Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

Ah ha! Found it! It's in the Spring 2007 issue of The Packard Cormorant!

First thing I'd suspect about Conner and its degraded condition would be that the war materiel plants may not have been built to the usual peacetime standards, and they either used substitute building materials, or were rushed to completion, or both.

The next thing I'd suspect was that in converting the plant, whether it was a substandard structure or not, Packard may have had to cut their own corners in making Conner fit their bill and to do so quickly. Things that should not have been cut may have been, and things that should not have been excavated may have been. Not to mention that the plant sat directly on top of the old stream bed and the enclosed drain that was once Conner Creek. Maybe the footings weren't the best...

No doubt that Packard didn't put any maintenance into the buildings after the conversion, and Chrysler probably didn't lift a finger after they purchased Briggs. When Packard left, they left in a hurry, so who knows what water the plant ended up getting in the basement, etc.

I was reading the history during the summer. In 1949 Hudson claimed that the 262 inline six cylinder engine, that depending on the octane of fuel, they could obtain compression ratios from 9.3 to 1 to a high of 12.5 to 1.

John F. Shireman

We had 12.5/1 pistons in the Hornet for a very short time, it was a rare day indeed when a head gasket lasted more than 1/4 mile. That was with the 7D engine, the 7X had larger diameter head bolts but doubt it would have made much difference. Ultimately we reverted to stock CR. Packard's 8.7/1 for a flathead was really pushing the limit, GM stated that compression ratios over 8.2 or so were not practical in their flathead engines, though we also have to remember the gasolines of the time. As I remember the ARCO Purple and other super high octane gasolines came along a bit later and by that time flatheads from Detroit were dead. Our Hudson was a V8 Oldsmobile killer though in the 1/4 mile.

On the questions of PackardV8 on the engine bearings, it's just too long ago to remember, sorry.

Sometimes when reading the factory docs I wonder "how did people figure this stuff out back in the day, as I can't make sense of it". Well, sometimes they just didn't.

For example, after removing the windshield trim, I found this today on 5542-1152, in other words, the 152nd '55 Super Panama made. Some serviceman tried to follow the instructions in 55T # 10 and screwed up, then just decided to send it.

They unlocked the weatherstrip and left it like that. You're supposed to just take off the bottom 2 moldings. For whatever reason, I think this guy also took off the side two then couldn't get them back on easily.

Notice anything in the second photo? Dude must have been measuring his distances with an odometer.
(Disregard the one missing piece as the screw rusted through, so I removed it.)

Seeing how well this basic bodywork was handled, it's no surprise why they had so many problems fixing Twin Ultramatics in the field.

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If you can find a reasonably priced copy have a read thru "The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company" by James A Ward.. There is info on some of the 55 quality issues and of Conner and S-P issues in general. Excerpts from some of Nance's memos to the VP of production on the subject are mentioned but there are also a few of those memos reprinted in full in the Kimes edited Auto Quarterly book on Packard.

Don't know it to be fact but I read somewhere that the Ward book had become required reading in some business schools. Apparently classes for want to be CEO's use it for highlighting examples of things not to do if the student ever makes it to the corner suite.

Build quality issues were common across brands in the 1950s. One reason was high demand, and another was ambitious styling changes from year to year, and probably too many choices in trim levels, options, drive trains, etc. In '57-'58, Ford was building a "300" body with shortened tailfins and generally modest trim levels, and the "500" bodies, with more prominent fins and higher trim. Olds and Buick also had substantial differences in body structure across model ranges.

Very true, it's also interesting how different the standards were different back then. If you read old auto reviews it was not unusual at all to have a small leak, odd wind noise, or misaligned piece of trim on a brand new media car and the journalists never seemed to make a big deal of it. Take a look a Tom McCahill's old reviews for example. I think Mercedes-Benz and the standard steel Rolls-Royce cars where some of the only ones to not experience notable quality issues during this time.

But, at least those issues were fixable unlike todays cars which become mechanically totaled and unrebuildable after 5-10 years!

McCahill was always a hoot to read. In his youth, he obtained a Packard and removed the body and drove the bare chassis around. He described removing the body and leaving it beside a river. "As far as I know", he wrote, "it's still there".

I'm not able at this moment to dig up my source for what I'm about to write about the issue of parts storage at Conner but I recall reading (I think it was in Ward) discussions Nance had with his Production people about how to get the most cars out of Conner. The problem in any configuration was having an adequate supply of parts for any given shift. There simply was no room at Conner for parts-on-hand to build the quantity of cars Packard needed to build in a shift. The solution, such as it was, was a first use of the Just In Time production method with parts being delivered "just in time" for when they were needed.

Since my childhood, I have viewed Nance as a hero who almost overcame all the events that hit Packard at once as he signed on to turn the company around. But recently I've come to realize that Packard's death can be laid squarely at the feet of Nance. Other's may have thought that moving production to Conner was a good idea and certainly many pushed Nance in that direction but ultimately it was Nance who made the decision and that decision killed Packard. The "teething" problems of the '55s would not have been nearly so bad had they not had to learn all-over how to build cars in a space that was never intended for final assembly. Whatever its origin, Conner was, when Packard moved in, a body stamping, welding and priming plant.

While Conner primed the bodies trucked over to East Grand ("bodies in white") to move final assembly there meant not only the full paint shop had to be moved to Conner but the upholstery shop as well.

The serpentine layout of the final assembly line meant that assembly workers were actually bumping into each other back-to-back.

In the boom selling year of '55, the new Packards were very late to market - not being delivered to dealers in any quantity until late January where all of the competition had cars in the dealer showrooms in the Fall of '54.

The production problems with the serpentine layout of the final assembly line meant that Conner had to be closed an additional 60 days to once again reconfigure the line in hopes of smoothing some of the kinks out.

Ward quotes Nance writing about one '55 in re-work that had more than 100 issues that needed correction before the car could be shipped to the dealer.

It was the quality problems with the '55s that prompted the banks and insurance companies to refuse to fund the tooling for the '57s. An understandable part of their thinking was with all the new features planned for the '57s and looking at the horrible teething problems of the '55s, the '57s were likely to face similar issues. The banks and insurance companies said, in effect, "Not only are we not touching this with a 10 foot pole, we won't touch it with a 15 foot pole!"