The late-40s and early-50s arguably had more design and engineering variety among U.S automakers than we would ever see again. That strikes me as a mostly good thing for consumers, but there were two downsides.
One problem was that unusual designs could get branded as weird, which could undercut sales to the point where an independent automaker’s viability was threatened. Then, when individual firms started to merge, the uniqueness of their approaches made it much harder to integrate platforms without destroying the brand DNA of the weaker partners.
One might even go as far as to suggest that one reason why the independents didn’t merge more quickly in the early-postwar period may have been because almost all of them were too quirky to be ideal marriage partners. So when they did finally tie the knot, that led to awkward situations.
For example, when American Motors was formed in 1954, Hudson lost its signature feature — a lower-slung step-down chassis — when its entire product line was moved to Nash’s platforms.
To make matters worse, Nash’s inverted-bathtub styling was so distinctive that it would have been quite a trick to make it look like a Hudson even with major sheetmetal changes. Yet the new automaker could barely afford to give the Hudson a facelift, so it ended up looking like a thinly disguised Nash. That quickly killed Hudson’s viability.
Why wasn’t the Nash designed for a ‘grand merger’?
Historical accounts of the late-40s and early-50s suggest that most of the independents were not looking for mergers, so it makes sense that they would strive for distinctive designs. However, I am perplexed that Nash didn’t develop more generic designs that would have worked well in a grand merger that its CEO George Mason reportedly championed (Foster, 1993).
I get why Mason’s options were limited with the 1949-51 big Nash, which was merely a reskinning of a prewar body. That wasn’t the case in 1952, when a brand-new body was introduced. Nash could have taken a cue from the Big Three, which made its bodies generic enough for multiple brands to develop individual personalities.
Of course, one could argue that the Big Three’s brands didn’t have all that much individuality in the first half of the 1950s. At that point, each automaker shared among their brands far more sheetmetal than they did in the 1960s.
As a case in point, even the mighty General Motors saved money by using the same doors and trunk lid on its Chevrolet and Pontiac. Only the front end and rear-quarter panels had different sheetmetal. A similar pattern played out with Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac.
Ford and Chrysler sometimes shared even more sheetmetal — and heavily relied on trim differences to give their brands individuality.
A particularly interesting example is the 1953-54 Plymouth and Dodge, which shared a hood and trunk lid in addition to door sheetmetal. Clever differentiation of the brand’s front- and rear-quarter panels makes this difficult to detect.
Why Hudson never had a chance at American Motors
A spasm of mergers in 1953-54 resulted in the number of independent automakers dropping from six to three. You might think that the new combines could get away with as little sheetmetal differentiation as the Big Three, but that’s not how it worked out. A major reason why may have been public expectations.
The long-time Hudson buyer may have expected the automaker’s cars to possess more unique qualities than the relatively superficial ones offered on Big Three brands. That may be a key reason why they took the risk of purchasing a car from Hudson — particularly once the automaker’s increasingly tenuous existence raised the specter of the buyer getting stuck with an “orphan.” That is, a car built by a car company no longer in business.
Aerodynamic styling wasn’t the only thing the big Hudson lost when it was switched to a Nash body. As mentioned above, also gone was the step-down chassis. That had helped to give the brand’s cars superior room and handling. We discuss here how American Motors could have done more to keep Hudson’s performance and safety features, but you were still buying a Nash.
That might have been much less obvious if American Motors could have immediately come out with a new body that didn’t reek so much of Nash’s personality. That wasn’t possible due to the speed with which the merger occurred. And once the new combine did come out with a major redesign in 1956, it was for a compact that was primarily intended to elevate the Rambler from a nameplate to a brand. No effort was made to integrate Hudson’s traditional design cues. It had become a throw-away brand.
Studebaker and Packard were too different to merge
The prospects of Studebaker-Packard were heavily undermined from the outset because its platforms were so incompatible.
The Studebaker body was far too narrow to build a full-sized Packard. Meanwhile, the Packard body did not lend itself very well to a junior model from Studebaker partly because it wouldn’t have looked enough like the brand without a complete reskinning — which the financially struggling automaker may not have been able to afford.
What Studebaker-Packard plausibly might have been able to do was to take the money spent on facelifting the compact platform for 1956 and instead give the Packard body a facelift, shorten the wheelbase around four inches ahead of the cowl, and call it a Studebaker.
