This is the compelling story of the puzzling decline and fall of one of America's most prestigious automobile manufacturers, a company that for most of the fifty-nine years of its history was a synonym for luxury, excellence, and corporate stability. For the first time, this book gives an authoritative and convincing explanation of why the Packard Motor Car Company collapsed in 1956 in the midst of one of the greatest automotive booms in history. Had Packard collapsed in the depression year of 1934 when it was producing its classic, beautifully handcrafted Twelves, its death would have been without doubt tragic, but more easily understood. The irony, however, was that having survived the Depression by successfully changing its manufacturing techniques, bringing out new models and pitching its advertising to different clientele, when the firm tried to repeat that strategy in the 1950s, it failed.