker's 76,000 sales for the calendar year 1939 were barely at its break-even point. Packard achieved a profit of only half-million dollars. This precarious financial state, combined with new model developments among Packard's rivals (GM's LaSalle and Cadillac Series 61, Chrysler Imperial, and the Lincoln-Zephyr), meant Gilman quickly needed something radically new to keep the company going.
The company developed a new car that was introduced eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Packard's hopes for the future rode on the new Packard Clipper line that represented a break from traditional styling and embodied an abrupt change in construction techniques. However, World War II intervened. It made Packard's investment to produce one of the only all-new 1941 American cars impossible to realize in the altered conditions.
Initial reception
The Clipper's market timing could not have been worse. After only 16,600 of the 1941 models were made, and a few thousand 1942s, Detroit stopped building civilian automobiles to concentrate on defense production. By the time cars began rolling off the lines again in late 1945, the still sleek Clipper's impact had been diminished by four years of war. The bright promise of its debut was limited by late introduction; what should have been its solid sophomore year was weakened by World War II. Its third and fourth years were postponed until 1946–47. Though Packard designer John Reinhart and other Company insiders wanted to retain and "sweeten" (in Reinhart's words) the Clipper's svelte lines, Packard management felt pressured by new, industry-wide postwar designs, thus introducing the mixed review "bathtub" or "pregnant elephant" 1948–1950 Packards.
There were only two other automakers introducing all-new 1941 models which were stopped short by the American entry into World War II and thus rendered obsolete before their time. Besides Packard, Ford brought out a much-changed design for the 1941 model year — the restyled Ford and its Mercury clone. Nash also produced all-new 1941 models, using monocoque "unitized" construction for the first time. General Motors redesigned for 1942, arguably a piece of bad timing even worse than Packard's, but the 1942 cars were so relatively few in number that they still looked reasonably new when GM resumed automotive production in 1946. The Ford/Mercury comparison was not apt either, primarily because these were quite different cars from Packards, with no pretense of luxury. Nor did their design history mirror the Clipper's. The 1941 Fords and Mercurys were evolutionary developments, clearly related to the 1940s they replaced. The Clipper was such a dramatic break with the previous Packard design as to preclude comparisons.
After the war, while Packard opted to improve the Clipper, while other automakers restyled its models for 1949. While the bulbous 1941–48 Fords, Mercuries, and Nashes were replaced by modern designs, the Clipper was undone by a bulbous 1948 upgrade that, while well received in its initial year, aged quickly in comparison with the new models from the "Big Three" and Nash, and cost as much to reskin as a wholly new car would've cost. A 1949 Mercury Eight which had cost $2,000 new was still worth $430 five years later, while a 1949 Packard Eight which had cost $2,200 new was worth only $375. Motor Trend automotive journalist Tom McCahill, who had raved about the '46 Packard Clipper Deluxe eight, called the 1948 Packard "a dowager in a Queen Elizabeth hat," and "a goat.'
The Clipper's timing was unfortunate. The state of the world being beyond Packard's control, Clipper production came to a halt on February 9, 1942, just as it was hitting its stride and when Clipper styling had spread through the entire Packard model lineup.
Style identity
A full envelope body with a modern look was a long time coming at Packard. Cadillac was wearing pontoon fenders and flowing lines by 1934 and had adopted all-steel bodies by 1935. In 1936, Lincoln announced the Zephyr, with an all-steel unibody, and a shape so advanced that derivations of it were still in production twelve years later. Chrysler also tried introducing a streamlined platform which the market didn't respond well to, named the Chrysler Airflow. By comparison, Packard adhered to traditional, crisp, conservative styling. Its main acknowledgment of new-era styling was the skirted fender which appeared in 1933. Packard – like Lincoln and Cadillac – had survived the Depression by building medium-priced cars: the One Twenty, Zephyr, and LaSalle, respectively. But unlike its rivals, Packard styling had remained arch-traditional. Unlike Lincoln, Packard followed the medium-priced One-Twenty with an almost-low-priced car, the Six (later briefly known as the One Ten). Unlike Cadillac, Packard refused to market its cheaper models by a different name and remained wedded to them long after prosperity had returned. By 1941, the year the Clipper debuted, the least expensive Cadillac was priced at $1,445; the lowest priced Packard sold for only $927.
