Re: Romney's selective memory

Posted by Steve203 On 2015/8/21 0:15:33

Someone correct me if i am wrong but Hudson bought stampings from Briggs. Hudson did not have it's own stamping.

Hudson produced a composite drawing of all it's plants, made to look like they were all together around the assembly plant. The caption for the body plant reads: "Monobuilt body-and-frame, fenders and sheet metal manufacturing, finishing, painting." Accounts say that when Cadillac bought the plant, they used it as a stamping plant.

<i>AMC had only stampings in Milwaukee (not Kenosha) and trucked the bodies in white to Kenosha. </i>

AMC was still shipping bodies from Milwaukee in 75 when I visited Kenosha assembly. The Milwaukee body plant, and one in Racine, had been acquired by Charles Nash around the same time he bought the Kenosha plant. In the interview, Romney said they had just built a stamping plant in Kenosha. He could be referring to the lakeside plant, a former Sealy mattress and furniture plant that Mason bought in 52. Sticks in my mind that, when I toured the plant, the guide said some bodies were made in Kenosha, so there may have been some presses in the Lakeside plant.

<i>So Not likely Packard would want such a distant stamping plant.</i>

Shipping stampings is not nearly as expensive as shipping semi-finished bodies. Kalamazoo, MI used to have a GM stamping plant, when there were no assembly plants closer than Lansing. The bulk of Studebaker's stampings were shipped by rail from Budd. Packard's problem was it lacked the facilities to assemble and paint bodies, even if the Nash produced stampings were price competitive.

<i>Romney only wanted Packard for their dealer network. </i>

I recall Nance being quoted that he had the job of bringing Studebaker into the "grand plan" as Mason had not been able to come to terms with Vance and Hoffman. Studebaker was the largest of the four independents. For Mason to do an asset strip on Studebaker, take the V8, the dealers and legacy parts business, then kill Studebaker, he would have needed complete control. Maybe Mason could not come to terms with Studebaker management because he could not figure out how to take complete control of the larger company. An attempt at an asset strip would be blocked by the Studebaker stockholders. Studebaker had the best investment bankers in the business on it's side as both Goldman and Lehman Brothers has been major stockholders since before WWI. We saw that demonstrated when Studebaker, on the brink of collapse, outmaneuvered Packard and had the merger valuations based on book value, rather than market cap, which gave Studebaker interests 55% of the vote at S-P.