Packard Forum Index » Studebaker Built Packards (1957 - 58)

I wonder how much the automotive press helped the slide in Packard production in 56.

The statement that sales fell in 56 is very true and interestingly while some of the auto magazines did give good marks to the facelifts and some features, just about all had a column in the same issue which fed the rumor mill with prognostication -- real or imagined.

I have several copies of Popular Mechanics, Motor Trend, MI etc where in their respective columns starting around the first of the year there are interspersed with some forward thinking feature rumor a very negative statement on the actual or perceived financial condition and if the feature would see the light of day. This reporter hearing this or that from someone "in the know" type of thing.

It doesn't take a great jump to figure a person reading about a great feature would be more concerned whether that company is about to close as soon as he bought it and then would look elsewhere.

Good point. I don't think the press started the slide but they may have caused some potential sales to evaporate, particularly near the end. My feeling is that they were simply doing their job and that folks had a right to know what was going on behind the scenes. It was Packard that started the slide and pushed it most of the way. As an example pertaining to 1956 specifically, 4-door hardtops were the big new rage and the public was buying them up. All the GM brands had one this year, Buick and Olds having started the trend the year before. Chrysler Corp. had them across the board too. Ford, Merc and the new Rambler also did. Lincoln and the big Nash/Hudsons didn't, Lincoln getting one the following year and the big AMCs scheduled for extinction. And what of Studebaker-Packard? Nothing.

There was one in the works for the new 57 models. There certainly wasn't money enough to redo the 51 body shell to have a four door hardtop for one year.

Hard charging Nance has been accused of a lot of poor decisions through the years. I am inclined to give the guy a break on most of them but there is one area where I think his planning temperment/style didn't just hurt Packard but sank them: he seemed too willing to p#$% away whole model years in the hope of cashing in on a later "big plan" like the 57s. Keeping the money coming in, year after year, is what keeps an OEM alive. His lack of producing a 4-dr hardtop in 1956 is admittely small potatoes in the big picture scheme of things, although other OEMs did manage to bite the bullit and crank out a one-year only style before completely restyling their 57s.

Nance's biggest mistake IMHO was that he p%#$ed away 1954. That was the year he should have put out a heavily redesigned, lowered body that took Cadillac head on and lent itself well to a later 4-door hardtop design (i.e, no old-fashioned body insert between the front/rear doors). Losses would have become profits this year and life would have been much easier for the '55 V8 roll-out with the restyling task now behind them.

Didn't his plan call for the 55s to actually happen in 54 but body tooling and engine took too long so everything was pushed back a year? As an incidental, one of the histories said they spent 29 million on the Connor move and co-incidentally lost right at 29 million that year.

Been debated adnausem but what if he hadn't been convinced to make the move-just lease the plant and bought the extra machinery needed for body production only instead. There probably would have been money for a new hardtop.

I tend to pin the Conner move as the most damaging of all the decisions Packard made in the '50s. The Kimes book's picture of a Chrysler exec handing over the "key" to the Conner Avenue plant, just below a picture of the last Packard going through the "Body Drop" at the Grand Avenue plant says it all to me. Why is everyone smiling? I think the Chrysler exec is smiling about the millions of $s Chrysler is getting for a piece o' crap plant. The others just don't know they're getting shafted-- yet. Later, they all complained about the "cracker box" that Packard had acquired at great expense.

I have looked and looked, and found nothing of more import to the company's future demise than this debacle was.

On the question of 1954, yes... James Ward's book states that Nance wanted to do something big for '54 but time ran out. And herein was IMHO the prime reason why he was the wrong choice to lead the company. Packard had enough time to put out a competitive design in 1954 but Nance took too long learning while he was earning. Too many studies, too much discussing, not enough doing.

It goes even deeper. Nance said at the start that Packard should have never put out such a "radical" design as the '51s. I disagree. The Contour cars represented what was to come in the 50s and Richard Arbib showed the design's potential in the Pan American. I also take issue with the assertion in JW's book that Nance "understood what constituted a saleable car." He misunderstood almost every aspect of the business - design, engineering, manufacturing, planning. Even marketing, his supposed stock in trade. It seemed he was constantly complaining about the poor quality of the ad copy. I showed a '54-56 What-If recently that worked off a '54 ad. The messaging and artistic depiction surrounding the Pacific hardtop were fabulous. What held the ad back? The car! Not that it was bad but it wasn't competitive with the new '54 Cadillac coupe. I compared a Patrician depicted in another ad with my 2.5" lowered what-if and found that the ad depicted the car to be even lower! In other words, the ad folks needed to exaggerate to create imagery that moved people. More power to them. It was Nance's major oversight in not giving the ad folks a car that required no embellishments.

