Customer Reviews

The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company

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4 star:		(1)
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I have owned several books of antique automobiles, including Packards. This book is about the company itself and what lead it to its precipitous decline after WWII.

It is very readable and informative. It is one thing to read tables of sales and changing positions in the marketplace among brands, which are available in automobile encyclopedias. This book, however, explains WHY things happened. For instance, I did not know that in 1953 Ford decided to be No.1 at any cost. Ford's deep pockets were used to buy market share. GM did the same. This created a serious problem for all the independent producers, none of which were as efficient as GM or Ford.

I liked the book a lot.

My boyfriend Tom is an automotive historian, who has read this book before--LOVED IT & was waiting for a good price to add it to his colection. The item's condition was truly worthy of the FINE historical account he KNEW it to be. So we're both VERRY happy with Amazon. If you want a REVIEW of the book ITSELF--Tom says it's a MUST-HAVE for ANY serious Packard fan & a SHOULD-HAVE for any fan OR student of independent auto-makers in general!

This is an excellent history of the last decade of operation of a once proud company and the man who tried to save it. It presents company president James Nance as a talented executive whose strategies were constantly thwarted by fast moving events beyond his control.

It provides an excellent analysis of the trends in the market that the after World War II, the problems faced by the independent auto manufacturers, and the variety of responses their respective company presidents made.

The author does an excellent job of tracing the decision making process by company executives and their board of directors despite the fact that company records were burned shortly after the band was dropped.

Without a doubt the greatest book ever written about the Packard Motor Car Company. It concentrates on the post war models and personalities that shaped the company into its purchase of the Studebaker Corporation in 1954, its attempts to create the fourth full line company and merger with AMC. President James Nance was brought in to "turn this thing around" from Hotpoint. He almost succeeded, and it is a tragedy of monumental proportion that he failed. the cards where stacked agains't him and nothing could have altered the outcome. Though I read this magnificent book at least once a year, every time somewhere in my deepest wish, I hope it will turn our differently. The writer has a hypnotic way of keeping you turning the page and a somewhat stacato writing style. It keeps you on the edge of your seat, which is something that is probably unusual for an auto company history, or industrial complex. Packard was more than just a car, it was and is a state of mind, an aura that few other automobiles could ever achieve.