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The Hemmings article in this link refers to a merger between Checker and International Harvester. What has that to do with Packards, you'll ask? Nothing except for the last sentence of the third last paragraph which I got a laugh from.

I always thought it was like Packard pushing Studebaker in a wheelchair.

The merger was a disaster for Packard. It is ironic that it was Studebaker that kept producing automobiles up to 1966 while Packard's last true vehicle was made in August of 1956.

I don't know if you had a chance to read Ward's "The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company" but if not, well worth reading to understand some of the thinking and decisions and why things worked out the way they did. It is dry in spots but overall, illuminating. How a company could make so many mistakes going in boggles the mind. Probably resulted in a whole semesters worth of don'ts for later students at any good business school.

Your comment brought back my last course in my senior year of business school taught by the Dean of the Business School. The class was divided into groups of five each and we became the Board of Directors for American Motors Corporation. Our job was to run and hopefully save the company. Our decisions were fed into a computer model and implemented and we received the results, cash flow, sales figures, bank balances etc. We could see our results weekly.We were either going down the tubes or saving the company. We were competing against other groups for a grade so we didn"t discuss what we were doing. We closed some plants, increase advertising with dealers, cut cost, etc, pushed certain models. Any way my group saved the company and won the competition. Great learning experience.

Fred, looks like they needed you at Packard.

Thanks. I would have never listened to those investment bankers that talked the Packard board into the deal with Studebaker. Truth be told they are the ones that came out of the deal smelling like a rose.

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Rather like the tourist being shown around NYC. The guide points out a marina full of yachts belonging to stock brokers. "And where are their client's yachts?" asked the tourist.

The whole thing about Studebaker and Packard sharing a platform was delusional as the body would be too wide to fit through the paint booths and ovens in the South Bend body plant. The book about Harold Churchill talks about the closure of the Detroit assembly operations. They considered moving Packard production to South Bend, but it would have cost millions to rework the body plant. The Packardbaker was a relative bargain at $3.5M.

The entire idea of consolidating facilities was unrealistic because, by the time the merger was done, Packard had already committed to assembly at Conner and powertrain production in Utica.

But, Nance went into Packard with the ambition to do a big deal. Walter Grant was telling him Packard was "rapidly approaching bankruptcy". And Nash had already taken over the Hudson dealer network and customer base. The entire episode smells strongly of a determination to do a big deal, regardless of cost.

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I would have loved to take a turn at that game. When I was in grad school we played a soda pop company simulation.

What year of AMC history did you start with? What options did you have? In what simulated year did you save the company?

My alternate history of AMC starts in 54, with the merger with Studebaker, making the Studebaker V8 available to Nash and thus avoiding the $10M spent getting the Potter V8 in production. Then shuttering the Kenosha foundry and engine plant, consolidating those operations in South Bend, as assembly in South Bend is closed. Use the footprint in Kenosha freed up by removing the foundry and engine plant to build a body plant next to the assembly plant to eliminate trucking assembled bodies from Milwaukee.

Gosh , Steve, that was 1975 so we were working on one of down periods for AMC. They teetered on bankruptcy many times. We studied several companies but AMC was our computer simulation.