When Packard unveiled the Predictor at the Chicago Auto Show on January 7, 1956, people reportedly crowded ten deep around its turntable. That was exactly the reaction Packard needed. Once one of America’s most prestigious automobile manufacturers, the company was now fighting for survival, and rumors about its future were getting increasingly difficult to ignore. Packard had merged with Studebaker in 1954 with ambitions of creating a fourth major American automaker capable of challenging General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. Instead, the combined company was struggling with weak sales, high costs and dwindling resources. The Predictor was intended to convince customers, dealers and perhaps even investors that Packard still knew where the automobile was going.
It certainly looked convincing. Created under Studebaker-Packard design chief Bill Schmidt, with Richard Teague and Dick MacAdam heavily involved in its development, the Predictor was dramatically lower and more futuristic than the Packards sitting in showrooms. Its windshield curved not only around the sides but upward into the roof. Quad headlights disappeared behind powered doors. Tall, transparent-looking fins surrounded Packard’s familiar cathedral-style taillights, while a narrow vertical grille gave the front unmistakable Packard identity without simply copying the past. The car was sent to Ghia in Turin, Italy, where the finished body was constructed in just 90 days before being rushed back to Detroit for its Chicago debut.
It Had T-Tops Before Anyone Called Them T-Tops
The Predictor’s real magic was hidden in the details. Sections of the roof above the doors could slide inward electrically, making the low-slung coupe easier to enter and creating something remarkably similar to the T-top arrangement that would become familiar on American performance cars decades later. The reverse-slant rear window could be lowered for ventilation. The seats could swivel outward to help passengers climb aboard, the trunk lid was power operated, the windows were electric and Packard’s Ultramatic transmission was controlled with push buttons. An overhead console filled with switches made the interior feel more like an aircraft cockpit than a luxury automobile built during the Eisenhower administration.
Packard insisted that this was more than fantasy. The company initially referred to the car as the Projector, and Schmidt wrote at the time that it was not merely a dream car but a demonstration of practical ideas being seriously considered for future production. Underneath the exotic Ghia body was enough production Packard hardware to make the Predictor genuinely drivable. Some of the more ambitious engineering proposals were abandoned as development progressed, partly because Packard simply did not have the money or time to create everything its engineers imagined.
Even the car that reached Chicago was barely ready. Its extraordinarily complex electrical system suffered shorts and other problems after arriving from Italy, forcing technicians at Creative Industries in Detroit to work feverishly before the show opened. Yet none of that mattered once the public saw it. The Predictor became one of the sensations of the show and subsequently traveled to other exhibitions and Packard dealerships around the country.
What makes the Predictor especially fascinating today is how many of its ideas no longer seem ridiculous. Hidden headlights soon became commonplace. Roof panels that transformed the feeling of a closed coupe eventually appeared on Corvettes, Firebirds and countless other cars. Reverse-angle rear windows appeared on production automobiles. Four individual bucket-style seats, cockpit-like controls and the idea of a personal luxury coupe filled with powered conveniences all became familiar concepts. The Predictor did not literally invent everything that followed, but it captured a direction the American automobile industry was about to take. Car Design News has even noted echoes of its proportions and ideas in later cars ranging from late-1950s GM sedans to wide-track Pontiacs and the four-seat Ford Thunderbird.
The Future Arrived Too Late for Packard
The cruel part of the story is how little time Packard had left. The Predictor had barely finished exciting auto-show crowds when the company’s Detroit manufacturing operation collapsed. Packard’s Detroit plant closed in the spring of 1956 as falling sales and mounting losses forced Studebaker-Packard to consolidate production in South Bend, Indiana. Packard-branded cars continued through 1958, but they were based heavily on Studebaker products and never restored the prestige the company had once enjoyed. The grand future suggested by the Predictor never reached a Packard showroom.
The car itself was luckier than the company that created it. Unlike countless concept cars that were dismantled, discarded or quietly crushed after their usefulness ended, the Predictor remained in the Studebaker-Packard corporate collection. When Studebaker ended automobile production, the collection was given to the City of South Bend in 1966. The Predictor was restored in the early 1990s and has since appeared at major events including the Pebble Beach and Amelia Island concours. Today it remains part of the Studebaker National Museum collection in South Bend, meaning the public can still stand in front of the same one-off machine that drew crowds in Chicago seven decades ago.
That survival gives the Predictor an unusual power. Most concept cars show us what designers imagined might happen. The Predictor shows us an alternate history. Packard had the name, the luxury pedigree and designers who clearly understood that American cars were changing. Standing in front of the Predictor today, it is possible to imagine another version of the 1960s in which Packard survived alongside Cadillac and Lincoln, building low, sophisticated personal luxury cars descended from this extraordinary prototype. Instead, Packard gave the world one final glimpse of its future just as its own future was disappearing. The company didn’t survive to build the cars the Predictor promised. Remarkably, the Predictor did.
