Re: Merger of Nash/Kelvinator, Packard & Hudson

Posted by Mahoning63 On 2015/4/25 8:49:02

Thanks Steve, excellent synopsis and critique. That might be the same book I've been reading every Saturday morning in the library while my daughter is taking music lessons. Excellent account of what happened.

I checked the Standard Catalogue for 1950 FoMoCo pricing. Ford sedans were priced around $1500-$1600, Mercury was $2000, Lincoln Capri was $2500 and Lincoln Cosmo was $3200. So yes, there was a $500 spread throughout the line-up. Looking at the annual volumes for each company one can see how Ford left much opportunity on the table in the middle and upper end of the market, they simply were not competitive with GM. Maybe the Ford brand name had been so strong for so many years that people couldn't dissociate Mercury and Lincoln from it. Or maybe the product simply wasn't good enough.

Noted how Mercury was originally supposed to fall below E-car but somehow they got switched. Could it have been a case of existing fiefdoms being protected and promoted?

The company might have benefited from Packard and Hudson both, the Packard at the top and Hudson between Mercury and Lincoln. But thinking about your comments, had either joined Ford they would have lost their uniqueness as you said. Maybe not initially but over time.

The Continental Mk II was an interesting play on Ford's part, an attempt to one-up Cadillac. That they failed points to the difficult nut the upper end of the market was to crack. They made a great car and it would have made for a great series including sedan and convertible but the business case simply was not there. Nor was there a business case for the wonderful Eldorado Brougham of 1957. I think the lesson was that, besides the need to be a bit shrewd with content and craftsmanship even in this rarefied segment, the bodies and manufacturing needed to be based on a somewhat lower priced / higher volume product to amortize costs.