A DRUG TRIP GONE BAD

Perhaps it's not to everyone's liking but I give the design team a BIG A+ for daring to be different. Hmm, if we all thought alike the 🌎 might be boring. At least it isn't white.

Packard was trying to buy some time to put together viable financing for designs still in the drawing board or existing as one-off "dreamcars", so  I certainly give them credit for their efforts. I wish the big plans would have succeeded.

These Packardbakers  were the direct result of "too little time & too little money."    

The young Studebaker design team did their best with the limited resources they had, which, when measured by those parameters, necessitates at least a few compliments.   However, "limited anything"  in the late 1950's was a recipe for disaster.        Consumers wanted "more, better, faster, newer, etc."

Love it or hate it, there was simply NO place in the 1958 American car market for a Frankenstein assemblage of pirated parts & pieces that had already been seen.   A sad end indeed for a once proud & prestigious make known as Packard - "Ask the man who owns one."

If this is a drug trip gone bad, I must have bad taste. I like it. To my eyes, it's no more outrageous than most of the other 1958s. I like the roofline, in particular. The greenhouse is light and airy with a huge backlight to accentuate it. The fins are overdone, but no more than those on the 58 Caddys. I would have preferred a single headlight on each side, but everyone was going with quads. For a company taking its last breaths, it looks to me like a noble effort. 

I used to dislike this design intensely for years but now I KIND of like it and KIND of feel sorry for it (is that possible?) because it was a last gasp effort with very limited resources.  I like it more now simply because it is different and rare and for what it represents in automotive history.  A very sad end nonetheless.

Good riddance to the ugly brand. Never liked Packard, they may have been great before my time, but my time started in '48 to '50 actually liking car designs and Packard was one I didn't care for.    

Except for the fins, which were overstated and you could say that about others makers in 1958 and 59, the styling is not bad.

@chris Well said Chris. The only 58s I like from the big three were the Chevy and Pontiac  Packard's legacy would have been better if it had stopped after 1956 IMO.

I use to despise these, not so much anymore. But I agree, Packard should have ended it after '56 and not tarnished it's prestigious reputation as modified Studebakers. It does look like they borrowed the Chrysler roofline and '57 Dodge tailfins.

It’ so friggin’ weird that it’t kind of cool. It’s like a caricature of 1950’s kitsch.

 I always thought the Hawk was equally bizarre, but they apparently have a rather large fan base.

@kevins I agree the Packard Hawk was not an attractive design but it sure looks great in 1/43 scale!

Come to think of it the Esval '58 Packard 58L HT also looks much nicer in 1/43 scale than 1/1 IMHO.

@jack-dodds I totally agree Jack. My adjective’s were bizarre and weird, something about their styling is oddly attractive to me.

Posted by: @bob-jackman

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"Packard's legacy would have been better if it had stopped after 1956."

As someone who owned a '56 Packard for over 20 years, I agree.   OTHO, by '57, Packard was dead, so MNGMT's "pathetic"  efforts, I'm sure, were as viewed as "everything to gain, nothing to lose."    Sadly, of course, it just didn't work out - the public wasn't buying it - literally.  😔