Richard A. Teague - Early Work

Early Work

After World War II, Teague penned a design for a pre-Henry J economy car for Kaiser Motors. In 1947 he joined the General Motors design studios headed by Edmund Anderson. Starting as an apprentice stylist and eventually graduating to the Cadillac advanced design group, he also worked on the 1950 Oldsmobile Rocket. The 1950s "saw some of the most beautiful and some of the most outlandish vehicles" and the head of the design department at General Motors liked chrome on cars.Teague described how two sets of overlay designs were made for Harley Earl to choose from. Both chrome trim sets had been put on one Oldsmobile prototype by mistake. Earl saw it and ordered it produced that way although the stylists were horrified.

General Motors fired Teague and he joined The Packard Motor Car Company as Chief Stylist following John Reinhart's resignation. His first work there was a minor facelift on the Packard line for 1953, and when the Packard management under James J. Nance decided to relaunch Clipper as a stand-alone make, separate from Packard, it was Teague who achieved the visual distinction between the two. He also designed several Packard show cars. These included the 1953 Balboa (whose canopied reverse-slant and lowering for ventilation rear window later appeared on the 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser, 1958–1960 Lincoln Continental, and various Mercury models), the 1954 Panther, and contributed with William Schmidt to the 1955 Request whose principal designer was Dick Macadam.

The restyled Packard line for 1955 showed Teague's keen eye for detail and his ability to produce significant changes based on limited budgets. However, the company was not doing well following the purchase of struggling Studebaker. The last Teague design for Packard was the Executive, introduced mid-1956 and derived from the Clipper Custom. Sales of the luxury Packard collapsed during 1956. Teague also designed the last Packard show car, the Predictor, plus a new Packard and Clipper line for 1957 that would have followed the general lines of the Predictor. The design also was stillborn when Detroit Packard Detroit operations were shut down completely in mid-1956. Lacking all-new Studebaker-Packard company had to make use of existing economical Studebaker designs. Working with little time and money, the stopgap 1957 Studebaker models became known as "Packardbakers." The 1957 Clipper Studebaker "wearing Packard makeup" were designed largely by Teague, until a "real" Packard model could again be made.

By 1957, the entire Packard styling team moved to Chrysler Corporation and Teague became chief stylist. After leaving because of management conflicts, he worked on non-automotive assignments for an independent design firm.