Arguably its conservative design philosophy had stood Packard well in the years leading up to the Clipper. The company was able to advertise—and sold quite a few Packards with—styling continuity from year to year. There was a family resemblance between a 1939 and a 1932. In 1939, the comparison of its One Twenty with the LaSalle, the company declared that: "Packard has style identity...Packard styling is consistent...But look at the 1938 LaSalle! About the only similarity is in the name, and who can be sure that a sudden fanciful style change won't make the 1939 a style orphan?"
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Mercedes-Benz and Rolls-Royce survived for years with very expensive but dated designs. Packard also survived with limited styling change for at least eight or nine years up through 1940. Packard's hallmarks were good ones: the chiseled frontispiece; the grille recalling classic Greek architecture; the ox-yoke radiator/hood shape harkened back to the Model L of 1904. The cormorant mascot, red hexagon hubs, and arrowhead side-spear, were recognizable and timeless.
To create a modern envelope body while retaining those famous hallmarks was no small undertaking. It was still one of the chief accomplishments of automotive industrial design that the people who created the Packard Clipper were able to do so flawlessly. Advertising invited America to "Skipper the Clipper" in 1941. It was showing the country an obviously brand-new, up to date, in Packard's words, "Windstream" or "Speed-Stream" automobile, yet one which was still undeniably a Packard. Though it did not owe a curve or contour to any previous model, the milestone 1941 Clipper carried the same inimitable radiator and hood shape, as well as the same arrowheads and red hexes, and the same long hood and close-coupled profile of Packards of the past.
Design
Writing in The Classic Car and The Packard Cormorant, Joel Prescott published an account of the Clipper design which considerably revised the picture offered by George Hamlin and Dwight Heinmuller in Packard: A History of the Motor Car and The Company, published by Automotive Quarterly. James A. Ward's book on the decline of the Packard Motor Car Company includes views of designers such as Howard Darrin, John Reinhart, William Reithard, and Alex Tremulis.
Prior to World War II, Packard, like most auto companies at the time, did not have a styling department. It was Harley Earl's formidable Art and Colour Section at General Motors that convinced the industry of the importance of styling. A handful of outside consultants, like Raymond Loewy at Studebaker, occasionally sold their designs to American producers. Sometimes the designs even reached production without drastic changes by the body engineers, who at that point largely controlled the shape of cars. One such design consultant was Howard "Dutch" Darrin, whose involvement in the Clipper occurred because Packard was his favorite American make.
After returning to America in 1937 following a successful career as a Paris coachbuilder, Darrin looked around for chassis on which to practice his automotive art. He said, "I concentrated on Packards knowing that by lowering the radiator I could make a very beautiful custom-bodied Packard with little change in its basic structure." The result was a long skein of dramatic Packard-Darrins, which were actually cataloged by the company at one point and which led to Darrin's role in the Clipper. "Around 1940, Packard called and asked if I'd design a new standard line car for them. The hitch was that I had only ten days to do so, Chief stylist Ed Macauley (actually vice-president for design) would be on the coast for that amount of time, and if I didn't have anything before he left, it would be a lost cause. The company offered me a thousand dollars a day if I could meet the deadline."
Confident in his ability to put a thousand a day to good use, Darrin said he thought he "could establish enough lines for a full- and quarter-scale model". Later he said that to meet the deadline, he "slept several nights on a drafting table", yet Packard never paid him.
Kaiser-Frazer stylist Bob Robillard admitted that Darrin had held onto his claim as the originator of the Clipper almost from the start. A 1946, Darrin paper delivered before the Society of Automotive Engineers, "Does Styling Control the Design of Cars?" stating that he widened the Clipper body because the continuous fender-line, which comes right through the door past the A-pillar, required more width for the proper hinging of the door, "the net result being a wider and more roomy car." However, according to Reithard, "the parameters for track, wheelbase and overall length had been established. Other than that, we had very little to go on except some very rough sketches and hand-waving from Darrin."
