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Hi all,

I didn't see anyone post it here... The June issue of Hemmings has a reprint of an SIA (Special Interest Auto) interview with George Romney. It looks like the original interview was published in 1981. In the interview, Romney talks about his start and time at AMC, and how a merger with Packard was dropped.


Here is the interview online. -->blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2010/04/04/s ... k-sia-interview-with-george-romney/

Wow! Very illuminating.

The final conclusion can only be that Nance was a self centered jerk. That coincides with his being fired by Henry Ford II after a brief stint at Lincoln (or Mercury).

I deal with name calling all the time and usually those people are treated like gold and sink the ship. It seems to be a basic human trait that the worst elements rise to the top of the corporate ____________ (you choose the word). Same is true in politics and relationships. In fact - civilization.

Fantastic post!

In this months Studebaker Club "Turning Wheels" there is a continuation of an interview with Harold Churchill and the goings on with the merger and his version of how some things came to pass.

Quote:

You're absoloutely 100% right Tim...I have witnessed it at my own company for many years. A continuous attempt at re-org after re-org but always with the same management so nothing changes...each one steering the ship on new course but all end up heading sraight for reef...its a plague that's sweeping the country all the way to capital hill. didn't mean to get off topic but the article was a perfect example...Nance was apparently a brainless power monger while Mason, like Mr. Romney, had vision along with a Midas touch...I believe Nance alone was the biggest contributor to Packards demise...we describe it as "willing workers - systems failure" syndrome where I work.

I think it is pretty clear that both Romney and Nance were strong-willed, ambitious people who both wanted to run the merged company and did not like each other so I would take anything either said about each other with a grain of salt. But it is interesting to have Romney's perspective on the matter.

Quote:

I'm not sure that I would come to that conclusion based on the comments from a competitor. There's usually more than a bit of self-interest expressed in these types of interviews.


That said, Governor Romney certainly did foresee many of the economic difficulties that are currently plaguing our nation. Oddly, we seem to still be making the same mistakes that he identified in 1981.

Lastly, I'm always amused whenever I see one of these "what-if" scenarios. Can anyone honestly say that had Packard merged into AMC the result would have perpetuated the marque's sterling luxury image? Really, would any of us wanted to see an grassy green 1978 Packard with 5mph bumpers, a white vinyl top, and plastic rub strips parked in a showroom in between a yellow Pacer and a brown Matador?

Given the only thing left of AMC is the initially unwanted Willys Jeep, I don't think Packard would be here today
even with the merger. I think the only way the name Packard could have survived would be if they were taken over by Ford because that would have been a lot cheaper than the Edsel fiasco. But even then Packard would have been gone today.

I think the 1940 110 was the embodiment of Max Gilman's plan. A classy little low priced car. After they fired Gilman the 110 was phased out in favor of the Clipper.

I think Romney's mention of using studies of his target market was very good and the Mason plan for success of the Rambler was brilliant stuff.

I have never tried to imagine a modern Packard because I probably wouldn't buy it anyway. Everything has converged into a general form. However, they have figured out how to build in obsolescence via junk engineering and so I am hanging on to my geriatric modern car just as long as possible.

Today's cars have hand grenade engines and electrics that make Joseph Lucas look pretty darn good. Seriously, engines are failing in under 20,000 miles and there are vehicles being built that don't move when it rains.
I see brand new $190,000 buses that don't run because the quality of the parts hasn't been tested. This is what happens when the MBA's take over and fire everybody who is trying do some work rather than play office politics and grab xss.

And of course their explanation for everything is to blame the help.

Tho' i said goodbye to this subject in my post (#7) of Midan's What Single Factor Most Contributed to the Demise of Packard? a few threads below on this forum, i don't know what this endless Monday morning quarterbacking does.

Packard survived several permutations. The Company originally produced lightweight, nimble, "sporting"
"motors" for entrepreneurs, doctors, playboys, even taking some heat for introducing "that French thing," the steering wheel to the States.
110 years ago, gasoline was still novel, even tho' Packard was an electric goods producer, that industry as state of the art as the Silicon Valley producing today's Tesla, even as Rolls-Royce, formed five years later, originally produced electric industrial cranes.

