Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

Hi Pack 120c --

Packard's Conner Avenue plant was located just south of Warren. If I recall correctly, the plant was razed in 1960, so it would have been gone before you even started to have conscious memories. I think that the big AQ Packard book intimates that the shopping center was where the plant used to be, but it was actually just south of the shopping center. I've cobbled together a map from Google Earth to help you visualize where it was.

Kevin

Attach file:

---

  (47.42 KB)

If you look at the November, 1954 photo I posted above you can see the shopping center taking shape just to the north of the factory, the Kroger grocery store is already up and running and the footings are going in for the rest of the strip built around it. The demolition was completed August 8, 1959. As I said in my TPC article on Briggs/Conner the Chrysler land dept. paperwork I saw mentioned that "the plant was demolished due to its poor condition" and I pondered the fact that it was only 19 years old (which was practically new back then, Chrysler and other big three units were in plants that dated back to the teens and twenties then, and continued in those plants much later). It's hard to believe that Packard could run it into the ground in just three years, unless Briggs built it and never cared for it, which is also difficult to believe. I think it was too small to be anything meaningful to Chrysler, who had just built an engine plant in Trenton, MI (South of Detroit) and had yet again expanded their Jefferson Ave. Chrysler plant. I think they just got a better bang for their buck demolishing it and parceling out the land, which is what they did.
I took the two bus loads of conventioneers to the site of Conner during the 2006 PAC convention, we went right from the Boulevard site to Conner so that they could get a sense of the geographical distance, then we pulled the busses right onto the parking lot that is now where the plant once stood. Many people (well, actually the few who care about V-8s) really liked that, they felt they had a much better sense of how far apart these facilities were.
The Chrysler Conner engine plant is to the east of the railroad tracks, which were at the back of the Briggs/Packard Conner plant.

Wasn't there also some kind of huge concrete block left over from Briggs in the middle of Connor plant that Packard didn't/couldn't remove for some reason that made the space almost impossible to utilize properly?

Yes, the operative word here is "almost." They had to veer the line around it. They were so crammed into that space that it's a miracle they got any cars made.

I'm sure it would have caused any other prospective users of the site to take a hard look at the potential mess vs going somewhere else and made it a bit hard to move on the market. All considered, land for a shopping center probably had more return to the owner (Chrysler maybe, Briggs estate still??)--and demolition a fraction of remodeling costs.

The land belonged to Chrysler's real estate department, they sold it off in parcels, including some to the city of Detroit, Kroger and developers of the shopping center.

I need to go back and read Mr. Pushbutton's article again, as I know how dangerous it is to keep relying on my memory. Unfortunately, I have no idea where I placed that issue of The Packard Cormorant, so memory is all I have to go on at the moment.

Wasn't the Conner facility originally built as a war material plant by Briggs? I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that Conner wasn't all that well-built to begin with, as the war plants had to go up quick and start producing immediately. And wasn't Conner just a lease from Chrysler and not an outright purchase?

I don't know how long the automotive industry kept up the practice of aging or "pickling" cast iron blocks, but I know it continued for a time after WWII. As an anecdoital story about this process, a friend of mine in Seattle in the early 60's had a 1946 Chrysler New Yorker with the 323.5 cu.in. straight eight. In the late fifties he had the engine rebuilt and the machine shop complained that the block was so hard it was destroying his boring equipment. Their guess was that the block was cast before the war and (since Chrysler did not use the eight in any military applications) that it had aged for four or five years rather than the usual one and had become much harder than normal. Therefore there may be something to this process after all.

Hudson blocks, the 308, 262, 232 and perhaps the 202 were a high nickel alloy and so hard they generally couldn't be bored by conventional means, they had to be ground to an oversize. Been there.

Owen. Can u remeber if the Hudson main bearing inserts are about the same thickness as Packard V8 inserts??? They used a brass screw to hold them in place top and bottom.

What about the rod bearing inserts. Were they same thickness as Packard V8 and did they use brass screws too???