Re: The Demise of the Independents

Posted by Craig the Clipper Man On 2017/4/3 15:38:05

WauhopM:

James Nance did not come up with the idea of banding the independents into one major corporate umbrella. The person who gets credit for that idea was George Mason of Nash. He proposed joining Nash, Studebaker, Hudson, and Packard together as American Motors. Unfortunately, Mason died before his idea could come to fruition.

Nash and Hudson did merge, as did Packard and Studebaker. Studebaker had a joker up its sleeve in 1954 when it revealed that it would drowning in red ink -- after its purchase by Packard. Nance must have felt like one of those gangsters going over the side of a boat in a cement bathing suit!

The final merging of Nash, Hudson, Packard, and Studebaker also hit a wall due in part to the animosity between Nance and Nash CEO George Romney. I think it was a moot point because it was too late for that merger anyway.

It is my opinion that the time for a merger between Packard and other major independents should have occurred during the 1920s before the Depression. By the early 1950s, the Big Three were rolling out cars at such a rate that the independents were literally left in their dust. Without the resources to bring out a variety of new models and flood television and magazines with advertisements, the independents continued to fall further and further behind.

I don't believe that Nance was the villain here. A lot of what is laid at his feet had its roots from many years before. No doubt the Studebaker purchase was a fiasco, but I don't think Nance would have made that move had he had all of the facts before him. I also think Nance made every effort to try to save Packard -- there just was no way.