Founded all the way back in 1899, the Packard Motor Car Company was one of America’s very first automobile manufacturers. For the next 60 years, it was considered a high-end, luxury brand, pumping out handsome designs like the Packard Eight. They were sleek, comfortable, and gave other upscale American cars, like Cadillacs, a run for their money.
Then, in the late 1950s, the brand went bust. A new Packard hasn’t been made since ’58, and the marque itself was retired a year later. But after all this time, there is indeed hope that brand-new Packards — well, brand-new productions of old Packards — could indeed be gracing streets again soon.
In 2019, a luxury watchmaker named Scott Andrews bought the rights to the brand. It’s going to take a little while to get all the pieces in place (like, say, a factory), but the intention is absolutely there. So if you ever wanted to live it up like it’s 1932, your chance may be here soon.
The life (and afterlife) of the Packard brand
Packards helped define the very idea of an American luxury car. Partly, that was expressed by how good they looked (and, man, they were beautiful cars). However, Packard believed that technological innovation was also a key factor, and some of their inventions are in every single car you’ve ever driven. These pieces include the steering wheel itself, which is kind of a necessity when driving, but also in-car air conditioning, tail lights, the glove compartment, and even the limited slip differential. Yeah, Packard was a really important company.
Unfortunately, its competitors eventually outpaced it, and sales started to sag. Packard merged with Studebaker in 1954 to try to buoy their fortunes, but it wasn’t enough. Studebaker retired the brand just a few years later.
After that, the marque bounced around from owner to owner. Studebaker went through a merger with Worthington Corporation in 1967, which off-loaded it to the Bayliff Coach Corporation in 1978. Bayliff used the brand to build custom-body replicas of old Packards seated atop other platforms. In 1992, Canadian farm equipment magnate Roy Gullickson bought the brand and even created a brand-new prototype vehicle, the Packard Twelve, which is pictured above, intending to put it into mass production. Sadly, no investors bit, and the brand faded into obscurity again.
The coming Packard revival
Hopefully, Packards will be driving out of history and back onto roads in the near future. Now that Scott Andrews owns the rights, he is currently intending to make a low-volume run of the legendary Packard Victoria, a gorgeous two-door convertible. Since he actually has the original blueprints — 135,000 of them, in fact — these will be exact reproductions in all their early 20th century splendor.
When might these new (old) cars be coming? As you might imagine, it’s not an easy task to get a factory up and running, and the old Packard plant was just torn down. Not to mention, the company needs to navigate regulations and a shifting marketplace. So for now, it’s all about getting enough investment capital to get the wheels of industry rolling again. Time will tell.
No car brand should go unremembered, but Packard in particular holds an important place in automotive history. It’s an American treasure, and it deserves to be better known than it is today. Maybe, if some dazzling Victorias start overtaking Cybertrucks on the highway, its legacy will be restored for a whole new generation.
