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DaveB845 wrote:
I suppose that painting and trimming a body for later assembly, somewhere else, can be comprehended when there are just a few body styles, paint and trim level choices. But doing it for more complex assortments of options (e.g. BMW says that they could build almost two million cars without doing a repeat/duplicate) is amazing. This makes me wonder what in the world Packard needed all that East Grand factory for if that much of the work was being done elsewhere by outside companies.
The only comparable situation I can relate to is Porsche in Zuffenhausen/Stuttgart. They build car bodies in advance of orders, stock them, tracked by computer pickers, and call a body forth when an order says it's needed. I was told that it may take as long as several weeks in storage, or just a matter of hours. The complexity is amazing considering market differences in crash protection, engines and transmissions offered and 2 vs 4 wheel drives. A Carrera body has differences from a standard 911, and the option list can almost double the price of a completed car.
This complexity makes it easy to see how Packard lost money on every one of the Caribbeans it sold, simply because of the customizing of the five hundred or so they made each year. Same goes for Buick Skylarks, Olds Starfires and Cadillac Eldorados, each having non-standard body parts.
Briggs was obviously a profitable enterprise. I just wonder how much of what The Man Who Owned One paid ended up in the Briggs' coffers?
You need to know that these things that Packard is accused of doing that seem weird or wasteful today and to people outside of the car industry, in fact were not at all unusual. On the contrary, outsourcing bodies throughout much of Packard's history was a very normal procedure.
Yes, some of today's car companies make big statements about their capabilities-especially those from overseas. Some of it is true... some is puffery. But with computers and robotic assembly, sure, a lot is possible. It ought to be!
And while we're talking about what seems to be genius and waste by various car companies, there are some facts to consider. Ford outsourced bodies and cars all during the 1950s and even into recent years. What, you say, were these cars? Mustang convertibles for many years were built by outside vendors. In more recent years various Ford products were built by Mazda. Like the Probe and Capri and last Cougar. Back in the 1950s, Mercury station wagons were built by Mitchell-Bentley's Ionia Division (if you never heard of M-B, think of 1953-54 Packard Caribbeans because that's who converted them too!). GM used M-B for many Buick station wagons and later, Buick, Olds, Pontiac and others (and for anyone crying out- Oh no, you're wrong they had Fisher Body... just look on the door sill step plate and you'll likely see "Body By Ionia" rather than "Body By Fisher"). And back on the subject of Ford using outsiders... who do you think built the Continental Mark II??? Mitchell-Bentley.Yes, same folks who did the first two years of Caribbeans. And yessss, Ford lost money on every one of those too. But they are still some of the most memorable FoMoCo products ever. How about Toyota? Who do you think built the Celica convertibles? American Sunroof Company (ASC) and my friend, the late Heinz Prechter. They had plants in different locations-one of which was in SoCal where a small assembly line existed and hardtops were cut into convertibles. ASC also did Camaro and Firebird convertibles for GM. Bottom line: none of this was unusual practice in the auto industry. ASC did the retractible hard top Mitsubishi 2000GT Spyder too. And more.
RE: Packard's need for a large facility on Grand Blvd... most car plants in Detroit's glory years were huge. They had to be. Ever see old Dodge Main? Or Ford Highland Park? Or Ford Rouge? Everything was pretty much done indoors-despite (or because of) the climate.
And the Packard plant on Grand Blvd. produced much more than merely cars. Also remember that much of the facility was ballooned during wars-especially World War II. Once it was there... it was there. Yes, not all of it was being used, but if they needed it, they had it.
AND some of that huge space made money. A good-sized area was actually leased to Briggs and others. Of course all that space is also the reason that Packard once had parts inventories going back decades earlier and could often supply their wealthy customers with replacement items that no auto parts store would stock. Sadly, these large inventories were...uh..."disposed of" in the 1950s.
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