“Ask The Man Who Owes For One”

Packard’s longtime slogan was “Ask the man who owns one.” Frank G. Eastman, who succeeded Ralph Estep as editor, had the same  piquant sense of humor. In a mock ad during 1917 Eastman drawled, “We build a good car and charge a good price for it—Ask The Man Who Owes For One.”

Chief truck engineer H.D. Church never signed his first name. Eastman pondered: “Hamm, Hamilcar, Harlo, Hermann, Hubert, Hernando, or is it just plain Henry? We don’t know. He signs his requisitions ‘H.D. Church’ and firmly refused to divulge for publication the label sprung upon him at the christening font.” (Factory hands called Church “Heavy Duty,” which, if true, was the ideal nickname.)

Making whoopee

Eastman also came up with the now-famous comment on an escaped murderer. In 1913 Harry K. Thaw, millionaire slayer of Stanford White, escaped from the Matteawan Asylum for the Criminally Insane in a Packard Six:

“When dependability is vital; when high speed is necessary; when a fast getaway is absolutely imperative, Ask The Man Who Owns One.” Safe across the border in Canada, Thaw duly wrote the company endorsing the product.

Eastman was chastened for making light of a somber event, but he came back swinging. Packards. he declared, were the favored transportation of the New York underworld:

“Innocent accomplices of ‘Lefty’ Louie, ‘Dago’ Frank and the rest. Jesse James, Dick Turpin and other outlaws of yesterday and the day before used the best horses obtainable. The selection of the Packard by the gun men of New York is, we insist, a matter of evolution and no reflection on the integrity of the car.”

Visual delights of the Packard marque

Integrity was exactly what Frank Eastman gave The Packard. He evolved its highly diverse cover style—no two successive issues alike. He frequently varied the paper stock and the typography.

Eastman recruited the best illustrators in the world: artists like Henry “Hy” Thiede, Earl Horter, R.S. Heinrich. The results were invariably a surprise, and always effective.

Eastman explained the rationale and means for those splendid covers in The Printing Art in 1915:

In our opinion the cover design is perhaps the most important factor in getting attention for the publication. There is so much diversity of method in handling different issues of The Packard that it seems almost impossible to arrive at average figures that mean anything….

The total costs for plates, including cover designs and illustrations, was $362. Printing, binding and mailing $1428. Paper, including cover stock $787. Envelopes $96; postage $835. The drawings cost $200; writing and editorial work and art supervision estimated at about $500.

My department has no means of measuring the concrete results of the investment in this form of publicity. We know that The Packard is an influence in keeping Packard owners in the family. We know it helps to promote the morals of the organization.

There are three points to keep in mind in conducting a house organ. First: To make it sufficiently interesting so that people will read it. Second: To have it reflect the character of the house. Third: To remember that the ultimate aim is to sell the goods.

Eclipse and rebirth

In the late Teens The Packard suddenly disappeared, replaced by an organ entitled Passenger Transportation. This was probably done to separate cars from trucks—the latter now had their own magazine: Freight Transportation Digest. But truck production ended in 1921 and Passenger Transportation was not on the same plane as The Packard. Frank Eastman was replaced as advertising manager by Frank H. McKinney in 1920, though whether McKinney edited Passenger Transportation is not known: the magazines carried no editorial credits from 1919 on.

Evidently the austere, colorless appearance of Passenger Transportation caused McKinney to reconsider it. Thus a second generation of The Packard began, labeled Volume I, Number 1 in the winter 1920-21 “Show Number.” (Salesmen gave out thousands at the round of winter auto salons.) In 1927. the title was modified to The Packard Magazine, and thus it continued through its last issue in 1931.

The Packard Magazine

If Estep had created The Packard’s concept, if Eastman had expanded the idea to include fine artwork, the new editors added a final touch: design excellence. The beautiful issues of 1927-31, printed on heavy coated paper, ran no more than twenty pages each. But each was a design masterpiece. Now. as the Art Deco age dawned. The Packard Magazine adopted thin. elegant typefaces, vignetted photography. John Held’s inimitable “Joe College and Flapper” cartoons decorated some issues.

Always there were striking four-color prints and paintings. In every way the magazine was the essence of the Packard motorcar in its golden age. In 1927, the summer cover was Gainsborough’s classic “Master Heathcote”—a painting sure to strike a chord with Packard’s clientele. Indeed the magazine was as worthy of a place on wicker settees or glass topped conservatory tables as The Literary Digest.

“Luxurious Transportation”

Autumn 1927 brought the first of Manning de Villeneuve Lee’s magnificent paintings depicting transpor­tation contrasts, with a Western scene entitled “Blue and Gold.” From this point through its last issue, every number of TPM featured a striking Lee painting.