While Darrin held himself the central design figure and the original design "called for a sweeping front fender-line that carried right through the doors to the rise of the rear fender, similar to a custom Clipper I built later for Errol Flynn". However, Packard shortened the sweep to fade away at mid-door. This was done as a hedge because no one knew if the through-fender-line would sell. He said Packard Styling also "vandalized the design by throwing on huge gobs of clay along the wheelbase" creating a flare to the lower part of the doors to hide the running boards they added for the same reason. Thus, by Darrin's own admission, the Clipper that appeared in production was not entirely his work. Few designers besides Darrin believed this splendid car was the product of ten days' work. But despite the work of Packard's designers, the Clipper's theme was clearly Darrin's, confirmed by Alex Tremulis and other insiders.
At the time Packard contacted Darrin about designing a production car in the theme of his limited-production Victorias, the company was, according to Darrin, "....so afraid of GM they couldn't see straight." GM's new C bodies, introduced midway through the 1940 model year, made Packard's traditional bodies, only facelifted since their 1938 introduction, look dated. Packard had, as Darrin said, "....the best chassis in the industry," but upper-echelon GMobiles looked more modern than Packard's traditional 1941 bodies. 1941 Buick and Cadillac sales were up 24% while Packard's traditional bodied cars down an accordant amount.
The Clipper changed that. The only thing hindering the Clipper's ascendency was War II, and after the war, the sheet steel shortages and strikes at vendors plagued all independents. After the war, for example, Chrysler was held up for weeks just by a strike at the supplier of their door locks. Being a holding company, GM was better able to weather this situation.
Perhaps the best summation of the Clipper's design comes from Joel Prescott: "The truth may well be that the Clipper should be remembered as automotive history's most successful committee design, because assigning the genius of its beautiful lines exclusively to one particular designer cannot now be done with any degree of certainty." And as it turned out, this new look guaranteed the Clipper an appearance never compromised by competitive imitators. In 1942 Cadillac and Buick adopted the same pontoon fender line, but the Clipper still looked unique, apart from and slightly above the crowd, especially the new 1942 senior Clippers, which alone retained the debut 1941's 127-inch (3,200 mm) wheelbase, longer hood, and front fenders.
The Clipper was to be Packard's last bellringer not just for the Forties, but through the firm's 1956 demise, another reason its name brought back in 1953. Though introduced in April 1941, the Clipper, despite priced between the One-Twenty and One-Sixty, outsold the entire year's One-Twenty production.
Engineering and evolution
When considering the great transitional designs that brought us from the art decorations and speed-lining age of the Thirties into the envelope bodies of the Forties, much is always made of Bill Mitchell's famous Cadillac Sixty Special. In particular, its thin window frames, squared-off roof, wider-than-high grille, and concealed running boards were bold steps forward. The Clipper had at least as many pioneering features in an even more integrated package.
The original milestone 1941 Clipper rode the 120/160/180 wheelbase of 127 inches (3,200 mm) and used the One Twenty's 282-cubic-inch (4,620 cc) straight eight, but produced 125 bhp (five more than the One Twenty). Despite the familiar engine, few Clipper parts were interchangeable with other models. The chassis was entirely new: a double-drop frame allowed a lower floor without reducing road clearance. The engine was mounted well forward and the rear shocks were angled to assist the traditional Packard fifth shock in controlling side-sway. The front suspension was entirely new since the lower frame eliminated the need for Packard's traditional long torque arms, the same reason Rolls-Royce and Bentley, despite copying nut for bolt Packard's prewar Saf-t-fleX i.f.s, also went with a similar GM-type i.f.s. in the '56-on Silver Cloud/Bentley S series; a double-link connection between the Pitman arm and steering brackets, with a crossbar and idler arm and two cross tubes, controlled wheel movement.
