Photos by Patrick Ernzen, courtesy RM Auctions.
Despite a 20-plus-year pursuit, Roy Gullickson has yet to realize his multi-million-dollar dream of putting the Packard name back into production. From that pursuit, however, he did end up with a roadworthy Packard revival prototype, perhaps the last car ever built to bear that name, which he will send off to auction this summer.
Following the demise of Packard, Studebaker-Packard proceeded to drop the latter half of its name and then sometime in the 1960s allow the trademark on the Packard name to lapse. Not until the late 1970s did anybody pluck Packard from the public domain, when Budd Bayliff re-registered the name and began to modify a number of vehicles – including Buick Rivieras, Mercury Cougars, and Ford Crown Victorias – with the signature upright tombstone grille.
Then in 1992, Bayliff sold the rights to Packard, reportedly for $50,000, to Roy Gullickson, a former engineer for White Motor Car Company and Massey-Ferguson (and self-described “engineer, pilot, farmer, entrepreneur and hands-on business owner/operator”) who became a millionaire after selling the farm equipment company he co-founded. Gullickson envisioned more than just Packard-nosed neo-classics; instead, he intended to raise Packard from the dead entirely by building “ultra-luxury, high-performance full-size American automobiles” under his Arizona-based Packard Motor Car Company.
“We had a fairly comprehensive formal business plan in place,” Gullickson said. A plan that called for raising $30 million within three years and building as many as 2,000 cars a year – priced at about $160,000 – within a decade, according to a February 2000 article in Forbes . And while part of that plan apparently involved sending cease-and-desist letters to Packard club members selling anything with the Packard logo at the time, another part involved building a fully operational prototype not based on any existing automobile.
While Gullickson worked with Lawrence Johnson, whom he described as a former Packard engineer, on the 119-inch-wheelbase all-wheel-drive aluminum space-frame chassis, he had Arunas Oslapus and Don Johnson, who styled the Fiero-based Zimmer Quicksilver, work out designs for the four-door, four-seat all-aluminum sedan body, ostensibly inspired by the 1941 Packard Clipper. For power, Gullickson went with a 440-hp, 525-cu.in. Falconer Racing Engines V-12 to which he added GM fuel injection and ignition, a custom accessory drive, and intake and exhaust manifolds to fit in the car’s engine bay. Backing it is a GM 4L80E automatic transmission and Borg-Warner transfer case sending power to front and rear Dana-Spicer differentials. Engineering work started in early 1994 and Packard Motor Car Company completed the prototype in mid-1998 at a cost of $1.5 million, “and that doesn’t include my time,” Gullickson said. Earlier reports have pegged the cost of developing the prototype at about $800,000.
When Gullickson debuted the Packard Twelve, as he called it, in October 1998 in Tucson, he claimed an overall weight of 3,750 pounds, a zero-to-60 time of 4.8 seconds, and a quarter-mile time of 12.5 seconds. He then went on to show it extensively over the next year, including at the Packard centennial celebrations around the country, and claimed he had 70 orders in hand for the cars by early 2000.
He didn’t, however, have enough investment money in hand, and production never commenced. “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.” Indeed, in 2007 Gullickson placed a $1.5 million price tag on the Packard Motor Car Company (including the Packard Twelve prototype), noting that he and his wife were ready to retire, though nothing came of that. “We always had a lot of interest, but no combination of interest and capability,” he said.
Seven years later, again citing his age, Gullickson has decided to sell just the Packard Twelve prototype – splitting it off from the company – without reserve at RM’s upcoming Motor City auction in Plymouth, Michigan. “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 Packard Motor Car Company – which continues to control the Packard trademark for licensing purposes – is still for sale, and Gullickson said he’s in talks with some interested parties, but doesn’t believe anything is imminent.
With less than 300 miles on the prototype, it hasn’t seen the sort of shakedown testing that Gullickson said it would have received had further funding come through. “It rides fairly typical,” he said. “We didn’t stray away from best design practices as far as steering geometry, though the springing may be a little bit harsher than it should be for a car like this. And we didn’t do much noise, vibration, and harshness testing, so it’s a little noisier than I’d like.”
As far as the expected price, Gullickson said he would certainly like to get out of the prototype what he put into it 15 years ago, but he’s not expecting it’ll go for that much. “It’ll bring what it’ll bring,” he said. RM has yet to release a pre-auction estimate for the car.
RM’s Motor City auction will take place July 26 in conjunction with the Concours d’Elegance of America at St. Johns. For more information, visit RMAuctions.com.
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