Quote:
Owen_Dyneto wrote:
I can't comment on why Studebaker might have waited until the late 30s, but the early to mid-20s and perhaps a bit later were devastating to US truck makers, driving Packard, Pierce-Arrow, and many, many others from the marketplace. Following the end of WWI the US government decided to bring back from Europe the thousands (tens of thousands?) of trucks manufactured and shipped to Europe for the war effort. These vehicles were either sold at bargain-basement prices or even given to Federal, State and local highway agencies and cities/towns which essentially destroyed the domestic market for new trucks for at least a half-decade, maybe longer.
Interesting, and something I had not considered. Of course, if a lot of those army trucks had been Studebakers, they would have provided significant service parts business for the company. iirc, many of those Army trucks were from Mack, and Mack survived the industry shakeout.
The government also sold off it's huge inventory of Liberty engines and parts, which destroyed the market for any new production engines near the V-12 Liberty's size. I admire Hall-Scott's solution to that problem: they produced a new 6 cylinder engine, so it's size did not compete with government surplus Libertys, but they designed it to use the Liberty parts that were available below the cost of production. The crankcase and crankshaft were new, but cylinder barrels, heads, pistons, rods, cams were all purchased from government surplus.
Which brings up another question that occured while I was reading "Master Motor Builders": why did Packard persist in making V-12 aircraft engines, with the market flooded with Libertys? The appendix of the book lists a long series of 1300-1500 cuin V-12s produced in the early-mid 20s, each produced in tiny numbers. The sense I got was that Macauley was indulging Jesse Vincent's curiosity, and subsidized the aircraft engine operation until auto profits evaporated in the 30s.
This Post was from: https://packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=158261