East Grand Blvd., Conner Ave. or even Moscow?

Posted by Owen_Dyneto On 2012/1/16 10:22:24

In answer to Rusty, excluding wood on station wagons and few (non-structural) small pieces that might have been used in convertibles, 1938 was the last year that all senior cars used wood-frame bodies, and in 1939 only the Twelve used them.

In answer to the overall question about the interplay of Briggs and Packard in producing the conventional-style bodies, I've had conversations with quite a few Packard historians over the last few days. The Packard Board Meeting Minutes of April 10, 1940 seem to provide a reasonably definitive answer. Briggs was paid to develop the tooling and the bodies for the "new" (meaning Clipper style) bodies; Packard continued to build the conventional bodies thru the end of their use in 1942, though production of the doors was sublet to Budd (for both juniors and seniors) as had been the case already for several years. The sole exception was the production of the LeBaron Sport Brougham and LeBaron limo and 7-pass sedan which were converted by Briggs (who owned LeBaron) but were made by converting standard production bodies which Packard had produced. Briggs leased space in East Grand to store the bodies "in the white" and they were trimmed and painted at East Grand, whether by Briggs or Packard employees is not clear. One of the drivers behind the decision to go to Briggs was to clear space at East Grand for war work which at that time was already under way for Great Britian.

My thanks especially to Packard historian A. J. Balfour who has a complete set of Packard Board Meeting Minutes for this analysis. He reviewed the minutes of every meeting from 1937 thru 1942 to find this information.

As to the long-standing myth that won't die about the conventional body dies going to Russia, it's just that and has been rather conclusively proven a number of times by direct comparison of the cars. Some very small parts were identical and might have come from Packard or their suppliers, for example some instrument panel parts. Radio "waterfalls" for example are identical.

PS - should I get hardcopy of the the 4/10/40 Board Minutes, I'll try to quote from them or scan a few lines to put what I think should be the final wrapper on this topic.