Re: One Story Assembly Plant What If?

Posted by Leeedy On 2014/5/16 14:32:16

Quote:

It is amazing, stunning that people are continuing to claim that the Packard plant had no rail access. This is simply just not true and I have been all over this topic in the posting section on this web site entitled "How did they do it?"

Packard had tons of rail access. I was there. I saw it. Regularly. People are making all kinds of mistaken conclusions today off of bad photos and 21st century satellite views that leave off the reality of what things really looked like when Packard was in business! You may not be seeing it in photos and Google maps today, but it was certainly very much there! Rail heads came out of what was a huge shipping and storage lot at Mt. Elliot and East Grand Blvd. This had all been torn out by the 1960s, but sorry, it WAS indeed there when the plant was operating. There was a second line of track and spurs that went right through the plant and supplied coal to the power plant, oil, gasoline and lube to the plant depot and more. MORE rail access. It is neither fair, nor accurate to say that all this did not exist because it did! Most of this was removed in the ensuing years, but it certainly was there.

RE: Conner Ave. Packard Plant being "single story"... Again, this is not true. There was indeed a second floor there and the first floor height was already huge. There were in fact overhead conveyors that indeed led to the second floor (as well as stairs) and you can see all of these things in plant layouts. And it is likewise amazing that people have somehow forgotten the total fascination in the 1950s with single-story facilities of all kinds... from schools to factories. Stacked floors, stairs and elevators were considered outmoded and old-fashioned in the 1950s. Every-and I mean every write-up about the Conner Avenue Packard Plant referred to it as "modern" and implied it was cutting edge in every way. Now, all these years later we have folks railing against single-story factories!

RE: Packard Plant being "surrounded by urban residential"... (Presumably this means the Packard Plant on East Grand Blvd.) A good number of the people living in those "urban residential" areas in fact worked at the plant. And all of these areas came AFTER the plant, not before it. Furthermore, Conner had loads of residential area around it-which is why it was almost immediately turned into a shopping mall after Packard left! In fact, one of the most controversial government housing projects ever in Detroit was right across the street! I won't go into this one, but there were lots and lots of "urban residents" in the area... probably a lot more than over at Grand Blvd. Gotta know your Detroit history here.

RE: buying Willow Run instead of Conner Briggs...Doing so would have been twice or even three times as expensive as doing Conner-if only from an operational standpoint. That would have been like going out of the world backwards.

And Willow Run wayyyyy the heck out out by Ypsilanti in those days to a Detroiter was considered a HUGE trip... it was nowhere near Detroit city limits-no matter what direction it was on the compass. With Conner, the movement of cars by truck continued almost as it had earlier since the cars were still stored and shipped out from the same place as always at Mt. Elliot and East Grand Blvd. And the bodies had already been coming from Connor anyway. Had Packard moved to Willow run, this storing/shipping operation would have been lost too... or absurdly expensive to continue using.

People today think nothing of going to Ypsi from Detroit. I have a cousin who lives there. But...this was a very, very long trip from Detroit (especially East Grand) out there in those days. And the highways were nothing like today when a drive to Ypsi is nothing. Again, gotta adjust your thinking from 21st century back to the 20th century and the 1950s.

Furthermore, Packard bodies were already being built at Conner anyway! All Packard did was move the rest of the assembly line from Grand Blvd. to Conner to finish the complete car rather than truck the bodies from Conner over to East Grand. They didn't have to pick up every last thing and drag it over to Conner. So all of the howling about Conner is not about a complete move of anything. Yes, Conner could have been bigger. Yes, the move could have been a better one. Yes, the changeover could have been better refined. Much new equipment was added at the time and there were many unproven machines and processes that needed to have the bugs worked out. There just wasn't time to do all this. Then factor in the new V8 engine, new technology torsion suspension, new body styling... all these things were happening at the same time! It is a miracle that it worked out as well as it did with so many opportunities for something to go wrong! So people today need to put this all into perspective.

RE: James Nance wanting to run Packard into the ground"... While this may be the opinion of those stalwarts (some of them good friends) who saw his moves as too brash, too naive, too radical or too expensive, the man did what he thought was best. But it was just too much, too late. Like the guy who yanked the helm on the Titanic hard to one side, there was no way that ship was not going to hit the iceburg. So if we want to do the blame-game here it was Curtiss-Wright that put the final nail in the coffin- no matter how many people were sticking pins in their Jim Nance dolls.

Anyone who even remotely believes the fantasy that Jim Nance did NOT want Packard to succeed is simply mistaken. And obviously never talked with him. I can assure you, losing Packard broke Nance's heart and he was still hurting about it many years later-even if he rarely showed it. Of this, I can assure you... straight from the man.