Re: What SINGLE factor MOST contributed to the demise of Packard?

Posted by Owen_Dyneto On 2015/2/24 11:27:55

However, Hudson was probably the greatest car ever built even by todays staandards and expectations. THey simply had a too few dealers.

I've really got to take exception to that, Hudson was a truly fine car, but the greatest ever? And the reason they had too few dealers is primarily that they no longer had the product offerings that appealed to the marketplace that in turn could support a larger dealership network. Nor did they have the $ (after what they spent on the Jet) do develop a new product. The one side effect when they developed the unibody stepdown was that they also locked themselves into a far higher cost to develop a truly new product.

Packarrd had an excelleent dealer network

By 1954 Packard's dealer network was, to quote Bob Neal, "a shambles". From a high of 2065 in 1947, but 1954 they had barely 1200 dealers, many of whom were very small and financially just about clinging to a bare existence.