Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

Not at all. Good work.

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Thanks. Actually I only lived in Detroit's east side up until I was about 9 or so and not so close to Conner. But with owning businesses in the area, we were there often. I actually grew up most of my formative years on the northwest side near Palmer Park.

In the days of the Conner Plant, northwest Detroit was like being on another planet. There were no cross-town expressways, so everybody drove surface streets for the most part to get around. A trip from my house to my uncle's store was a lonnnng trek. But we did so on a regular basis. And a DSR bus ride was like an endless journey. I can recall more than once falling asleep on the way home from East Jefferson and ending up at the end of the line in the middle of nowhere!

It was a very different world then... and of course a very, very different city.

I guess my second question is why did managment move the production for 55 into Conner instead of using the East Grand Blvd plant-or just used Conner for making the bodies and have the cars assembled at East Grand Blvd?

I'm sure others will come along and give you chapter and verse but essentially Nance was sold by Ray Powers and others on the efficiency that would result from combined operations in a more modern, mostly single story assembly line which were beginning to become the standard for new auto production plants. Most historians call the advice to move to Conner as ill-advised.

Have you considered reading some Packard history? The Kimes-edited book gives considerable coverage to the 55/56 Packard era including the move to Conner and it's consequences.

Been awhile since reading it but as I recall James Ward's The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company is another book that will give some insight into reasons and decisions around the Conner move.

Leedy--all good, salient points. In the photos I have of the plant taken in 1953, after Chrysler took ownership of the plant there is nothing but Packard work being performed there, and the operation is very luxuriously spread out, with huge aisles between lines. There isn't a whiff of any work for any other customer visible in the photos.
I could be 100% wrong in this memory, but wasn't there something in the AQ book (AKA "Kimes" book-erroneously) about Packard sending all of their body making equipment to Briggs at one point just after the war, on a handshake--with no paper trail, then having no body making equipment, and faced with the possibility of having to buy all new presses and equipment the lease and operation of the former Briggs Conner facility (full of the right equipment) was their only card to play to obtain bodies? I guess the auctions that would have taken place after the fall of the house of Packard would be an important piece of evidence that way. If there were no auctions of body stamping presses, etc. it could be that Chrysler just took them and moved them to other facilities like Mound road. When I worked at the Chrysler museum one of our stalwart volunteers was a retired production supervisor at Mound Road stamping. He told me that Chrysler had a standing order with Fisher Body/GM to buy any used presses that they were done with, so basically Chrysler's new presses were the ones GM didn't consider good enough any more to turn out quality work. I think they would have jumped to have Packard's presses and machinery.

Wasn't Conner (either under Briggs or Chrysler) also producing the last of the "Step-down" bodies for Hudson? There's some mention in the Crestline Hudson history book and photos showing trucks transporting incompletely trimmed Hudson bodies to the Hudson plant (the one GM bought at bargain basement rates and where the 1956 Cadillacs were produced following the GM renovation.

In my opinion, the first big error in the Packard demise saga occurred when Briggs was awarded the contract to build Packard's bodies in the early 1940s. Soon thereafter, Briggs asked for a price increase and things would never be the same on East Grand again. The war production push merely masked the odor of a very bad deal until the seller's market dissipated later in the decade. Multi-stories or not, I suspect most of us would have supported Packard-built bodies continuing to come out of the recently re-tooled and renovated dual line East Grand plant. Bad advice be damned, hindsight is often twenty twenty.

One other thing that several of you with Packard production order documentation might answer; both of my 1956 In-transit/bill of lading show notations of "WAS sales". Does anyone know what that might mean? This also appears on other people's documents for their cars.