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Re: What SINGLE factor MOST contributed to the demise of Packard?
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Home away from home
 
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Absolutely, Steve.
Nitwit is the only operative word I can think of to describe Mason, Ferry, Nance and Barit in these years. Look at the tons of money they collectively spent on new product in the 1950-55 timeframe: a new compact Nash, a new series of large Packards, a new series of large Nash's, a new compact Hudson, a moderatley revised series of large Hudsons, a heavily revised series of large Packards. None fully successful, none part of a larger vision of consolidation, all contributing to ultimate failure save for one, the Rambler - and this only because there at last arrived a car guy to save the day, someone who was able to sift through the clutter and clear it out. The product clutter, the merger clutter, the multi-line showroom clutter, the visions of being a Big 4th clutter. IMHO the only merger that could have worked would have been the one that put Romney on top.
Posted on: 2015/2/24 9:48
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Re: What SINGLE factor MOST contributed to the demise of Packard?
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With the SP merger in 54 it seems to me that the new 1955 stude president should never have been built but the clipper line should have been studes with a stude 289 v8 for base models and packard 320 v8 for the deluxe models. Packard could have had a 1955 executive and had 2 versions of the senior small and large v8. All built at EGB. Then get the stude champion commander conestoga and pickup production to EGB as soon as possible. South bend is contract work or sold.
Even better Packard could have bought the Studebaker name inventory tooling and dealer network and not the factory or company. Looking at the amount of design changes in studes between 1954 and 1957 seems that stude got the money not packard. Seems this money might have been better spent to merge the production of cars to produce economies of scale instead of running 2 seperate companies. John
Posted on: 2015/2/24 10:09
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John Rhodes
1953 Packard Patrician |
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Re: What SINGLE factor MOST contributed to the demise of Packard?
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Home away from home
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Packarrd had an excelleent dealer network. WHICH MEANS many dealers and the claassic realestate axiom of "location-location-locaation".
Stud,Nash and hudson suffered from sparse dealer network. Packard did not need Stud,Nash nor Hudson for anything. The ONLY reason Nash (AMC) ever made it thru the late postwar era intothe 1990's was AM-General and Jeep. Without AM-general and Jeepthen AMC would have never lasted past the mid 60's. As for AMC building and designing compact cars in the postwar era they were a bit too early. NOTE Falcon, Dart, Corvair et-al that neraly ALL debuted in 1960. Such cars were impending econ-depression cars for a depression that was avoided by 1965. NOTe that Pontiac was nearly defunct in 1958. NO doubt that post war era of Packard Stud, Nash and hudson was completely void of any real managers at the helm of any of those companies. However, Hudson was probably the greatest car ever built even by todays staandards and expectations. THey simply had a too few dealers. BOTTOM LINE: any NEW cars sales will only be as good as AVAILABILITY of service and well dependent upon resale value. Nash, stud and hudson refused to recognize that. Or i can better argue that at least NASh and Studebaker (i m not sure about Hudson) just didn't give a shit.
Posted on: 2015/2/24 10:22
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VAPOR LOCK demystified: See paragraph SEVEN of PMCC documentaion as listed in post #11 of the following thread:f
packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7245 |
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Re: What SINGLE factor MOST contributed to the demise of Packard?
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Home away from home
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Like'n it John although would have dropped the Clipper effort completely and focused on Packard and Studebaker. Also, the Packard V8 in a Studebaker apparently made for a very nose-heavy car.
Nance might have done well to wait until Studebaker went bankrupt, which might have happened as early as '56, then purchased the items you mentioned.
Posted on: 2015/2/24 10:33
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Re: What SINGLE factor MOST contributed to the demise of Packard?
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Forum Ambassador
 
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However, Hudson was probably the greatest car ever built even by todays staandards and expectations. THey simply had a too few dealers.
I've really got to take exception to that, Hudson was a truly fine car, but the greatest ever? And the reason they had too few dealers is primarily that they no longer had the product offerings that appealed to the marketplace that in turn could support a larger dealership network. Nor did they have the $ (after what they spent on the Jet) do develop a new product. The one side effect when they developed the unibody stepdown was that they also locked themselves into a far higher cost to develop a truly new product. Packarrd had an excelleent dealer network By 1954 Packard's dealer network was, to quote Bob Neal, "a shambles". From a high of 2065 in 1947, but 1954 they had barely 1200 dealers, many of whom were very small and financially just about clinging to a bare existence.
Posted on: 2015/2/24 11:27
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Re: What SINGLE factor MOST contributed to the demise of Packard?
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Single answer: They built cars that not enough people wanted to buy.
Posted on: 2015/2/24 12:15
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Re: What SINGLE factor MOST contributed to the demise of Packard?
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Quote:
The problem with that plan is that, by the mid 50s, Studebakers were small, cheap, noisy, ill handling cars. I saw a pic on a Studebaker FB group recently tha showed s 53-55 Studie parked next to a 55 Plymouth, and the Plymouth dwarfed the Studie. Selling a tarted up Studie as a Clipper, as they did in 57-58 and selling it in the midmarket segment Nance wanted to, would have been a stretch. I doubt E Grand could have handled Studebaker volume. Studie and Packard together would have been over 200,000/yr, a level that I don't recall E Grand ever hitting in it's history. Packard buying Studebaker out of bankruptcy would have dodged the Studebaker labor contract issues, but buying Studie out of bankruptcy would have required cash, which Packard didn't have. They did the merger with stock, so the major cash expense was only the banker's fees. As for all the Studie styling changes, they were only refreshes. The 1953 model carried on through the first generation Lark, with only changes to the front and rear external sheetmetal. The 1953 frame carried on, with assorted lenthening and shortening, to the end of the company. Look in a 66 Studebaker and you see a flat floor with very low seats, due to the ancient frame under it that didn't allow for footwells.
Posted on: 2015/2/24 12:18
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Re: What SINGLE factor MOST contributed to the demise of Packard?
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Quote:
According to the Foster book about AMC, at the time of the merger, there were about 7,000 Hudson dealers, over twice as many as Nash had. I'm sure many of those Hudson dealers were very weak as, from the combined 10,000 dealers at the time of the merger, AMC was back to 3,000 in a very few years. I think it was in the Ward book about Packard, where the comment is made that some of the Packard dealers were so undercapitalized they didn't even have a demonstrator for prospects to drive. I am going from memory, rather than looking it up, Packard only had about 1,800 dealers in the mid 50s. (correctons welcome) Bottom line, all the independents had weak dealer networks. If a dealer was well capitalized and successful, he could make a lot more money selling one of the big three. And the big three from time to time would go on raiding campaigns to steal the best dealers away from the independents.
Posted on: 2015/2/24 12:33
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Re: What SINGLE factor MOST contributed to the demise of Packard?
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Quote:
Hudson didn't really have the money to develop the Jet. They did a deal with Murray so that Murray paid for the body tooling and Hudson would pay back the tooling costs on a per car basis. When Jet sales lagged far behind expectations, Murray demanded more money per body so they could recover their costs in a reasonable time frame. That increase in tooling amortization made the Jet's price even more uncompetitive. The engine in the Jet was essentially the old Hudson straight eight with two cylinders cut off. Given the success Kaiser had with selling Kaiser tooling in Argentina and Willys Aero tooling in Brazil, it would seem to me that Hudson and Murray could have found a buyer for the Jet tooling...that narrow body would be an asset in a cramped european city...but I have never found anything saying what happened to it. Owen, thanks for confirming my memory of the weak condition of Packard's dealer network.
Posted on: 2015/2/24 12:49
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