The 1941 Clipper was the widest production car in the industry and the first to be wider than it was tall—a foot wider. The body from cowl to deck was a single piece of steel, the largest in the industry, and the floor pan had only one welded seam from end to end. Single pieces of sheet metal comprised the rear quarters and hood. The hood could be lifted from either side of the car or removed entirely by throwing two levers. Instead of the traditional third-side window, ventipanes were incorporated in the rear doors, providing controllable flow-through ventilation. The battery made its first move from under the seat to under the hood, where it stayed warmer and was more accessible. There was a "Ventalarm" whistle to warn when the tank was within a gallon of being full, and an accelerator-activated starter button, so the act of starting simultaneously set the automatic choke. Reithard's symmetrical dashboard contained a full ration of instruments, including an electric oil pressure gauge adapted from the One Sixty. Options included Packard's Electro-Matic vacuum-operated clutch, which let the driver ignore the clutch pedal in ordinary driving; "Aerodrive" (overdrive); an effective auxiliary under-seat heater, leather upholstery, fender skirts, and, for $275, air conditioning — a Packard first, introduced on all eight-cylinder 1940 models.
Introduced in April 1941, as a single four-door sedan model, the introductory Clipper was by no means a cheap or even medium-priced car. Per Packard chronicler MGH Scott, the Clipper was neither junior nor senior, and priced as it was since the days of strictly high hat luxe were over thanks to more affordable engineering improvements from the late '30s and more egalitarian times. The Clipper sold for around $1,400, in a market niche between the One Twenty and One Sixty, competing in the midst of Buick Roadmaster, Cadillac Sixty-One, Chrysler New Yorker, Lincoln Zephyr. Despite a mid-year start, the Clipper garnered 16,600 sales for the 1941 model year, eclipsing the total year's 17,100 less expensive One-Twenties. By the 1942 model year, Clipper styling spread through the Packard line, except where special tooling existed—convertibles, taxis, wagons, and commercial cars. However, the market slot occupied by the 1941 Clipper was abandoned, recreating a gap between the base 282-ci Clipper Custom ($1.341) and the 356-ci One-Sixty Clipper ($1,688).
The bulk of the 1942 production was concentrated on the 120-inch (3,000 mm) wheelbase junior models, but the One Sixty and One Eighty Clippers proved conclusively that Packard was as much a builder of luxury cars as ever. The 1942 160/180 Clipper was 9.5 inches (240 mm) longer and 140 pounds (64 kg) heavier than its square-rigged 1941 predecessor, with wider cabin, nearly as much rear legroom as the long wheelbase 1941-42 160/180, which retained the old-style Packard body.
The smooth 356-cubic-inch (5,830 cc) straight-eight of the One Sixty and One Eighty Clippers, featuring a 104-pound (47 kg), nine-main-bearing crankshaft and hydraulic valve lifters, was the most powerful engine in the industry through 1948, exceeding Cadillac's V8 by 15 horsepower (11 kW). It could deliver 70 miles per hour (110 km/h) in second gear overdrive and take the 4,000-pound (1,800 kg) car to over 100 mph on Packard's Proving Grounds banked oval track. In 1950, ten years after Packard's nonpareil nine-main-bearing 356 inline 8 debuted, Rolls-Royce mirrored the design for their nine-main bearing, F-head 346-ci B-80 inline 8, used only in a handful of Phantom IVs produced solely for heads of state, military vehicles, and Dennis fire trucks. Like Packard's 245-ci six used in junior Clippers, Packard's 1940–50 356 Super-8 engine also appeared in marine guise 1947-51.
The top-of-the-line Clipper One Eighty offered two shades of leather or six colors of wool broadcloth upholstery, Mosstred carpeting from New York's Shulton Looms, walnut-grained instrument panels, amboyna burl garnish moldings, seatbacks stuffed with down and rear center armrests. Unlike any other contemporary, the post-war Custom Super's headliner was seamed fore to aft instead of sideways. Packard claimed that the unique headliner was adopted "to provide a more spacious feel to the interior."
With a nearly full line of Clippers, Packard managed to build 34,000 1942 models before production ceased in February (an annual rate of around 80,000). According to John Reinhart, there is no doubt that Clipper styling would have proliferated in 1943–45. "The next logical step would have been convertibles and commercials—and a wagon." But the war intervened. Whereas Cadillac with its greater facilities was able to field a complete line of restyled 1942s, including convertibles, all of which came right back in 1946, Packard was able only to add a club coupe body before the war.
