CarBrandLogos archive · Packard · 1935

PackardOne-Twenty

The car that kept the company alive, and arguably cost it its reputation.

Photo: Rex Gray · CC BY 2.0

The story

A defining chapter in Packard history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Packard One-Twenty, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The Depression destroyed the American luxury car market. Peerless, Marmon, Stutz, Franklin and Duesenberg all went, and Packard understood that selling a few thousand very expensive cars a year was no longer a business. Its answer, launched in 1935, was to build something in the medium-price field, at a fraction of the price of a Super Eight, using proper mass-production methods.

Packard 120-C 4-Door Sedan 1937 · Lars-Göran Lindgren Sweden · CC BY-SA 3.0

1940 Packard 120 Darrin Convertible, Lime Rock

Design and engineering

It was a genuinely modern car rather than a cheapened old one. It brought independent front suspension and hydraulic brakes to the marque, and it was well enough engineered that the press treated it as a real Packard rather than an imitation.

1940 Packard 120 Darrin Convertible, Lime Rock · Mr.choppers · CC BY-SA 3.0

In production

Commercially it worked immediately. Volume multiplied several times over, the company returned to profit, and it survived the decade when most of its peers did not.

Packard One-Twenty · Mr.choppers · CC BY-SA 3.0

Legacy

The cost of that survival is still argued about. Once buyers could get a Packard for the price of a Buick, the badge stopped signalling what it had signalled, and the firm never fully recovered its position at the top of the market afterwards. Whether that was a mistake or simply the price of existing in 1935 is the central question of Packard's history.

Technical specification