First came the “luxurious transporta­tion” series (always including a Packard). Then a number of current events in which no Packard appeared—a bold departure for a car magazine. Commander Byrd’s voyage to the South Pole. President Hoover’s goodwill trip to South America, Gar Wood’s Packard-powered Miss America VIII, winner of the 1929 Harmsworth Trophy were all featured.

Each year there was a different border. The simple golden “picture frame” of 1928 was adopted for the cover of The Packard Cormorant on its first issue in Winter 1975.

The end of the road

The visual impact of The Packard Magazine forcibly overshadowed its excellent editorial content, punctuated by a return of some of the old humor. “Sedans may come, limousines may go, coupes roll on forever,” the editors said in the Twenties. But in “the zest of the Open Road, the Open Car beats all comers.” In 1928. when twenty-three 800-horsepower U.S. Navy planes were completing a quarter million miles of maneuvers at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the editors quipped: “The well-known Packard script is flying overhead to the tune of 200,000 total horsepower.”

Alas with the Great Depression, hard times came to America’s greatest luxury car. Time and money were now fast running out for Packard’s superlative magazine. It almost seemed as if Volume X, Number 1—the last issue, summer 1931—was the appropriate curtain call. It contained the final chapter of H.F. Olmsted’s history of Packard.

Olmsted himself provided the valediction: “With its new Twin Six recently announced, Packard bids fair to continue its stride to even greater heights. Already the enthusiastic reception which has greeted it world-wide indicates that the new Packard may fittingly take its place in the annals of Company achievement.” That was the famous Packard Twelve. And it did.

Ave Atque Vale

Through depression, recovery, recession, a second great war, temporary resurrection and demise, Packard publica­tions fitfully came and went. But never did they duplicate that elegant sense of pace, editorial sensitivity, humorous style and high design found in The Packard Magazine.

In retrospect it was better that way. We wouldn’t have thought  as much of it if, like so many other automotive house organs, it descended into the vulgar hucksterism of the Thirties and early Forties. It would have been heartbreaking to watch The Packard die alongside the company in the Fifties.

But among those for whom it had been an intrinsic part of the Packard family, the loss of the magazine was felt. For those who admire it today, the old yellowed pages are an infinitesimal microcosm of what was a great company at the height of success. They are much more valuable than the sterile if luxurious sales brochures. So thank-you Ralph, thank-you Frank, and thanks to your successors, for what you gave us.

That final issue ended with one of Packard’s arresting four-color illustrations of 1931: a majestic Deluxe Eight. Pictured front-on, it was a testimonial, as ever, to sheer integrity. Beneath it was a two-line statement that summarized the work of those who had created the finest automotive house organ in history, a slogan adopted on Packard Club publications today:

“This magazine reaches you as another evidence of our interest in your Packard ownership.’’

Further Reading

“Packard Tales and Memories of Bud Juneau,” 2021

1. The Packard: setting the standard, 1910-11

“I am much pleased with the idea of publishing a periodical intended to circulate among all who are interested in Packard welfare,” wrote General Manager Alvan Macauley in June 1910.

“Its most important office will be as a medium for the exchange of ideas and information…. Its columns should be open to all, and contributions should be welcome. It might contain preachments intended to make clear to all who read what a wonderful piece of mechanism a Packard car is.”

Alvan Macauley could have been thinking about the Packard Club magazine today, capably edited by Stuart Blond. In 1975 it was The Packard which inspired the design of the new Packard Cormorant. To this day that magazine duplicates The Packard’s cover styIe, margins, logos and typefaces. Occasionally we approximate The Packard’s engaging style, common only to a few business journals.

The Packard was not the company’s first periodical. That was Small Talk, first issued in December, 1902. Edited by Sidney Waldon, then advertising manager, Small Talk was a modest newsletter containing letters from happy owners.

Waldon replaced it with the more elaborate Packard Pointers. This lasted through the company’s remaining years in Warren, Ohio, but ceased publication after the move to Detroit in 1903.

In Michigan Packard consolidated its new Grand Boulevard factory, updated and improved its cars, and ultimately evolved the standard-setting Model Thirty.

In 1907 Waldon became sales manager, and his place was taken by Edwin Ralph Estep. Three years later Estep produced The Packard Number One.

Ralph Estep: present at the creation

Estep was a short, bespectacled, roundish gent with a prodigious liberal arts education, a warm style, and a sure sense for quality and elegance. “Before Estep took over,” wrote historian James J. Bradley, “Packard ads verged on the amateurish—loudly assertive of feats, runs, reliability trials and speed records. Estep imparted to Packard advertising the same aura of class and sophistication of its sales agencies and the cars themselves.”

A testimonial called Ralph “the pioneer developer of scientific automotive publicity.” More than a publicist, he was a poet, humorist and man of letters. He produced the first truly memorable automotive literature.

