Busting Romney’s Packard Myth

While writing a speech for Mike Kunz, manager of the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Irvine, Calif., I unintentionally stirred up an old Packard controversy. You don’t hear those two words come together too often, now do you? And no, it had nothing to do with Mercedes-Benz getting its big break in the U.S. market when Studebaker-Packard became its distributor in 1956.

Here’s the deal: The Mercedes-Benz Classic Center was participating in the prestigious Los Angeles Antique Show, and Mike was giving the kick-off lecture. His topic was “The value of authenticity in collecting and restoring classic cars.” I’ve been working on projects for Mike and the Classic Center since even before its official opening in February 2006, including press materials and speeches. Authenticity has been a central theme in much of that work. A central theme for much of that work has been discussion of the vast Mercedes-Benz archive. Here’s the passage from the speech:

This is not some haphazard collection of old files. Rather, it is a truly astounding library of factory information, engineering drawings, photos, marketing materials and much more. It is a carefully detailed chronicle of every model we have ever made. The old materials have been safely scanned and preserved.

The LA Antique Show audience, I thought, would appreciate the ability to tap into a detailed archive like that. I thought they’d also appreciate hearing about a debacle along the same lines. I remembered reading that the late great Packard had once maintained such an archive. Then, shortly before the brand’s demise, while it was shuffling production facilities on the way to its grave, a top executive ordered the vast archive destroyed. One might guess desperate cost cutting as the reason.

The name I remembered was James Nance, who had become president of Packard in the early 1950s. I don’t remember where I read that it was he who had ordered the archive’s destruction, but my journalist experience told me to check it out before putting into the speech for Mercedes-Benz. The auto media is known for parroting myths, especially around collector cars.

I e-mailed the Packard experts, Kanter Auto Products. If you’ve ever driven north on Rt. 287 through Boonton, N.J., then you’ve no doubt seen the Kanter building — it’s the one with the mid-1950s Packard body shell on the roof.

Kanter had started out in 1960 as two brothers going in on a vintage Packard and quickly became a business enterprise when they realized they could buy up old stocks of Packard dealer parts on the cheap. Today, the company has over 60 employees and an inventory of 1.3 million new and used Packard parts. They deal with other American makes, too, but they could almost be considered a “Classic Center” for Packard.

I also e-mailed Rachel Lauver, the assistant executive director of The Citizens Motorcar Company, “America’s Packard Museum,” in Dayton, Ohio asking about the archive’s destruction and Nance’s connection.

Stuart Blond from Kanter’s Packard Dept. was first to respond:

“Thank you for your e-mail. James Nance was credited and blamed for many of the events that occurred during his tenure as President of the Packard Motor Car Company (1952-54) and of the Studebaker-Packard Corporation (1954-56), but the destruction of the Packard archives should not be one of them.

When the decision was made in July 1956 to end production of Packard and Clipper automobiles in Detroit, the S-P Board of Directors entered into a “Joint Program” with the Curtiss-Wright Company. On July 26, 1956, James Nance resigned as S-P President and Harold Churchill took over. (Churchill was an executive on the Studebaker side.) The real power-behind-the-scene, however, was the head of Curtiss-Wright, Roy Hurley.

The Board ordered the consolidation of all automobile production at the Studebaker factory in South Bend, Indiana. Many of the Packard files in Detroit were moved, but many more were destroyed. A local company was hired to oversee the destruction, and once this happened several of the employees in the Packard styling department (including Richard Teague, head of Packard styling and Ed Cunningham, head of color and trim), took it upon themselves to save as much as they could. Most if not all of the Packard photographs were saved and sent to the Detroit Public Library. They are now in the Library’s National Automobile History Collection. In fact, nearly 3,000 of these photographs are online. (Enter “Packard” as the search term.)

During the early-1960s, a biography of George Romney (President of AMC, who was then running for Governor of Michigan), first blamed Nance for the destruction. Nance never spoke about his years at Packard until he granted an interview with the Packard Club in 1976. By then, the word was out about the destruction, and although Nance had been long-gone from Packard when it happened, the author of the biography never corrected it.

I hope that this helps. I knew both Jim Nance and Dick Teague before they died (Nance in 1984 and Teague in 1991), and I know Ed Cunningham now, and they were and are all Packard enthusiasts.”

The day after receiving Mr. Blond’s detailed answer, I received an e-mail from Ms. Lauver. She “confirmed” the Nance story. I forwarded her reply to Mr. Blond, who then e-mailed Ms. Lauver asking where she got that information. She replied that her source was George Romney’s biography.

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As I said, it pays to check the facts, especially when they originate from a politician named Romney.

JK