Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

I have been an auto plant logistics "junkie" for almost sixty years and have personally visited 38 plants on five continents to satisfy my curiosity. But owning my Packard has brought up all sorts of questions about how the postwar Packards were actually built. I am assuming that Briggs Manufacturing did the metal stamping, welding and body assembly (not only for Packard, but some Ford and most Chrysler products, too) at their Conner facility, but how did those body-in-white bodies get to East Grand? I am assuming, in the pre-Edsel Ford expressway, the trucks must have been constantly running over East Detroit streets, with trailers of bodies for both the junior and senior cars. I am also assuming that bodies for cars were stashed with TBN already stamped into the firewalls, and therefore plucked when a sedan, hardtop or convertible was needed, meaning that the sequence of these numbers is scattered, not necessarily in Last In, First Out order. The upheaval that occurred when Chrysler bought Briggs and body production later shifted from East Grand to Conner may have made this process more sensible. I am also assuming that all paint, trim and upholstery was not done by Briggs, but was done by Packard workers at either East Grand, or later, at Conner for the 55 and 56s per broadcast sheets. Finally, the stamping of the vehicle identification door jamb and engine block was done, coordinating it with those sheets and production sequence.

Is there a Cormorant issue or published book that documents some of these issues? Or is there an old timer still around who remembers how'd they built these special cars?

Interesting questions and I'd like to know more about it as well. But to touch on but one comment you made, the bodies were shipped by Briggs already painted and trimmed. Whether this was done at Briggs by Briggs personnel or Packard personnel I don't know, but it's documented any number of places that this was the practice at least between 1946 and 1950, perhaps earlier and later as well.

See page 29 of the Robert Neal book on Packard 1948-50 for a picture of the painted and trimmed bodies as they arrived from Briggs. Also, the photo below shows a shipment of Chrysler bodies from the Briggs facility enroute to final assembly, likewise painted and trimmed. Proof that they weren't "first in, first out" is shown by the disparity between the Briggs Body Number and the Packard Vehicle Number, a situation which existed from the 21st series (and perhaps the 20th as well, though I've yet to learn of a 20th series Clipper-style body with a Briggs Body Number Tag) thru until the 24th series was underway.

I'm looking for a photo I have of 1949 Chrysler bodes leaving a Briggs plant for final assembly, they likewise are fully trimmed and painted.

I suppose that painting and trimming a body for later assembly, somewhere else, can be comprehended when there are just a few body styles, paint and trim level choices. But doing it for more complex assortments of options (e.g. BMW says that they could build almost two million cars without doing a repeat/duplicate) is amazing. This makes me wonder what in the world Packard needed all that East Grand factory for if that much of the work was being done elsewhere by outside companies.

The only comparable situation I can relate to is Porsche in Zuffenhausen/Stuttgart. They build car bodies in advance of orders, stock them, tracked by computer pickers, and call a body forth when an order says it's needed. I was told that it may take as long as several weeks in storage, or just a matter of hours. The complexity is amazing considering market differences in crash protection, engines and transmissions offered and 2 vs 4 wheel drives. A Carrera body has differences from a standard 911, and the option list can almost double the price of a completed car.

This complexity makes it easy to see how Packard lost money on every one of the Caribbeans it sold, simply because of the customizing of the five hundred or so they made each year. Same goes for Buick Skylarks, Olds Starfires and Cadillac Eldorados, each having non-standard body parts.

Briggs was obviously a profitable enterprise. I just wonder how much of what The Man Who Owned One paid ended up in the Briggs' coffers?

This makes me wonder what in the world Packard needed all that East Grand factory for if that much of the work was being done elsewhere by outside companies.

For one thing, up until the decision in late 1940 to outsource body manufacture, much of the space was used to build, paint, and trim their own bodies. Other than for WW II work there weren't many significant additions to plant space after the alterations needed to make the high volume junior cars.

Before 1940 they were building two lines of cars. The Senior line was reorganized to take up less space with the 120, but building cars by hand takes a lot of space.

With the collapse of the luxury market the 120 was really just using up vacant space in the factory. They probably got a good costing job from Briggs to out source that work.

I don't really understand why a multifloor building is supposed to be so bad. What's the difference if the body comes down from above or is moved from a half a mile away? I only know the heating costs and property taxes are higher.
The biggest hindrace with the Packard plant is lack of railroad access.

Today's plants are in bad shape and the only infrastructure investments are being made in places like Mexico. I'm confident that within 30 years they will all be gone, including Ford which avoided bankruptcy only by screwing it's creditors.

Imagine facilities with roofs caving in, toilets overflowing, broken down furnaces, collapsed sewer pipes, poor lighting and worn out electric service. The Masters at Being Xssholes (MBA's) think that shrewd behavior is to blame everything on the help. What they don't understand is that the Mexicans are going to launch their own brands one day. Goodbye American cars.

"The biggest hindrace with the Packard plant is lack of railroad access."





Here's a photo I pulled off the internet. There's railroad tracks running right past the Packard plant.

There appears to be a spur, but on the wrong side of the tracks to be useful.

You'd think RR would be easier and less expensive than trucks, particularly the size trucks used in the plant's heyday.

To see a photo of the 1954 Packard bodies, sitting on shipping trailers outside of the Conner Avenue plant, ready to be trucked over to East Grand, read John Lauter's article "Conner, Briggs, and Chrysler" in the Spring 2007 issue of The Packard Cormorant (#126). The photo is copyrighted by DaimlerChrysler (at the time), and so cannot be scanned and posted.