I offer that scenario with the caveat that the Packard platform may have been too expensive to pencil out very well as a Studebaker positioned in either the low-priced or lower-premium-priced markets. And even if such a design could have been profitable, such a car might not have solved one of the new combine’s biggest problems: too many assembly plants for its shrunken volume.
The most radical scenario was arguably to switch Studebaker’s entire passenger-car lineup to the big-car platform and build it at Packard’s new assembly plant on Conner Ave. in Detroit. Studebaker’s South Bend facilities would have been reduced to producing trucks and contracted defense work.
The problem with that scenario was Packard’s new plant was unusually small (Ward, 1995). This would have severely limited total passenger-car production even compared to American Motors. And if some passenger cars continued to be produced at South Bend, that could have kept fixed costs high.
A caveat to the above is that the Conner plant’s limitations might not have mattered much in the short run. Indeed, switching Studebaker to Conner in 1956 might have saved the automaker from financial collapse by compensating for declining sales of both brands. Nevertheless, this was a much less promising financial move than American Motors consolidating all production in Nash’s Wisconsin facilities.
Kaiser and Willys: The odd couple that worked better
Kaiser-Frazer cars tended to be quirky, but its management was even quirkier. As a result, the fledgling automaker’s chances of a merger with one of the larger independents appears to have been small — and possible only if Kenry J. Kaiser’s management team left the building, which Kaiser’s ego might not have found acceptable. So it made sense that Kaiser would buy out the only smaller automaker, Willys Motors.
Kaiser was the Elon Musk of his time, who was dismissive of Detroit’s traditional ways and insistent on blazing his own trail. He also engaged in lavish spending that likely hastened the automaker’s departure from the U.S. passenger-car business (Langworth, 1975). Not a good fit with the more conservative management of the other independents.
Paradoxically, the first-generation Kaiser body arguably came the closest of any postwar big car from an independent to being generic enough for a multi-brand automaker. The body sides were plain and the greenhouse had an “anycar” vibe.
Unfortunately, the automaker didn’t have enough money to exploit the potential of its first car. The Kaiser looked so similar to its companion make, the Frazer, that one wonders why they bothered fielding a second brand.
The second-generation Kaiser was the exact opposite. The design was so distinctive that it would have been silly to have been used for another brand (go here for further discussion).
In contrast, Willys’ only postwar passenger car, the Aero, had a body with an anonymous but pleasing shape that could have been differentiated quite easily if it had been offered by multiple brands.
It’s too bad that Hudson didn’t make a deal with Willys to offer its own version of the Aero instead of spending a lot of money on the ill-fated Jet. As we discuss here, updating its aging big cars would have been a much better investment.
Was Mason as focused on a grand merger as reported?
I have run through this exercise to suggest that all but Willys were poorly set up for any merger, let alone a grand one of three or more firms. This was particularly problematic with Nash, which needed to be a central player in a grand merger. Its production facilities — and platforms — were in the best position to become the core of a new combine.
Mason’s penchant for offbeat styling clashed with the needs of a multi-brand automaker. This leads me to wonder: Was he as committed to a grand merger as reported? Or did he erroneously think that other brands that joined a merger could maintain their cachet even if they obviously looked like a bathtub Nash?
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Foster, Patrick R.; 1993. American Motors: The Last Independent. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Langworth, Richard M.; 1975. Kaiser-Frazer: The Last Onslaught on Detroit. Princeton Publishing, Princeton, NJ.
- Ward, James A.; 1995. The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- autohistorypreservationsociety.org: Hudson (1956)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Frazer (1949); Hudson (1955); Kaiser (1949); Nash (1952); Packard (1956); Pontiac (1955); Studebaker (1956); Willys (1953)
The problem with Hudson (and also Packard) was that their management waited far too long to pull the trigger on a merger; by the time they finally did their backs were firmly against the wall and they had no spare money to bring to the wedding. Packard was pursued by Nash as early as 1948, and Hudson should have merged with Nash at least three years earlier than they did, while they were still profitable and hadn’t introduced the Jet (which squandered the money Hudson had for a new model).
Packard-Hudson would have been a good merger. It helped that they were both built in Detroit so sharing stuff while keeping their own platforms for the time being would have been feasible.
Actually we can get an interesting debate going here. The previous article mentioned Packard was too generic in the 50s which was their problem and this article stating other independents were too unique. Both are valid solutions to the problem of declining sales in a time of fast moving styling changes and engineering advancement. If people are buying cookie cutter cars from the big 3, make cookie cutter cars. Low risk but low reward. Or, step down or go small or go for unconventional futuristic styling. High risk, but if it’s a hit high reward for a while. You just beta tested ideas for the big 3 on your dime. Hopefully you raised your financial profile for a second round.
