Re: One Story Assembly Plant What If?

Posted by Jimmy Scichilone On 2014/6/22 16:55:06

Its a mystery to me and many others (but does not seem to be hit on much) as to WHY Packard didn't assume lease/ownership/control of the Briggs/Conner plant and just continue the status quo of the building of Packard bodies for 1955 in the same manner that Briggs did for the previous years bodies. Everything was in place for the previous manufacture of bodies by Briggs, the only thing needed was Packard to update the current assembly line for bodies to the '55 models, and continue business as it stood. If Conner had excess capacity it could have been used for other stampings and assembly. Nance was handed some very poor advice and surrounded himself with people like Ray Powers who made very bad recommendations.... As a company starting to be fraught with high cash outlays, it certainly didn't have the funds to do much, and yet it foolishly extended itself by moving all production to Conner Ave and thereby creating quality and production problems that would not have happened if it just continued business as it was. It could have leased Conner from Chrysler, continued with same assembly lines for the Clipper and Packard bodies in the same manner as Briggs when they were making the bodies, continued to trim the cars out at East Grand and saved a lot of woe that really cost the company its life. Nance wanted to bring Packard body manufacture back to Packard and it was a good thought, his timing was just all wrong. The argument that a one story plant was more efficient is all well and good and makes a lot of sense, but Packard was on the fence for survival in 1955.... by extending 29 million for start up costs over at Conner it really put itself in great jeopardy.....from which it never recovered. The losses at Studebaker drug it down even lower......till it was so weak as a company with collapsing sales that no one in their right mind would loan them money for the new models...... All these 'studies' of costs efficiencies that were handed to Nance......some of them were obviously just plain flawed. When a business is on the line and doing poorly these major changes instill a risk that is very dangerous........if just one of these 'studies' are flawed or incorrect it can cause the whole stack of cards to fall......which is exactly what happened in Packard's case.