Re: 55-56 V8 Powered Orphans

Posted by Mr.Pushbutton  On 2007/5/24 12:03:40

OK-I've told this story before over on the AACA Packard forums, I'll try to do long story short here:
My uncle worked for Ford (Lincoln Mercury) out of Dearborn during the period that Packard was hitting the skids. There were memos going around Ford to unconditionally hire anyone that showed up from Packard applying for a job, such was the respect for Packard at Ford. There was a steady procession form East grand blvd. to various Ford facilities.
My uncle used to go to lunch with a bunch of marketing people, one of whom came from Packard and still drove a 1956 Carribbean. They all were intrigued with the Packard pushbuttons and thought them to be just the thing for this new car they were working on. They arranged for the Carribbean to go to an engineering garage for evaluation, looked at the system on the car and bought the parts needed to make up the system through a S-P dealer. The one thing my uncle kept hearing was "we've got to make this thing cheaper"
The tooling had been destroyed at Autolite at the end of the run, Packard was gone and no one wanted to pay for the tooling, so Ford started all over for the Edsel. They were known to be more trouble than Packard's p-button system.
Jim Nance became the head of Edsel, and was well known as a proponent of pushbuttons, first at Hotpoint with the pushbutton range, then at Packard. He would have been more than receptive, although the idea would have to climb a long ladder of middle men at Ford before a product VP would have seen it.