The irony of the 1951 Packard body was that it was the most generic of the independents but was built in a fairly low-volume factory, so wouldn’t have been an ideal base for a grand-merger’s big-car platform.
On the subject of the Hudson Jet, do any of the original concepts by Frank Spring exist before management fatefully went in a different direction?
Heard the Italia can be thought of as reflecting what Frank Spring had in mind with the Jet, although cannot say am convinced by the Italia unless it was much cleaner and displays cues from the Fiat 1400 that was said to have influenced the Jet.
And lastly could the Willys Aero have been easily adapted to use the original Jet concept’s exterior?
Langworth’s Hudson book has a sketch. The design looked quite different — and better — than the Italia. I could see Hudson making some changes to an Aero-based Jet, but perhaps no more than a facelift and different rear- quarter panels.
It is a conundrum on if Hudson should have gone with Frank Spring’s original Jet sketch vs the Aero-based Jet and investing the rest in updating the big cars, spinning off a step-down intermediate, converting their sixes to OHVs in the short/mid-term and developing a V8.
Taking the more powerful 130-140 hp 2.6-3.0-litre Brazilian Aero into consideration, understand options for improving the 104-115 hp 3301cc Hudson SV-Six to keep up by finding an additional 15-30 hp were pretty limited. Supposedly it was capable of a slight increase to 3414cc and could have benefited from a similar OHV conversion to Bernie Siegfried’s 308 Hudson OHV prototype conversion, of which a number of features were reused on his Ford Truck Six design.
Read some possibility of the production Jet being capable of using the larger Hudson Sixes, could the same be said for an Aero-based Jet on the basis it was receptive to both the Continental-based Super Hurricane Six as well as any V8 be it the 232-288 Kaiser-Frazer, 327 Hudson via Leroy or another source?
Ultimately can see the above only delaying the inevitable consolidation of independents, on the other hand it would have made for a memorable swansong and might have bolstered its position relative to Nash upon their merger. Though agree it would have also helped had Nash gone generic in place of the inverted-bathtub styling.
All good points, especially those of Kim in Lanark and Robert Karafin: Packard and Hudson should have been the first merger partners post-war. Maybe the folks in South Bend and Kenosha (although I see how George Mason thought of his company in the early 1940s as a Detroit company) could have married if the Studebaker people had been less arrogant. Part of the problem was that between 1940 and the end of hostilities in 1945-early 1946, The U.S. government would not have allowed any kind of collusion or merger of automakers. The priority of the War Production Board was allocating raw materials to manufacturers, not drawing up future business plans. (Look what happened to Preston Tucker ! Kaiser-Frazer was already in business so it was not in Tucker’s organizational situation.) Most volume manufacturers were not ready with new products until late 1948, then the Korean Police Action hit. Much of what the auto producers put into the marketplace were not TOTALLY new cars: Only the 1949 Oldsmobile and 1949 Cadillac offered NEW cars with NEW V-8 engines. Everybody else had continuity in terms of car-body, chassis and engines. By 1954, it was too late for Packard, Hudson, Studebaker, Kaiser and except for the Jeep, Willys.
To this day, I do not understand, and I probably missed something somewhere, who within Hudson did the business plan for the Jet ? Maybe I over-estimate those in charge of product-planning, but who did they think were going to buy compact Hudsons and what was the target showroom floor m.s.r.p.? Let’s brainstorm a bit: In 1950, the m.s.r.p. of a base 1950 Ford Tudor business coupe with no options was $ 1,471.00; a 1950 base Plymouth two-door business coupe was $ 1,507.00; and the base Chevrolet two-door business sedan went for $ 1,741.00. By the fall of 1951, Willys had just introduced its base Aero-Falcon two-door sedan listing at $ 1499.50 ! Fast forward to the fall of 1952, and Hudson launches the base two-door Jet sedan (105-inch wheelbase and 67.1-inches wide) for $ 1,858.00, while the 1953 base Ford Mainline Tudor business coupe (115-inch wheelbase, 73.2-inches wide) rang in at $ 1,497.00; the ’53 base Plymouth Cambridge (114-inch wheelbase and 73.4-ches wide) was $ 1,750.00; and the car at which Dinah Shore just could not stop looking, the base 1953 Chevrolet 150 business sedan (115-inch wheelbase and 75-inches wide) was only $ 1,613.00. The 100-inch wheelbase, 73.5-inch wide 1953 Nash Rambler two-door sedan which was not meant to be a strippo compact had an m.s.r.p. of $ 2,125.00. For $ 2,051.00, you could park the spiffy Bel Air Hardtop in the garage. Why would people buy a European-size sedan for more money and get less of almost everything ? Where the hell were the board of directors and why didn’t they ask tough questions ? Hudson could not afford the Jet after 1948: Both Chevrolet and Ford explored the post-war U.S. “compact car” market before the war and likely reviewed things in 1945. It didn’t make sense for G.M. or Ford, so why did it make sense for Hudson. After all, the Henry J did not save Kaiser!
