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

The written history by JW does say that Nance was, at first, considering buying the plant but keeping EGB operations in tact. So yes, Packard could have also leased Conner and kept EGB as you have suggested. Life for Packard would have improved had they done this, certainly in the short term.

I wonder where that $29M quoted in Kimes book came from. It just doesn't add up. The lease was $1M per year max. The cost to move everything would not have been cheap but... tens of millions? This doesn't square. Ward said it was costing distributors an average of $85 per vehicle to fix the cars. Maybe that was lumped in. Over a 70K model run that's roughly $6M. Other warranty costs such as the axle, V8, trans and T-L had nothing to do with Conner.

I think what needs avoided is dumping all the '55's glitches on Conner. The historical records don't support this broad sweep of the brush. As an example, here's a quote from Ward's book:

"... the move to Conner, the many mechanical changes made after production started, the new paperwork, and vendors' slowness created a tug of war between the parts dpt and the factory."

The only Conner-unique factor in this quote is the first. Everything else mentioned, and who knows how many body assembly glitches related specifically to the '55 redesign and not to reconfiguring Conner, would have struck Packard just as hard had they never moved.

However, it must be said that Conner's production ramped up very slowly, costing many sales in the first half of the model year. A cynic could argue that with all the mechanical glitches it was just as well... better to court later with a good product than to destroy a relationship sooner with a poor one. Still, one never wants to lose potential sales. The car should have been ready. The plant should have been ready. The supply base should have been ready.

Hi

Hope some of these facts presented from two good sources will shed light on the whole Connor Avenue move.

Excerpted from "Connor, Briggs and Chrysler: Trend and Fate" by John M. Lauter, The Cormorant, Spring 2007, Number 126, pages 2-11.

"...the Connor plant was itself World War II surplus. Built for Briggs in 1940 for airplane component manufacturing and quickly enlarged a year later, it became an ideal sized and located facility to move Briggs' Packard work to after the war."

"Shortly after the war, Briggs moved all Packard production to the 759,749-square foot Connor Avenue plant."

"Walter O. Briggs died on January 17,1952 in Miami. In the face of daunting inheritance taxes his heirs decided to sell the automobile body business. Chrysler, their largest customer, was the logical choice".........."The sale closed on December 29, 1953. For $35 million, Chrysler gained all equipment, tooling and 12 plants - 10 in the Detroit area, one in Youngstown, Ohio and another in Evansville, Indiana, and added 30,000 Briggs employees to their payroll. The Briggs purchase found all body-making facets of Chrysler reorganized as 'Chrysler ABD" (Automotive Body Division)."

"In a press release dated December 29, 1953 (the day the sale closed), Chrysler stated, "Automotive customers of Briggs, including the Packard Motor Car Company for bodies and the Hudson Motor Car Company for trim materials, will be served by the Automotive Body Division, under Chrysler management." Chrysler obviously thought better of this aspect of the business after acquiring Briggs, notifying Packard that they would no longer provide bodies to Packard after the 1954 run. James J. Nance was known to be on friendly terms with Chrysler president L.L. 'Tex' Colbert; perhaps Packard would have suffered a more curt disruption of their body supply if these two men were not social with each other."

"The move was sold to the shareholders and the media as 'modernization', getting all assembly operations on one level, but it was really a case of 'bringing the mountain to Muhammad." Packard's body assembly operations were there, in place, and operating. It was probably easier for Chrysler to lease the facility to Packard than deal with disposition of the equipment and property immediately after the Briggs acquisition. We know that the Connor plant never functioned well as an automotive assembly factory and that the production supervision and staff at Packard pulled off a miracle transferring operations from the 3,000,000-plus-square feet of East Grand Boulevard space to the meager 759,749 square feet (a figure that Packard staffers contested once in the plant) at Connor."
"The end came in the summer of 1956, when all Detroit (Packard) operations were ended by Curtiss-Wright. Studebaker-Packard held the lease on the Connor plant until June 11, 1957, after which it reverted to Chrysler. According to documents in the Chrysler archive, the plant was 'in such poor condition a supplemental agreement was made to demolish it on December 30, 1958." The demolition was completed by August 8, 1959. At 19 years of age the Connor plant must have been an albatross to Chrysler, too small for any significant production and too big for sub-assembly work. As for the statement concerning its poor condition, it is hard imagine that Packard caused such a degradation of the facility in three short years. Perhaps Briggs was lax in maintenance."

Photographs show 1954 Packard bodies were only painted in their finished colors but without any interiors, chrome trim or glass before shipment to Packard.

Excerpted from The Packard 1942-1962 by Nathaniel T. Dawes, page 123:

"In May (1954) the company negotiated a five year lease with Chrysler, at an annual cost of $0.8 million with option to buy. Nance immediately had Ray Powers, vice-president of Engineering, who had done the Utica plant begin layout of a final assembly facility." Author notes he was assisted by Neill S. Brown and John D. Gordon.

"These three (Powers, Brown and Gordon) had until September 16, 1954, to finalize the plans and organize the logistics to implement the plans. That date is when the last 1954 Packard body shell came off the line. Starting September 17 it was to be an organized race against time to complete the renovations and begin assembly of the 1955 models."

"The Connor Avenue plant went from shutdown on September 16, through a complete renovation, began production, and the first 1955 Packard drove out the door on November 17, 1954. That is exactly 62 days, from shutdown to production of the first automobile on the new line."

