You know the saying about how a wounded animal is still dangerous? I’m sure you do, especially those of you with wounded hyenas in your kitchens that you’ve been avoiding for days. I was thinking about this in the context of dying carmakers, specifically Packard. In its death throes, during its final year of existence, Packard’s last punch thrown was kind of a fascinating car, and the fastest Packard ever built.
Of course, it was also a badge-engineered Studebaker, but you can’t really blame Packard for that. They were dying!
The car is the Packard Hawk, and it’s not a car I’ve thought about very often. Only 588 of these were made, so it’s unlikely to be something you’d encounter by chance, which is a shame, because these are really striking machines with so much presence and gravity they feel like a neutron star, just with more chrome.
“The Most Original Car On The American Road” is a little ironic considering this was a badge-engineered car, and, inherently not-so-original.
Let’s just take a moment to recap Packard’s situation as of 1958. Boned, I think was what the Pope (at that time, Pope John XXIII) had to say about it. The once-great company (remember, Packard was the top-selling luxury carmaker between 1924 and 1930) bought out Studebaker in 1954, creating the Studebaker-Packard Corporation, which proved to be something of a disaster, because Studebaker was in about as good financial shape as a chronic gambler with two suspended credit cards, and had massive overhead and needed to sell an absurd number of cars – often said to be 250,000 – just to break even.
That said, Studebaker did have some interesting and reasonably up-to-date platforms to work with, including their sporty car – maybe “personal luxury car” – the Hawk.
The Hawk evolved from the Raymond Lowey Studios-designed Starliner/Starlight coupés and hardtop coupés, a design led by Bob Bourke. These were some of the sleekest, most elegant cars of the 1950s, at least according to sources like, um, myself. As the 50s went on, the prevailing jet-age-baroque styling of the era soon dripped onto these cars, and they sprouted upright grilles and tailfins and became the Studebaker Hawk, which led to Silver Hawks and Golden Hawks, fancier, more ongepotchket versions.
Okay, but let’s get back to Packard. In 1958, they really didn’t have any platforms of their own anymore, and everything they made was an up-market, re-badged Studebaker. They decided they wanted something sporty to compete with the Ford Thunderbird, and they had that, in the form of the Studebaker Hawk.
They took the Golden Hawk and added all of the luxury stuff that had been previously dropped, including lots and lots of leather, including special leather-upholstered armrests on the outside of the windows, making a comfortable place to rest your arm on the upper part of the door.
I mean, if you have to get a trucker’s tan, that’s the way to do it.
The bigger news was under the hood, as the Packard Hawk had Sudebaker’s 289 cubic-inch V8 with a McCulluch (later Paxton) supercharger, making a very impressive 275 horsepower. This made the Packard Hawk the fastest four-seat car you could buy in America at that time, keeping up with Thunderbirds and even Corvettes of the era.
Speaking of Corvettes, the Packard Hawk also featured some fiberglass bodywork like the ‘Vette, specifically the low, tapered nose with its wide, full-width grille:
This was the focus of a lot of derision back in the day, with people comparing it, unfavorably, to a fish. I actually think its fishmouth feels like Ferraris and other Italian sports cars of the era. I like it.
Overall, the look of the Packard Hawk is all late-’50s excess, but in a way that I actually like. The textured gold inlay panel on the rear fin, the hood scoop, the front indicators in their own silly little pods, the pointed chrome warhead/Dagmar bumper guards, the exterior upholstery, it’s all so good. Plus, it has what looks like crotch-cooler vents on the front quarter panel there.
There are a lot worse ways Packard could have gone out, and, sure, this one is definitely a product of badge engineering, but when it comes to reworking another car, you can’t get much better than this.
Top graphic image: Studebaker-Packard
The post The Last Packard Was A Badge-Engineered Fast Luxury Beast appeared first on The Autopian.
