Re: Welcome new folks and voyeurs

Posted by John Clements On 2009/8/2 2:39:39

Owen is correct, Curtiss-wright seem to me to have picked the eyes out of SP and dumped them to thier fate.

3 reasons have been given for Packard's failure:
1) They let Clare Briggs talk them into ending their own body production in favour of Briggs (was OK until he died and his family sold the business to Chrysler to meet inheritance taxes, needless to say Chrysler didn't want to make bodies for a competitor);
2) The damage to their production equipment which was stored during the war took a while to repair, giving other manufacturers a head start);
3) Most important of all at the time was their difficulty obtaining supplies of steel, GM and Ford, probably Chrysler too had connections (or owned) in the steel-making industry and smaller companies like Packard had to wait.

Regardless, we can be proud of our vehicles, after all who else can claim to have once been the best car in the world?