J.W. Packard wanted his namesake cars to remain in this voiturette vogue. Henry Joy and his other backers wanted multicylinders and got them once they moved to Detroit to
be nearer raw material and an open shop environment. The ensuing cars were wonderful, refined, but not ultimate barouches on par with Chadwick, Elcar, Locomobile, Lozier.

The big Six of 1912 entrenched Packard in the automotive firmament. The Twin Six of 1915 was downright exotic--- 12 cylinders!

Packard's "junior" Single Six and Six of the '20s were crisply marketed as Rolls-Royce's "small HP" junior car, the 20, launched about the same time, yet based heavily on the concurrent Buick Six, tho' in the words of one British reviewer, "....not so good."

Image is everything in the car biz. As Dr. Cole mentioned elsewhere, the Cadillac V-16 trumped Packard, even if East Grand execs had a hollow laugh as after years of crowing over the merits of their V-8, Clark Street vindicated Packard by producing a straight eight with the firing pulses halved for less crankpin loading.

But as with Packard's V-12 of 15 years earlier, 16 cylinders had a more is better ring to the man on the street, which was exactly what GM knew would "trickle down" accordant panache on lesser Cadillacs, and GMobiles.

The first practical self starter (discounting earlier compressed air units, etc.); synchromesh, the "last word" of 16 cylinders, the slick, sleek "pocket luxury car (as such were called)" of the '38 60Special Fleetwood, the racy 1940 1/2 C bodies and HydraMatic. GM was increasingly calling the shots through the 1930s, let alone the '40s.

Savvy collectors before and including the likes of Phil Hill, and those here gathered, know Packard had the finest chassis, were the consistently finest production cars in the world, the best road cars, owned by more global embassies, royalties, movers and shakers, celebrities, Supreme Court justices than any marque on the planet.

Packard transformed several times. As mentioned, all Cadillacs from 1936-on were downsized junior cars, GMobiles increasingly sharing components with lesser divisions.

R-R's focus and maintstay from 1935-on was aero engines, the cars an increasingly boutique sideline, after the war having steel bodies whacked out by Pressed Steel, who supplied Austin and half the Sceptered Isle auto biz, even as Briggs supplied Packard, Chrysler, Ford.

The GM production men called in to teach East Grand how to build popularly priced cars took over the Company in the '40s. And they did what they'd always done; all they knew how to do.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Again, WHICH Packard are we talking about saving? The Packard Alvan Macauley left April, 1948 was NOT the same company that ruled the '20s,
or that still cornered most of the luxe business through the '30s.

This is a delicate subject as i know many here own bathtub Packards, which have their merits. But the dean of roadtesters, Tom McCahill, who'd raved over the junior '46 Deluxe Eight Clipper, called the '48 Packard "a goat."

Park a '48 Packard alongside the hipper, crisper '48 Cadillac. No contest. Sure, Packard still had unrivaled build quality, a terrific chassis, but from 1948 the Company was focused on gas turbines, the GE J47 jet engine, building over 3,000 of the latter while increasingly "phoning in" the cars.

I owned a '51 Packard long ago. Excellent ergonomics. Smooth, durable drivetrain. But a nothing car.
Not a PACKARD. The party was over. So again, WHICH Packard shoulda, coulda, woulda been saved?

The Packards many of us like are from a different era. "The car built for gentlemen by gentlemen."

The nature of the car biz changed quickly so by the '50s, people thought they were getting shortchanged if they didn't get silly, pointless sheetmetal changes and chrome baroque.

Which Packard woulda, coulda, shoulda been saved?
All these yeah buts, if, if, ifs. Packard was by 1948 an
also-ran, following GM's marketing lead, whatever some of us
buffs and clubbies think of certain models.

The ONLY way for that diluted "Packard" to survive another few years, and looking at monstrosities like the Predictor, good riddance, was by uniting with the remaining independents to be able to approach GM/Ford buying clout, tool amortization costs. Who cares what Nance said and Romney said? Boardroom, Detroit Athletic Club ego. Deck chairs on the Titanic.

What's the best scenario? Look at the '66 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. It looks like a concurrent Rambler Ambassador Classic with a cut down R-R grille.

