History Made Every Day™

The last 1956 Packard was produced, marking the end of production at Packard's Connor Avenue plant in Detroit, Michigan. Packard would continue to manufacture cars in South Bend, Indiana, until 1958, but for those familiar with Packard the last 1956 is considered the last true Packard car.

In 1902, a group of Detroit investors, led by Henry Joy, purchased Packard from its founder, James Ward Packard, and moved the company to Detroit. The following year, Joy hired industrial designer Albert Kahn, the pioneer of reinforced concrete, to build a new production facility for the Packard Motor Company. The first Packard cars were affordable, durable one-cylinder vehicles. But Packard quickly moved up the pricing ladder, offering four-cylinder engines. By the 1916 release of the revolutionary V-12 Twin Six, Packard had established itself as the country's leading luxury-car manufacturer, renowned for its hand-finished attention to detail. The release of the Twin Six allowed Packard to quadruple output over a period of one year. Packard became the largest truck supplier to the Allied Forces during World War I.

The 1920s were the company's hey-day; huge, sleek Packards were a perfect fit for the decadent U.S. market. Conversely, the Depression heavily damaged Packard's part of the market, and by the mid-1930s, Packard sales had dropped dramatically. Packard President Alvan Macauley eventually made the drastic decision to develop and produce a lower-priced car. Although the move would initially bolster Packard's sales considerably, historians argue that producing lower-quality cars heavily damaged the most valuable brand reputation in the automobile industry.

World War I saw Packard convert to war production earlier than most companies. Packard's Twin Six was adapted into the Liberty Aircraft engine, by far the most important single output of America's wartime "arsenal for democracy." Though Packard was only the third largest producer of the engine, the Liberty enhanced Packard's reputation considerably. After the war, Packard had a difficult time reconverting to passenger-car production. The post-war "seller's market" kept Packard alive, but it soon became clear that the independent car companies without specializations were doomed by their relatively high production costs relative to the Big Three. Had Packard remained strictly a luxury car company, it may have been able to catch hold of a post-war niche.

By 1954, Packard's output had fallen to a dismal low. General Motors (GM) and Ford were engaged in a brief price war that took its toll on the independents. Packard merged with the much larger Studebaker Corporation in the hope of cutting its production costs. Together, Packard-Studebaker was the fourth largest manufacturer of cars. The merger failed to help the fate of either company, however, and in 1956 Packard-Studebaker President James Nance suspended Packard's manufacturing operations in Detroit.