Re: New "What Ifs?"

Posted by Steve203 On 2014/8/20 10:02:15

The thing about the jet engine work, Packard didn't have the resouces to use what it was developing. I wouldn't be surprised if that was why the government pulled the development subsidy.

Even if Packard had gone the rounte that Curtiss-Wright did, license foreign designs, Packard still didn't have the resources to build them. While Packard could manage the $15M to build the Utica plant, it certainly didn't have the $48M that the government paid to equip that plant.

All it's competition was vastly more substantial: GE (which was handed rights to Whittle patents by the government), Westinghouse (which got in over it's head with the J40 and dropped out of the industry), Allison (which had GM's checkbook and was handed GE designs by the Army) and Pratt & Whitney, which had been a major aircraft engine producer for decades.

A better move for Packard would have been developing new markets for piston engine technology that it posessed, like moving into diesels for trucks to cash in on the trucking boom that arrived with the Interstate highway system.