Re: New "What Ifs?"

Posted by Steve203 On 2014/8/20 11:56:14

Leeedy, add to your list nearly every US Navy combat ship smaller than a carrier uses gas turbins.

But with all the money and talent put into automotive gas turbines, none of the companies that made that investment was able to make a business case to put them into production.

wrt Packard experimenting with fuel injection, they were not alone. AMC also experimented with the Bendix "Electrojector" system in the late 50s. Chrysler actually got a few Electrojector equipped cars sold, but soon retrofitted those cars with conventional carburetors because the EFI was so underdeveloped and unreliable at that time.

My focus on the "what if" threads is what could Packard have done, with the resources at hand, on it's own, without a handout from the government or other well heeled entity, to get itself past 1956.

We know how the Studebaker thing turned out

We have established that a purchase of Willow Run, as you suggest, would have broken them faster.

Best things I can come up with are the merger with Hudson as Barit offered, and diversification into truck engines, either on their own or by aquisition, but I don't know who in the industry at that time would have been small enough for Packard to aquire (Hercules in Canton, Ohio?)