Quote:
Packard5687 wrote:
Picking up on Mahoning63's thought about continuing engine production at Utica:
I have long puzzled why this seems not to have been considered as the house was collapsing in 1956. The Packard V8 was designed for expansion - the unbuilt '57s would have displaced 440 cu in. The Packard engine would have been competitive for many years. On the other hand, everyone knew that Studebaker's otherwise excellent V8 was at the end of its development cycle size-wise at 289 cu in. (The handful of Avanti R3 engines that displaced 304.5 cu in were bored out, not re-cored - and the cylinder walls were paper thin.)
So here's another scenario - management figures out that South Bend in unsustainable and that the possible volume out of Conner is more realistically profitable. So South Bend is shuttered and the Clipper becomes the Studebaker. There's one more re-style in the Reinhardt-Teague Senior body such as this envisioned by "Andy-HarborIndiana":
A couple problems with that scenario
-The S-P bailout involved Curtiss-Wright taking over S-P defense contracts, and a bagful of additional defense contracts that the government promised, and the Utica and Chippewa Ave plants to make the defense goods. In exchange, C-W handed S-P a lump sum advance payment for the lease of the two plants. That lump sum kept the lights on in South Bend. Utica needed to be cleared for C-W, so the new engine line was pulled up and trucked down to E Grand for storage until it was sold, for a tiny fraction of what the equipment cost.
-Most of Studebaker's volume was the low priced Champion and low trim Commanders. A retrimmed Clipper would be way out of the price range of Studebaker's clientel.
-While the Studebaker V8 didn't have any room to grow, Studebaker didn't need a bigger engine as it didn't have money to develop a larger car. Even by 56, Studebakers were noticeably narrower and lighter than the big three's offerings. Additionally, as the Studebaker V8 was designed to take a compression ratio of something like 14:1, it could take a supercharger better than any other V8 then in production, which is what S-P did for the 57 Clipper and Hawk.
-The merger between Packard and Studebaker was structured according to book value, rather than market cap. While Packard's market cap was larger than Studebaker's, Studebaker's book value was greater, so the Studebaker stockholders had control of the merged company. The two factions on the Board of Directors could not even agree to close one proving ground and consolidate operations at the other to save costs, so both proving grounds were kept open, and incurring costs, as the company bled. There would never be a consensus on the BoD to abandon South Bend.
Bottom line: Utica plant not available, big engine not needed, volume was in cheap cars and intrenched interests would not abandon South Bend.
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