Re: Hugh Ferry: Packard's most underrated president?

Posted by BH On 2010/1/16 14:27:30

I'm no expert when it comes to Packard history. However, it sounds to me like Ferry was a man of vision, but felt - perhaps rightfully - that he didn't have the necessary resources - internally or externally - to turn his vision into reality - except through someone like Nance. Things like the V8 and T-L didn't become a reality until a few years into the Nance era.

The merger with Studebaker is a bitter sweet pill. It took prospects of that merger to keep financing coming to continue production and R&D. Seems like it took the prospect of being able to achieve some economies of scale with Studebaker through shared parts to achieve the required projected break-even to move projects like the V8 forward. I'm sure that Nance spent a bundle on the 55th-56th Series, as a stopgap until the proposed 57/58 line was ready, but he banked on financial figures provided by Studebaker, which later proved to be less-than-accurate. I don't know enough about Ferry to say that he could have avoided that mess. I blame the accountants charged with that.

Yet, I feel the move to Conner Ave. was inevitable. Had the merger with Nash taken place, was there an AM facility in close proximity to take on all the work previously done by Briggs? Has anyone ever analyzed the square footage required for all the stamping and fabrication equipment and the teardown, transportation and set-up costs to determine if it was better to move it all to East Grand? I suspect that relocating the vehicle assembly line to Conner seemed more cost effective at the time. Blame the industrial engineers, as well as the accountants charged with that.

As evidenced by the ads and brochures of the time, Packard was doing a nice job of advertising, but a greater problem was development of its distributor-dealer network. Then, while many of the basic concepts of service marketing and customer satisfaction that the industry promotes today were being used by Packard 60+ year ago, Packard seemed to be falling behind in both quantity and quality of individudal retail stores - in spite of those afforded by the merger with Studebaker. I'm not saying there weren't any good Packard dealers, just not enough of them and in all the right places and at the right level of expertise. Not sure who to blame for that.

Still, I would agree things might have faired much better with Ferry and Nance managing in concert.