Having owned a 1956 Packard Executive, I owned the last Packard (excluding South Bend built Packabakers) model introduced. It was most certainly the end product of making the most complex product possible. It was a nightmare to keep working properly.

Up until 1954, the Packard straight eight was the most reliable US engine built. The bodies were well built by Budd.

In 1955, the company hit the perfect storm. Budd was bought by Chrysler and would not build bodies for Packard, so Packard built there own bodies with some difficulty and expensive design upgrades. Packard marketing decided that V-8's would sell better that straight eights, so a very problemsome V-8 replaced the the reliable straight 8. A change was made to a posi-trac rear end made by Dana-Spicer. These had a life span of about 10,000 miles due to improperly hardened parts.

Around this time Packard introduced power seats, power windows, power locks, a funky air conditioning system with the condensor in the truck and vents behind the rear seat, a search and seek radio from Delco, power brakes with the booster under the floorboard, a weird automatic transmission with two methods of operation and a pushbutton shifter. All of these things had problems. The torsion bar suspension with a self-leveler was great. It was later used by Rolls Royce.

The dramatic increase in problems experienced by buyers in 1955 killed Packard's reputation for quality and by June, 1956 it was merely a nameplate to put on Studebaker products.

A similar pattern can be found elsewhere. Mercedes has experienced this phenomenon. Read the posts from owners of 300D's with manual transmissions and those from owners of 1986 and later diesels. After being very reliable in the '80's, in the 90's, VW's became service nightmares. A mid '80's Subaru was an easily serviced indestructable mountain goat, by 1995, a Subaru was servicable only and often by dealer-trained midgets.

All of the companies who go for complexity lose market share and their reputations for quality.

If the Chinese are smart, their first cars into the US will be simple and user friendly. Henry Ford is still not a bad instructor about how to make money building cars.

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1983 300SD "Guderian"
1987 MR2
2015 Camry
2015 Chevy Spark
2006 Hyundai Tucson