Re: New "What Ifs?"

Posted by Rusty O\'Toole On 2014/6/28 12:21:29

If you include junior Packard sales you should include LaSalle. Note the jump in Cadillac sales when they dropped LaSalle and replaced it with a cheaper Cadillac in 1941.

No doubt Cadillac benefited from GM's buying power when it came to steel, tires etc and from the implied subsidy of sharing the Hydramatic with other cars. A lot of body design and styling was shared with other cars too.

There may have been years when GM subsidized Cadillac more directly but on the whole, Cadillac was a profitable division. They would not have kept a perennial loser. In fact during the depression they seriously considered dropping Cadillac.

But, that was the business they were in. For Packard to be competitive they had to take advantage of their own strengths and develop the sales volume to compete. I know this was a constant worry around the Packard boardroom. They were more concerned about mass sales in the medium price brackets and looked on the senior cars as a nuisance, and were trying to think up ways to expand into cheaper cars.