Quote:
Owen_Dyneto wrote:
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.
Hudson didn't really have the money to develop the Jet. They did a deal with Murray so that Murray paid for the body tooling and Hudson would pay back the tooling costs on a per car basis. When Jet sales lagged far behind expectations, Murray demanded more money per body so they could recover their costs in a reasonable time frame. That increase in tooling amortization made the Jet's price even more uncompetitive.
The engine in the Jet was essentially the old Hudson straight eight with two cylinders cut off.
Given the success Kaiser had with selling Kaiser tooling in Argentina and Willys Aero tooling in Brazil, it would seem to me that Hudson and Murray could have found a buyer for the Jet tooling...that narrow body would be an asset in a cramped european city...but I have never found anything saying what happened to it.
Owen, thanks for confirming my memory of the weak condition of Packard's dealer network.
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