Given nightmares like the Predictor, you really want to see the sorry creations a watered down, evermore rationalized "Packard" would've produced by the '60s?

There's a reason Studebaker only fleetingly considered "Packard" as the name for their new Avanti. The same reason Cadillac at least twice considered reviving the name "LaSalle," but didn't: They no longer meant anything to a new generation of car buyers.

We're buffs. Our sensibilities don't count. Let's get over ourselves. We can't revise history.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Empires come to a close. Rome. Portugal, Spain. France. Britain. US, if we don't stop thumping our chests, flag waving instead of knuckling down and hustling again.

Macauley left. The men remaining were largely GMers and outsiders, befuddled newcomers. Enjoy the attributes of the cars remaining.

Much as i admire John Adams, Grover Cleveland, Harry Truman, they were of their era, and it's difficult to put them in ours, or us in theirs.

What's served by flogging a dead horse?

I always bow to Monsignors O'Dyneto and Cole; their steady, PROFOUND mechanical knowledge of so many of our cars. Yet re: M. Cole's '40 110/Clipper comment above, a clarification:

The 1941 1/2 Clipper was neither junior nor senior, despite using a high-compression version of the proven "One-Twenty" 282-ci eight, and was priced between the One-Twenty and One-Sixty, smack in the lucrative "Lexus" market of Buick Roadmaster, Cadillac Model 61 & 62, Chryler New Yorker, Lincoln.

There was no junior Clipper 'til '42, and that had a different, shorter front clip/hood/front fenders, shorter wheelbase.

Sorry to sound brusque, and hope i haven't stepped on any toes, hurt any feelings. We all have woulda, coulda, shouldas. Mine is that the Company retained and "sweetened," to use John Reinhart's word, the Clipper,
and marketed junior and senior Clippers as adroitly as Crewe peddled their funky little Silver Dawns/Bentley R-Types on the same 120-inch wheelbase, and Silver Wraiths on the same 127-inch wheelbase as the senior Clippers, believing the East Grand fare better automobiles, the English products finer furniture.

But that's living in the past; assuming the men who deftly marketed Packard in the '20s and gave us sterling ads like Peter Helck's 1933 "Hush" still ran the Company.

They didn't. So my what if's as moot as anyone else's.

Before Henry Joy and friends moved Packard to Detroit a century and a decade ago, there were 3,000 makes of automobiles in our nation.

Packard outlived all their storied competitors, including Cadillac and Lincoln----because the Cadillac and Lincoln, a n d Rolls-Royce/"Bentley" that survived, were NOT the same cars they'd been in Packard's heyday.

We want a watered down "Packard" to have survived, sorta, kinda, to do battle with those shells?

Let's enjoy what we've got and wish Tesla all the success in the world. Without a Packard grille.

We have those.

Here's to keeping the cars running as East Grand intended, driving them judiciously, thanks in no small part to the clearinghouse, the wealth, of vital information provided us by the likes of Drs. O'Dyneto and Cole.

I don't think this discussion is not worthwhile. It's just an interesting business problem. Until I read the Romney article I had no idea that Nance was living in a narcissistic bubble.

The Packard puzzle questions the foundations of capitalism - Is hard work and fidelity to value added a worhtwhile business proposition?

If you examine the quality of broadcast music the answer is clearly - no.

If you examine the quality of military personnel overseeing issues of sexual harrassment the answer is clearly - no.

If you look at the people hired to drive school buses in Cleveland the answer is clearly - no.

If you look at Jack Welch and his committment to GE rather than his own meglomania the answer is clearly - no.

So maybe Packard went bust because they weren't crazy.

And maybe they realized this and thought the only way out was to hire a crazy man as president.

...just chiming back in.

I don't claim to be a "knowledge base" on Packards or the company. I just know what I've read, and I saw this and passed it along. I found the references to the merger interesting.

One thing that I always keep in mind when I read a piece is that there are usually two sides to a story. ...and I don't know about anyone else, but at 44 (I am not claiming to be young or old) I can't remember conversations and sequence to events 5 years ago, let alone 30 years ago. So I don't necessarily take things as fact.

...as fo the discussion about Packard surviving and in what state of existence... I'll let you guys hammer that one out.

Mark