Estep’s first effort at Packard was a spectacular catalogue for the 1908 Model Thirty. A deluxe version for special friends of the company featured a double-page “credo” in hand-lettered Old English, trimmed with gold leaf.

The frontispiece color engraving was tipped-in by hand; the cover was heavy, grooved white vellum with gold embossments of the Packard radiator. Each copy cost $35 ($900 today).

The advertising budget was only $40,000 a year, but in 1910 Estep convinced management that a periodical was needed. Thus emerged The Packard. Ralph left in 1912, but remained close to the company and its magazine for the six years remaining to him.

In 1917 he joined the American Expeditionary Force. He was killed in action at Sedan on 7 November 1918, four days short of the Armistice. Six other former employees had given their lives in the “war to end wars.” All were honored in The Packard under the title, “Their Name Liveth Forevermore.”

Puckish humor, visual delights

Though Estep produced only twenty-nine issues of The Packard, they set the tone for the eighty-one which followed. We cannot overestimate their beauty, Bradley wrote, nor “the priceless record they contain of the young company’s aspirations and philosophy….

“Detailed reports covered technical developments and construction of everything from bodies to steering wheels. The Packard recorded daring cross country trips, dealer news, essays on the efficacy of square dealing, advice to owners.”

Estep’s whimsical sense of humor was early evident in his pages. The Packard was laden with cartoon spoofs of prominent dealers. It was capable of atrocious puns.

A dealer moved from Texas to Alabama. Estep said he was “now down Old Mobile selling Packards.”

When Packard announced plans to class body parts as animal, vegetable or mineral, Ralph said buckram and duck would go into the animal section: “If buck, ram and duck are not animal, what the deuce are they?”

Ralph was close to sales manager Sidney Waldon, whose long-distance endurance runs were legendary. He was constantly poking fun at his friend.

In 1911 he ran a mock ad promoting Waldon’s farm, under the heading, “Pigs is Pigs. We hate to break up a happy family, but are now prepared to book orders for pigs from spring farrowings.” Eggs, too, were for sale, but “if they don’t hatch, don’t blame us; try another incubator.’’

“Seth Saith”

Another amusing feature of The Packard was its columns, such as “Seth Saith,” full of homely philosophy: “Harmony doesn’t mean serenity. Serenity ignores the troubles of others. It is often selfish.”

Sprinkled in were quotations from poets like Tennyson and Browning. Tennyson’s poem “Rabbi Ben Ezra” was prominent.

Always The Packard poked good-natured fun at corporate executives. In a 1910 issue Estep likened the top brass, including the straitlaced Macauley, to a brood of chickens “just hatched out at the factory”:

We understand that S.D. Waldon will have large steel gray wings, while Mr. Macauley’s pin feathers give indications of his flappers being somewhat similar in color to those of a meadow lark. Ramsey is not feathering out at all well but gives evidence of being a rare old bird.

Each of the fledglings had to dig up one dollar. The mother hen was Russell A. Alger [Secretary of the Corporation and former Member of Congress] who thought the U.S. needed the money and who, we understand, is very proud of the brood.

“Replies to the Curious”

A question-answer column posed dummy questions, for which Estep constructed his own bizarre answers:

“The Packard aims to answer all questions promptly. Working our Query Editor overtime and keeping an ice pack on his head, we obtained answers to the following questions….”

Q: What is the name of the part that can whiz and whirr so that the sensation is as if one were amongst mill machinery and that causes the whole car to vibrate, hum and make the occupants miserable?

A: The name of this part is the motor. The whizzing and whirring are readily stopped by taking a wire cutter and cutting all the wires you can see.

Q: What are the names of the parts of the machinery under the car floor?

A. It depends largely on the car, the extent of the floor and whether you look the names up in the parts price list or ask Technical Manager Stowell, who is a noted namer. Anyway, among Packard owners very little is known about what is underneath the car floor.

The Q&A column ended with a confessional: “After this severe mental strain the Query Editor is working on the higher mathematics and differential calculus as a mild form of relaxation.”

Packard, always Packard

Estep went out in a blaze of fun. The Packard for November 1911 issue, one of his last, was the “Cosmobogus Number.” Brimming with dummy pages from distinguished periodicals, it contained, of course, only Packard articles.

Cosmopolitan, The New York Times, Colliers, McCall’s and The Saturday Evening Post were all imitated. Estep called this satire “A Reckless Compendium of our Cautious Contemporaries.” Each page paid some kind of tribute to the product, which was fast becoming the preeminent American luxury car.

And that was the whole idea, wasn’t it? The Packard was a celebration—of all that was best in a young, dynamic company.  The grand marque couldn’t have had a better champion.

Continued in Part 2….