1956
Model year 1956 finally saw Nance's dream of Clipper as a separate marque realized, although by this time, most experts would later agree, it was too late. The Clipper was now its own separate registered marque, manufactured and sold by the Packard-Clipper Division of Nance's Studebaker-Packard Corporation.
Packard Clipper Custom 4-Door Sedan 1956
Existing Packard dealers were required to execute a Clipper dealer franchise sales agreement, but once again, most cried foul and, not long into the model year, "Packard" script emblems began to be placed on the decklids of new Clippers that rolled off of the company's Detroit assembly line. In a complete reversal of Nance's strategy, the emblems were also made available for placement on already-built cars that were languishing on dealers' lots across the country.
By the summer of 1956, Studebaker-Packard was in deep financial trouble. The Packards and Clippers were not selling at anywhere near a profitable level, and the company's creditors refused to advance any further money to the company for new tooling that would have allowed Nance to finally realize his ultimate goal of sharing body components among the company's three lines of cars. In late July, the final Packards and Clippers rolled out of the Conner Avenue factory. No one knew what the future might bring.
1957
Following the closure of the Detroit, Michigan Packard plant, Studebaker-Packard entered into a management contract with the Curtiss-Wright Company. Under C-W's president, Roy T. Hurley, S-P's new president Harold Churchill approved production of a new Packard, to be built in Studebaker's South Bend, Indiana plant. The new Packards, originally to continue the Packard Executive nameplate, were to share the Studebaker President four-door sedan body and new four-door station wagon body as well. The total tooling cost of the new Packard was estimated at roughly $1 million. At some point, however, the Executive name was dropped, as all of the Packards produced for 1957 carried the Packard Clipper name.
In order to keep the tooling cost as low as possible, trim components from the 1956 Clippers were used. 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 taillamps and wheelcovers. Inside, the cars' dashboards were fitted with the same basic instrument cluster as used in the previous two years. On the whole, the effect was that of a glitzy Studebaker.
Sales of the new Clippers were not great; historians differ as to why, although the cars' obvious Studebaker origins (which led the new Clippers to be derisively nicknamed "Packardbakers" by many people) certainly didn't help. Only about 4,600 were sold for the year.
For 1958, the Clipper name was discontinued, and the few Packard automobiles that were produced (four-door sedans, station wagons, and two-door hardtop coupes) were simply known by their marque name. The only exception to this was the Packard Hawk, which was based on the Studebaker Golden Hawk.
What might have been
Had Studebaker-Packard's creditors not cut off the flow of money to the company in early 1956, James Nance and his underlings had some grand plans for their three lines of cars for 1957 and beyond. However, as time and money slipped away, these plans died without coming to fruition.
As planned, Studebaker and Clipper cars would have been built around a shared chassis and inner body structure, but both cars would have had distinctly different outer styling. Photos exist of a proposed Clipper with modest, tasteful tailfins, a flat, taut roofline, crisply-drawn lower body features and even slight fins over the headlamps that extended back, flowing seamlessly into the tops of the long front fenders.
All in all, the proposed look was thoroughly modern and would certainly have made an interesting contrast when compared to the bulky, rounded 1957-58 Oldsmobile against which it would have competed. One is led to wonder, however, how the proposed car would have fared in the market given the "Eisenhower recession" that began in late 1957 and extended through much of 1958, when so many other established marques such as Oldsmobile, Buick and DeSoto had a tough time selling cars.
It is all very much a situation where one wonders "what might have been."