Whenever we hear of the iconic American automaker Packard, we tend to think of beautifully crafted and technologically advanced cars from the first half of the previous century, before the Detroit brand merged with Studebaker in 1954, with the name being dropped altogether in 1958. This 1999 Packard Twelve Prototype that will soon go up for auction, doesn’t exactly fit the bill of what we expect from a car bearing the famous nameplate, does it now…
What looks like the illegitimate child of a Buick LeSabre and a Jaguar XJ from the early 2000s (if you want to poke some fun at Bentley Mulsanne owners about the strong resemblance between the two cars’ rear quarters, go ahead…), is the brainchild of a one Roy Gullickson.
While Packard ceased to exist as a manufacturer in the late 1950s, Packard enthusiast Budd Bayliff purchased the rights to the Packard name and trademarks in 1978, and according to his website, “soon introduced a line of Packard Custom Sedan and Coupe replicars based on late-model GM passenger cars at his 2100 Harding Highway shop in Lima, Ohio.”
In 1992, Bayliff reportedly sold the rights to Packard for $50,000 to Roy Gullickson, who according to Hemmings, was “a former engineer for White Motor Car Company and Massey-Ferguson”. Gullickson envisioned the rebirth of the Packard name not with replicas, but with a new model.
Gullickson’s team built a working prototype dubbed the Packard Twelve at a cost of $1.5 million (or according to other sources, $800,000), which they presented in October of 1998 in Tucson. Their goal, at the time, was to raise some $30 million worth of capital within three years and build as many as 2,000 vehicles annually priced at about $160,000 a pop by 2010.
In an interview with Forbes magazine back in 2000, he said: “There’s no reason why America can’t build something every bit as good as a Mercedes or BMW.”
The Packard Twelve prototype was built on an aluminum space-frame chassis with a 119-inch (3,023mm) wheelbase and featured all-wheel drive and a 440hp, 525-cu.in. (8.6-liter) Falconer Racing Engines V12 with GM-sourced fuel injection and ignition, paired to a GM 4L80E automatic transmission. The company claimed that the car weighed 3,750 pounds (1,700 kg) and was capable of returning a 0-60mph (96km/h) time of just 4.8 seconds and a quarter mile run in 12.5 seconds.
While Gullickson said he had 70 orders without taking deposits, investors didn’t see a future for the company. “We knew we didn’t have the capital to go into production,” Gullickson said. “We were always willing to consider other options, like investing or selling the company outright.” In 2007, with the project long dead, he unsuccessfully attempted to sell the company’s name together with the Packard Twelve prototype for $1.5 million. “We always had a lot of interest, but no combination of interest and capability,” he told Hemmings.
Now, seven years later, Gullickson will try to sell the Packard Twelve Prototype separately from the rights to the Packard name, which he will keep, at RM’s upcoming Motor City auction in Plymouth, Michigan, on July 26, 2014. “We’ve enjoyed the car, and it’s accomplished a lot of things for us, given us terrific exposure, but my wife and I felt it best at this time to sell it,” he said.
The car will be offered without a reserve. How much do you think it’s worth?
By John Halas
Photos via RM Auctions, Story References: Hemmings
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