So, for $800,000 annually, Packard leased a facility with a fraction of the floor space (759,749 sq.ft. vs. 3,000,000-plus sq. ft.) it had utilized at East Grand Boulevard now to do complete car assembly which still included the body assembly. How much was expended to tear up everything in place at both plants and reinstall it all in inadequate square footage in a compression time frame isn't noted. All this on top of a radically changed product line far more complicated and unfamiliar to the assembly staff working in a new unfamiliar facility. The learning curve must have been steep indeed. If Packard had been a choice job in the auto assembly industry beforehand, it must have turned into a nightmare for many long-timers.

While it cost significantly to make this move, funds better utilized otherwise, blaming the complete $29 million loss for 1955 on the plant move directly is incorrect. What the action did was set in motion a hailstorm of market troubles of late introduction, badly delayed dealer deliveries and myriad quality problems that consumed months and considerable resources to rectify, worst of which was damage to their public reputation for quality and reliability. The 1955 loss was the indirect result of a whole sequence of unfortunate events, incorrect assumptions and bad decisions. No small share of loss was also extracted by the taking on the Studebaker operating expenses which the combined corporation was obliged to do.

Steve

Addendum: To my description of the two photos showing painted bodies without trim or glass, examining the photo on page 3, two transport trailers loaded with bodies show them to have glass and chrome trim in place. Apparently they were returned to an assembly line when specific orders were scheduled.

Nicely presented, Steve.

Well done, and let me mention an important detail. Although Connor was doubtless too small and cramped--I remember hearing stories of delivery trucks double parked as there was no place to offload-- the comparison of square footage between East Grand and Connor is not quite fair. The engine and transmission production, and I think axles and suspension parts was now done at Utica instead of East Grand. A great deal of that 3 million square feet had been used for that and foundry, not final assembly.

There is available an itemization of East Grand from the mid-30s that shows the square footage and the associated buildings that was devoted to each activity. I think this was given at his presentation at the Gettysburg National on the East Grand plant, and may also have been in his article in a recent TPC on utilization of East Grand in that era.

Well done Steve, and good point Ross.

A couple questions come to mind regarding the labor force. Who employed the former Briggs body assembly people in 1954? Chrysler? What about 1955-1956? Still Chrysler or now Packard? Wonder if this was an issue. For example, there might have been pay dispartities between Chrysler and Packard. A plant's grapevine typically grows wild so the differences would have been known to all.

Found a little more info on the Conner moving expenses. Ward says on pg 123 that the first year lease and moving expenses added to $3M.

Quote:

I believe the correct spelling is Conner

"It goes even deeper. Nance said at the start that Packard should have never put out such a "radical" design as the '51s."

I was flabbergasted when I read this. How could anyone call the 51 Packard "radical"? It is an obvious crib from the 1948 Cadillac and Futuramic Oldsmobile which, dare one say it, have a lot in common with the 1947 Studebaker.

When the 51 Packard debuted it was already 3 years old from a styling standpoint, possibly 4. This at a time when having the latest style was crucial to selling cars.

The 51 body could have been restyled more effectively if they had changed the grille and tail lights annually like everyone else. They did restyle it but never in a way to give a fresh look. Always in a way that you would have to stare hard at the car to spot the improvements, or have the new one parked beside the old one. This is no way to catch the public's eye or inspire an unquenchable desire to buy that car and no other.

If Nance can be blamed for Packard's backwardness in styling then he can be blamed for killing the company.

Think it still all goes back to a conservative & frugal management. Conservative, in that they brought out the 22 - 23 series when others were starting to go low and longer. Frugal in that styling wanted 51s to have more glass but mgt said metal was cheap and glass wasn't.

Their mantra of "Packard styling evolves" so one could buy this years car and not be afraid it would be out of style next year maybe haunted them. The "radical" change for 51 -- hard to say since it replaced something pretty long in the tooth which had pretty much stopped selling. Maybe they went back to the mantra in the 51-4 facelifts. As to that style being radical, maybe if one considers the 51s boxy. Others didn't do much boxy until 2-3 years later so maybe too much ahead of the time. Another of the hindsight "what if's".

OK, I'm taking a leap of faith and making this my very first post since joining the site this week. I should start by saying that I am also "not an expert", but as a serious and long-time student of automotive history and being a particular fan of Packards, I have enjoyed this particular discussion immensely.

For an all-too-brief period, the entire archives of Studebaker-Packard were stored in a warehouse here in Syracuse, New York which was one of many such facilities owned by Syracuse University. Whether the material was donated or not and if so, by whom I do not know. But in any case, fortunate circumstances gave me access to the stacks of material while it was here.

You gentlemen all have some correct pieces of the puzzle. The move to Conner, the perceived profitability of continued auto production, even your discussions of some viable options all reflect actual corporate discussions contained in the archives. You guys know your Packards, what motivated the company, and when you ask, "What were they thinking?", you've pretty well answered that, too.

Obviously not everyone agrees on what could have been. The mixture of nostalgia, respect for the Packard marque, and the changing nature of the automobile industry tend to color our thinking. We tend to think more in terms of what we think SHOULD have been . . . But in the context of the late 1950's, Packard realistically had little or no chance. Business decisions were responsibly made, and a grand old marque died what most consider an ignoble death. That's pretty much it.

I am so glad to have found this site, with the wisdom and passion you all so obviously feel for Packards. I intend to eventually read every post in every thread, especially those involving "what if" discussions and/or proposals. So hello all. I'm already glad to know you.