The lower priced two-door club coupe was the sportier Clipper despite a weight saving of only 45 lbs., with about 40 built before production ended in February 1942; a single One Sixty the only example known to exist. Postwar, about 600 senior coupes were made, compared to about 6,600 senior sedans.
1946–1947
For 1946–1947 all Packards used Clipper bodies and the "Clipper" name.
1948–1952
The Clipper nameplate was dropped for 1948 as Packard issued its Twenty-Second Series automobiles, which, while proclaimed by the company as "all-new," were actually restyled Clippers. Only the 1941–47 Clipper's roof and trunk lid survived. At this time, Packard's president, George Christopher, insisted upon concentrating on sales of the company's lower-priced cars, while longtime competitor Cadillac focused its attention on the upper end of the market.
The Twenty-Second and Twenty-Third Series (from mid-1949) cars wore the "upside-down bathtub" styling that was briefly in vogue in the late 1940s. Unfortunately for Packard, Nash, Lincoln-Mercury, and Hudson, the four manufacturers who embraced this type of styling, General Motors introduced designs that were lower-slung, more tightly drawn and less bulbous at around the same time. GM's designs caught the buying public's fancy, while the "bathtubs" quickly fell from favor.
Following a round of bitter corporate infighting in 1949, Packard management finally decided to phase out the "bathtubs" and create the all-new Twenty-Fourth Series for 1951. The new "high-pockets" design (so-called because of its high beltline) was much more modern. However, Packard continued to push hard into the lower end of the mid-priced field with its new "200" and "250" models. While the 250 hardtop and convertible, which would soon be named Mayfair, were an attempt to market upscale coupes which were slightly less bulky than the high-line sedans, and were decorated with chrome side scallops reminiscent of the top-shelf 400, the 200 was a full-range, middle-priced line continuing to compete with Oldsmobile, DeSoto, Mercury, the junior Hudsons, and others. James J. Nance became the company's president in 1952, and he immediately set to work on divorcing the lower-priced cars from the higher-end Packards. To this end, he decreed that the 200 and 200 Deluxe would be consolidated into a new line of Clippers for 1953.
1953–1956
Nance originally hoped to introduce the new "Clipper" as a stand-alone marque, targeting the mid-range price field, which he believed was dragging down the Packard image. When word was leaked to the Packard dealer network that they would be losing their best-selling Packard model to "Clipper", they balked. As an appeasement, Nance rolled the Clipper out as a Packard and worked to transition the cars toward their own make. Thus, the Packard Clipper name was reintroduced and applied to the company's entry-level models, previously known as the Packard 200, beginning in 1953. Clippers were available in Special and Deluxe trim models, as two- and four-door sedans. A 1953 Clipper went from 0 to 60 mph in 17.6 seconds in a Popular Mechanics test. The turning circle was 41 ft.
For 1954, the "Clipper by Packard" was given its own unique rear fender trim and taillights to further differentiate it from traditional Packards. The cars were also available with a distinctive two-tone paint pattern. For 1955, Packard became a marque in the newly formed Studebaker-Packard Corporation. The 1955 Clipper Custom offered torsion-bar suspension something not offered on other models, which only offered coil and leaf spring suspension. It also had a power steering option and an all-new Packard built V8 displacing 320 CID and was increased to 352 CID in 1956. Drivers enjoyed the comfortable ride but complained of door rattles and poor workmanship. Length was 215 15/32 inches long.
The Packard Clipper Constellation was a two-door hardtop automobile produced by the Studebaker-Packard Corporation for the 1955 and 1956 model years. The 1955 model was a Packard product and sold as part of the Packard Clipper line; for 1956, Clipper split from Packard, becoming its own make.
A total of 8,039 Clipper Deluxe, 14,995 Super and 15,380 Custom were built during model year 1955.
1956 models and production
Clipper Deluxe
4dr Sedan (5,715)
Clipper Super
4dr Sedan (5,173)
2dr Panama hard-top (3,999)
Clipper Custom
4dr Sedan (2,219)
2dr Constellation hard-top (1,466)
Total Clipper production for 1956: 18,572 (excludes exports, if any)
From Wikipedia’s article on Clipper (automobile), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3