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Hello... up until the end of the 1954 model year run, the bodies were trucked over to Grand Blvd. from Briggs. Loading trains for such a short distance in those days would have been over the top. A real ordeal. GM also trucked Fisher Bodies around the city too. Others did too. So this was really was not all that big of a deal in the 1950s-no matter how it may seem today. Much of East Warren Avenue (westbound beyond McClellan-the expressway in those days did not go past the plant yet) was one-way traffic. Packard bodies (and later, cars) took westbound East Warren Avenue directly to East Grand Blvd. and then directly to the plant. While it was also possible that some bodies could have been transitioned by rail, I can tell you that I used to actually SEE the truckloads of bodies heading for Packard. Regularly.

After the end of the 1954 model run, obviously everything was done in-house on Conner Avenue in the new Packard Plant. This solved many problems, but then merely created new ones. HOWEVER, many new Packards were still transferred from there to the huge storage lot off of West Grand Blvd. and Mt. Elliot. From there they went to trucks or trains.

RE: rail lines and the Packard Plant... There certainly were rail heads at the big storage lot off of Grand Blvd. and Mt. Elliot. Of course there were also more tracks through the entire plant (after all, this is how they brought in coal to fire the big power plant that made electricity... and petroleum and gasoline for the fuel and oil storage facility that used to be on East Grand). At one point there were huge ramps where drivers roared up with new Packards onto trains. There was also a facility at this location where trucks were loaded for shipment out to dealers. In fact the last new building related to PMCC was built on this site for just this very purpose. It was a yellow brick building that faced Mt. Elliot. In later years it became a storefront Baptist church. Then slightly modified (it now has a red brick front). This building still stands today (boarded up and missing its brushed stainless frame electric sign that once overhung the sidewalk and green marble entry) on the corner of Medbury and Mt. Elliot. If you Google Map this corner and look toward the Packard plant, the open lot that you see is where all of the new Packards were once stored-even after the new Conner Plant opened and was building cars. You can read more about all of this in the Winter, 2009 issue of The Packard Cormorant magazine. The building to the left of the lot as you look up Medbury toward the Packard Plant is apparently now some kind of food warehouse, but originally it was a Food Fair supermarket, then later a Farmer Jack supermarket... all built on top of where the trains loaded cars. Medbury dead-ended into the Packard storage lot and it was the departure point for many trucks filled with Packards. The Packard new car storage lot-originally a huge fenced acreage-then became the parking lot for the supermarkets. As you can see even after all of the buildings and all of the years, it it still a good-sized open lot today.

RE: rail lines at the NEW Packard Plant on Conner... there was a rail spur aside this plant too, but it was nothing like the rail facility at Grand Blvd. Though this rail spur eventually tied in with a large cluster of tracks near the Fruehauf plant, it could not really compare to the Grand Blvd. facility. But there was rail access. Of course this rail access was on the "receiving" side of the Conner plant... away from where the product output doors were.

RE: other articles in [i]The Packard Cormorant magazine...[/i] In addition to the issue I mentioned already, a very nice and thorough article on the Briggs was written by John "Mr. Pushbutton" Lauter. It contained great photos, operational info and much insight to their facilities and Packard products made there.

Big hint: you can't always go by what you see today in images of the Packard Plant on East Grand to make any serious conclusions about rail lines there ... or a lot of other things in the past. So much has changed. And for Conner...there is really nothing left to give insight now.

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RE: the Packard Plant photo shown above in the posts... Not a good photo to go by. This is how things look now. Big difference. The important rail stuff related to this subject matter is all missing from this photo. The kind of blanked area to the right of the tracks at Grand Blvd. (upper left-hand corner 3/4ths of the way up) is where the power plant once stood. Behind it was where they piled mountains of coal. When the power plant was torn down they put an A&P supermarket there... the low-story building now all boarded up. That coal came in on the tracks you see here. So did the oil and gasoline. But...

Those open areas? They once had more of the plant facility on them. This photo is just not good for determining how it once was.

In fact, the entire area that used to be the petroleum storage facility and the entire new car storage, truck-away, drive-away office and train shipping area is not even shown here. See the open area that begins to the left of this photo? That is where much of it was... well off into the upper left corner that is not even shown here. And the train tracks were much different then. The spur and line in this modern photo were pretty much the same then (except surrounded by more buildings), but there was much more track and rail heads off to the northwest of the property (which would be to the extreme upper left out of the photo). The rail heads and shipping ramps, etc. were all destroyed when a supermarket was built over where they were and the storage lot was turned into a parking lot.

For just a peek at the Packard new car storage/shipping facility as it was post war, take a good look at the photo on Page 9 of Winter, 2009 The Packard Cormorant magazine. In the far middle left you'll see a lot with a lot with cars parked in it. Those are new 1953 Packards awaiting shipment. And there were tracks in this area too (now long gone)... where cars were loaded onto the trains. The train loading areas were all torn out when a Food Fair supermarket was built in this location.

Finally, contrary to the comment about the rail spur shown in the modern photo being useful... this spur was indeed very useful and important back in the day. It was here where they parked the coal cars and the tank cars. If you don't believe me, take another look at the same photo I recommended on Page 9, Winter 2009 of TPC magazine. You can actually see a long string of tank and coal bin cars lined up on this siding, parked. Same spur and strip of track-only being put to good use in 1953!