Conner's production in 1955 was a mess, no doubt about it. One wonders how many of the glitches would have turned up at EGB had production stayed there. My guess is a fair amount but we'll never know. Had Nance restyled the cars in '54 rather than '55 the move to Conner might never have happened. He did get things turned around for '56 but the damage was done. What I challenge is the long held belief that the '56 sales slide was due 100% to the '55's bad quality and 0% to the '55/'56's design. The car's engineering was excellent, there is no doubt about that, but the appearance was not competitive with the multitude of hot cars offered by the Big 3 particularly in 1956.

I agree that the move to Connor Ave. might have been the final death knell.

I'll have to re-read Ward's book. Was building bodies the sole reason FOR that move?

The primary reason for the move to Conner was to reduce the cost of each car. Ray Powers gave Nance estimates ranging from the tens to hundreds of dollars per car depending on volume. What is not clear is how these estimates compared to what eventually transpired.

Have never seen the $29M cost for moving to Conner. Do you know where it came from? Couldn't find it in Ward's book. Utica cost $27M but Conner was leased to Packard from Chrysler, not purchased, for something less than $1M per year.

"...what if he hadn't been convinced to make the move-just lease the plant and bought the extra machinery needed for body production only instead. There probably would have been money for a new hardtop."

My understanding is that prior to 1955, Briggs/Conner Ave. stamped the body panels and welded up the bodies, which were then sent in the white to EGB for paint and final assembly (please correct me if wrong). Ward says there were numerous body assembly issues at Conner such as ill-fitting doors and trunks, poor workmanship and other problems. This raises a fundamental question: what were the root causes? A few might have been:

1. Squeezing final assembly operations into the plant might have impacted the existing body assembly area that had been humming along fine for years.

2. Studio might have given the tool & die makers ill-fitting surfaces, which cascaded into ill-fitting panels.

3. The tool & die makers got good surfaces but might have botched the mold surfacing.

4. The body assembly jigs somehow were/got misaligned, resulting in ill-fitting body pieces. (this might be related to #1)

5. The assembly workers, presumably formerly of Briggs, might have been p!ssed off. They may have had a bone to pick with Packard in general or with Nance and his leadership team in particular. Maybe they saw a loss in pay or seniority once they became Packard employees. Maybe being laid off for two months then having to work 10 hr shifts, 6 days a week (if this were the case... Ward alludes to the shift data to describe production volumes). Maybe the cramped quarters or accelerated fashion in which the new plant operations were hastily pulled together signaled to them that Packard didn't care about the ground troops. Who knows, but it should not be discounted and might have persisted had paint and final assembly stayed at EGB.

Ward also mentions that some of the quality issues had to do with engineering related to the V8 and other new features. These issues were independent of Conner and would have happened at EGB too.

Conner was likely the final straw (second to final... no 4-door hardtop in '56!) but had Packard put out a better looking car than the '55s and had done so in '54 (even if the V8 didn't come until '55), Conner would likely not have sacked Packard. Chrysler experienced miserable quality too in 57-59 but they didn't go under because of it. To the question of whether body tooling lead times prevented a '54 launch... only if the CEO takes a half year to gather umpteen data charts to figure out a plan. That said, nothing could have cured Nance's design blindness, which means that Packard may have been doomed the day they hired him. An old hand in the industry once told me that great design covers up a lot of sins. IMHO, Packard's cardinal sin from the late 30s on was that it didn't know the difference between good design from great.

Have never seen the $29M cost for moving to Conner. Do you know where it came from?

Kimes edited book, "Let the Ride Decide" chapter by George Hamlin and Dwight Heinmuller--around pg 601

......." For calendar 1955, Studebaker-Packard would lose $29,705,093 after tax credit, which figure bears an uncomfortable proximity to the start-up tab for the Conner plant, the best example of the bad advice proffered Jim, Nance"..... Goes on to say the Packard division turned a profit overall

Understand the cost per car argument and it appears the supposed future efficiency was all that was being thought about at the time. Doesn't look like much more than passing consideration was given to any of the negatives or pitfalls. Advice by manufacturing personnel was move come hell or high water and we'll sort out the details. My point was they needed bodies quickly. Would it not have been possible to lease the Conner space or if too big, another. Buy or lease the stamping equipment and outfit that instead of uprooting everything. They had been hauling bodies across town for many years so surely they could have done it another few. Labor availability is a good point and no idea how that played into things. Again one of those things that is going to be debated till time ends. Isn't hindsight great.