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.

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.

Unlike Cadillac, Packard refused to market its cheaper models by a different name and remained wedded to them long after prosperity had returned.

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.

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.

[citation needed] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The long-wheelbase (147-inch) Clipper seven-passenger sedan and limousine were competitive with Cadillac and the low-volume Chrysler Crown Imperial (Lincoln had no long models) in the first two postwar years.

This is a new point that has been missed in the many postmortems of Packard's fall: Reverting to strictly luxury cars would not have meant downsizing the labor force or contracting the facilities.

It did not take a mystic to comprehend these facts, as the late Hickman Price, Jr., who bought Willow Run for the Kaiser-Frazer partners, once said: "I believed we would have a period of three or four years—I remember putting 1950 as the terminal date in which we can sell everything we can make."

Moreover, the small independent automakers could not achieve unit costs and tool amortization down to GM/Ford levels, nor afford the requisite TV advertising and annual model changes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Total Clipper production for 1956: 18,572 (excludes exports, if any) Following the closure of the Detroit, Michigan Packard plant, Studebaker-Packard entered into a management contract with the Curtiss-Wright Company.

This was done to make the 1957 model differ in appearance from the President; outside, this included a narrower Packard-style front bumper and 1956 Clipper tail lamps and chromed wheel covers.

[9] Inside, the cars' dashboards were fitted with the same basic instrument cluster as used in the previous two years, while trim levels were generally higher than for Studebakers.