Quote:
johntrhodes81 wrote:
I didn't write my question well, sorry. I had heard that the Packards/Clippers wouldn't fit on the Studebaker line. What I was envisioning was moving the Studebaker Champion and Commander production to East Grand and building the Packards/Clippers and the Champion/Commander on the same line in Detroit, and close South Bend. I just wonder if the Champion/Commander would be to narrow to work on the Packard assembly line.
John
My suspicion is that E Grand could not have handled the volume of 150,000 Studebakers, and 50,000 Packards. Conner certainly couldn't. Conner couldn't even turn out 55,000 with acceptable quality.
The second problem is the way the merger was structured. Because the shares were allocated according to book value, instead of market value, the Studebaker holders ended up with a controlling interest in S-P. I think it's the Ward book that talks about how the Board of Directors was constantly hamstrung because the Studebaker holders wouldn't give up anything in South Bend, and the Packard management wouldn't give up anything in Detroit. They couldn't even agree to shut down one of the proving grounds. (Studebaker's was about twice the size of PPG), so the broke company kept paying the costs to run two proving grounds.
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