Re: New "What Ifs?"

Posted by Steve203 On 2014/8/12 15:03:09

I recall reading in SIA that the top stamping which stretches from the upper cowl, windshield frame all the way to rear panel head of the trunk opening was the largest single piece stamping then bringing produced. Packard didn't have stamping capabilities for such a large unit.

That would tend to support my theory that, instead of making the investment in presses and a building large enough to house them, Packard punted the entire issue to Briggs.

As the plants were increasingly taken up with war materiel production, that too spoke for body production outsourcing.

I doubt anyone at that time figured the war would run forever, yet Packard made a forever decision by transferring nearly all it's bodybuilding equipment to Briggs, without documentation, so, when Packard was forced to bring bodybuilding back in house, they couldn't reclaim the equipment.

The logistics in that era certainly would have argued against a move to Willow Run unless there were overwhelming advantages to do so.

The largest advantage of W-R was how cheaply it could be bought. The government spent over $100M building it, and Kaiser bought it for $15M. Kaiser did have other options: the existing Graham-Paige assembly plant on W Warren in Dearborn and the G-P body plant on Michigan Ave in Wayne, but Henry Kaiser thought big, so the old Graham plants were sold in 47.

Kaiser had most of the stampings for W-R produced by Fleetwings in Philly, because Fleetwings was Kaiser owned. When Kaiser built an additional stamping plant, he put it in Shadyside Ohio (on the eastern edge of Ohio, across the river from Wheeling W VA), because he could get incentives for building there. Then a few of the presses were removed from W-R, reinstalled in Shadyside and the stampings trucked to W-R (I have a photo of a skid of firewalls going in a truck at Shadyside)

When it came to engine supplies for Kaiser, facility selection amounted to what was available, which was a mothballed Continental plant on Jefferson in Detroit, a longer drive to W-R than from EGB. Continental in Muskegon couldn't provide enough engine block castings, so, instead of going to another foundry around Detroit, Kaiser bought the foundry of the bankrupt Round Oak Stove Co in Dowagiac, MI, a 150 mile pull to W-R

Kaiser-Fraizer was a logistical disaster, but the W-R plant itself was only a part of it.

As for the employees, the employers didn't seem too concerned about the ease of their commute. As another person mentioned, it was a 45-60 minute drive from Detroit to Utica for the J-47/powertrain workers. In one of my Kaiser books, there is a diagram of the locations that W-R's workforce came from. While most came from the Ypsilanti area, and the company HR people groused about the lack of experienced autoworkers, some people drove astounding distances to get UAW wages, especially in 1946-53 when there were few to no freeways going in the right direction.