CarBrandLogos archive · Packard · 1941
A modern body shape arrived in 1941, then the war stopped everything.
Discover the storyPhoto: Rex Gray · CC BY-SA 2.0
The story
Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Packard Clipper, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.
01
Packard's styling had grown conservative by the end of the 1930s, and the Clipper of 1941 was the correction. Its body was wider than it was tall, with front wings flowing back into the doors and a narrow vertical grille inherited from earlier cars, and Howard Darrin's influence on the shape is generally acknowledged. It looked a generation newer than the cars it sat alongside in the showroom, and it sold accordingly.
Packard Clipper Super 1955 Heck · Robotriot · CC BY-SA 3.0
02
It had barely a year. Civilian production stopped in early 1942 while Packard turned to building Merlin aero engines and marine engines for the war, and when cars resumed in 1946 the Clipper came back essentially unchanged, which was still competitive because everyone else was doing the same.
Packard Super Clipper ca 1947 in Belgium · Charles01 · CC BY-SA 3.0
03
The name then had a complicated afterlife. It was reused for Packard's lower-priced range in the early 1950s, and for 1956 Studebaker-Packard made Clipper a separate marque altogether in an attempt to protect the Packard name from its own cheaper models. The separation lasted a year.
1954 Packard Clipper De Luxe Touring Sedan · GTHO · CC BY-SA 4.0
04
The 1941 car remains the one worth knowing: the last time Packard clearly led American design rather than followed it.
At a glance
Produced
1941–1942Technical specification
From the journal
Contemporaries from the 1940s
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