O-D, Packard was trading work with AMC (Hudson) during the V-8 years, it has been written that Hudson produced the stamped portions of the V-8 engines, the valve covers and oil pans, probably the valley pans too, could it be that Hudson also cast the blocks and heads? This also begs the question of the Ultramatic housings and 1955 rear end housings.
The land where Packard's foundry sat became in short order the I-94 expressway, according to
http://www.michiganhighways.org/indepth/early_I-94.html the expressway was completed to Mount Elliot street (just west of where the foundry sat) in 1957, and was completed to Conner ave. (now passing through, or
under where the foundry sat)by the fall of 1958. Projects like this don't happen overnight, the expressway had been under construction since 1953 (as a modern submerged expressway, it had been under construction as a direct road linking war factories from east to west since 1942) it is not unreasonable to think that the federal trasportation folk may have tapped Packard on the shoulder re: eminent domain and the foundry land as early as '53 or '54. The massive Dodge Main plant sat just to the north of the Packard plant, and they would have had more clout and were undoubetedly left alone in the routing of the E-way.
Gemmer gear was on Mt.Elliot, parts of that plant remain today.
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