Re: Why no Packard in a "Packard"?

Posted by 58L8134 On 2012/4/19 8:43:14

Hi

Hope some of these facts presented from two good sources will shed light on the whole Connor Avenue move.

Excerpted from "Connor, Briggs and Chrysler: Trend and Fate" by John M. Lauter, The Cormorant, Spring 2007, Number 126, pages 2-11.

"...the Connor plant was itself World War II surplus. Built for Briggs in 1940 for airplane component manufacturing and quickly enlarged a year later, it became an ideal sized and located facility to move Briggs' Packard work to after the war."

"Shortly after the war, Briggs moved all Packard production to the 759,749-square foot Connor Avenue plant."

"Walter O. Briggs died on January 17,1952 in Miami. In the face of daunting inheritance taxes his heirs decided to sell the automobile body business. Chrysler, their largest customer, was the logical choice".........."The sale closed on December 29, 1953. For $35 million, Chrysler gained all equipment, tooling and 12 plants - 10 in the Detroit area, one in Youngstown, Ohio and another in Evansville, Indiana, and added 30,000 Briggs employees to their payroll. The Briggs purchase found all body-making facets of Chrysler reorganized as 'Chrysler ABD" (Automotive Body Division)."

"In a press release dated December 29, 1953 (the day the sale closed), Chrysler stated, "Automotive customers of Briggs, including the Packard Motor Car Company for bodies and the Hudson Motor Car Company for trim materials, will be served by the Automotive Body Division, under Chrysler management." Chrysler obviously thought better of this aspect of the business after acquiring Briggs, notifying Packard that they would no longer provide bodies to Packard after the 1954 run. James J. Nance was known to be on friendly terms with Chrysler president L.L. 'Tex' Colbert; perhaps Packard would have suffered a more curt disruption of their body supply if these two men were not social with each other."

"The move was sold to the shareholders and the media as 'modernization', getting all assembly operations on one level, but it was really a case of 'bringing the mountain to Muhammad." Packard's body assembly operations were there, in place, and operating. It was probably easier for Chrysler to lease the facility to Packard than deal with disposition of the equipment and property immediately after the Briggs acquisition. We know that the Connor plant never functioned well as an automotive assembly factory and that the production supervision and staff at Packard pulled off a miracle transferring operations from the 3,000,000-plus-square feet of East Grand Boulevard space to the meager 759,749 square feet (a figure that Packard staffers contested once in the plant) at Connor."
"The end came in the summer of 1956, when all Detroit (Packard) operations were ended by Curtiss-Wright. Studebaker-Packard held the lease on the Connor plant until June 11, 1957, after which it reverted to Chrysler. According to documents in the Chrysler archive, the plant was 'in such poor condition a supplemental agreement was made to demolish it on December 30, 1958." The demolition was completed by August 8, 1959. At 19 years of age the Connor plant must have been an albatross to Chrysler, too small for any significant production and too big for sub-assembly work. As for the statement concerning its poor condition, it is hard imagine that Packard caused such a degradation of the facility in three short years. Perhaps Briggs was lax in maintenance."

Photographs show 1954 Packard bodies were only painted in their finished colors but without any interiors, chrome trim or glass before shipment to Packard.

Excerpted from The Packard 1942-1962 by Nathaniel T. Dawes, page 123:

"In May (1954) the company negotiated a five year lease with Chrysler, at an annual cost of $0.8 million with option to buy. Nance immediately had Ray Powers, vice-president of Engineering, who had done the Utica plant begin layout of a final assembly facility." Author notes he was assisted by Neill S. Brown and John D. Gordon.

"These three (Powers, Brown and Gordon) had until September 16, 1954, to finalize the plans and organize the logistics to implement the plans. That date is when the last 1954 Packard body shell came off the line. Starting September 17 it was to be an organized race against time to complete the renovations and begin assembly of the 1955 models."

"The Connor Avenue plant went from shutdown on September 16, through a complete renovation, began production, and the first 1955 Packard drove out the door on November 17, 1954. That is exactly 62 days, from shutdown to production of the first automobile on the new line."

So, for $800,000 annually, Packard leased a facility with a fraction of the floor space (759,749 sq.ft. vs. 3,000,000-plus sq. ft.) it had utilized at East Grand Boulevard now to do complete car assembly which still included the body assembly. How much was expended to tear up everything in place at both plants and reinstall it all in inadequate square footage in a compression time frame isn't noted. All this on top of a radically changed product line far more complicated and unfamiliar to the assembly staff working in a new unfamiliar facility. The learning curve must have been steep indeed. If Packard had been a choice job in the auto assembly industry beforehand, it must have turned into a nightmare for many long-timers.

While it cost significantly to make this move, funds better utilized otherwise, blaming the complete $29 million loss for 1955 on the plant move directly is incorrect. What the action did was set in motion a hailstorm of market troubles of late introduction, badly delayed dealer deliveries and myriad quality problems that consumed months and considerable resources to rectify, worst of which was damage to their public reputation for quality and reliability. The 1955 loss was the indirect result of a whole sequence of unfortunate events, incorrect assumptions and bad decisions. No small share of loss was also extracted by the taking on the Studebaker operating expenses which the combined corporation was obliged to do.

Steve

Addendum: To my description of the two photos showing painted bodies without trim or glass, examining the photo on page 3, two transport trailers loaded with bodies show them to have glass and chrome trim in place. Apparently they were returned to an assembly line when specific orders were scheduled.