Finally, was George Mason a “car guy” in the same sense that Charles Nash was ?
Mason, from everything I read, was a well-respected businessman and a good steward of other peoples’ money. Like Walter P. Chrysler, Nash needed a successor. Chrysler had K.T. Keller, but Nash’s bankers introduced Mason to Nash and urged the marriage with Kelvinator. Mason was an idea man, but that does not mean he had a firm grip on what the public would want in 1949 (if anybody did). If one reviews the mock-ups of automotive designs before W.W.II and those in progress during the war, everybody was thinking about envelope bodies and aerodynamic shapes (but not as radical as the Airflow). Pininfarina’s designs were shopped to Mason (and Romney in 1948) after the war, and the Airflyte could be adapted to the Nash unit-body construction philosophy. I have viewed the Nash dealer presentations for salespeople and technicians. The cars’ engineering philosophy seems sound. I have never driven an Airflyte. I wonder if it drives like the Ramblers of the late 1950s ? My father always said when I was a boy that Chrysler and A.M.C. products in the 1950s had the best heating-ventilation-air conditioning systems in the 1950s. George Mason (and Romney) did not have stylists on hand that could take the Airflyte design and do what Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell could do with the G.M. “Torpedo” and 1949 Fisher Body shells. Was there a restriction in Pininfarina’s contract with Nash / A.M.C. that prohibited other designers to materially restyle PF’s design(s)?
Now the early 50s were before my time, but my understanding was the Rambler was the second car market, something the Buick or Chrysler owner would get for his wife to drive to the grocery store and country club. I also think there was a certain effort to market it to young single professionals, like the Mustang a decade later. I remember in the old Superman TV shows Lois Lane’s Rambler was featured in what today would be considered product placement. I am curious though about a16% Chevy charged on their business cars over the competition. That was close to a month’s wages then.
Can you imagine the horror in the Hudson management suites when J. Walter Thompson unveiled the “Two Ford Family” TV ads in 1953-1954. The 1954 Fords were very good cars with proven engines and bigger bodies than the poor small Hudson Jet. If families needed a second car, with the sales war going on, a new Ford Mainline sedan made an awful lot of just plain common sense. Perhaps in the senior management clubby, cigar-smoked atmosphere of paneled offices, the Detroit groupthink made otherwise bright men believe that their vehicles were the only cars for sales in the market.
I wonder if the lingering effects of the depression and the concept of path dependency can illuminate this. The latter basically boils down to the idea that the path which led an organization to succeed in something becomes a habit that is hard to break when circumstances change.
Both Nash and Studebaker remained committed postwar to engineering for low running costs, which for each of them was the recipe for survival during the 1930s. Had the 1950s been like the 1970s, I expect they would have done very well. But their organizational cultures were not well suited to an age of prosperity (leaving aside the brief Eisenhower recession).
Willys might be included in this category too, though it wisely delayed getting back into the car market postwar. But when it did, it was in the same vein as its prewar formula.
Packard’s recipe for surviving the 1930s was to move down market to drive higher volumes, but for a luxury product that strategy risks eroding brand equity, which in the end happened. Rather like what happened to Cadillac in the 1970s.
Hudson survived by taking desperate gambles, particularly with the Terraplane. You can see its gambles on the monobilt step down and the Jet as being in the same vein. The first two paid off for a little while and bought time. The third didn’t.
Kaiser-Fraser falls outside this analysis, aside from perhaps a little Graham legacy. It was just undercapitalized I think. And Henry Kaiser wasn’t the genius for mas production he had been for more bespoke industrial processes.
That’s an interesting way to look at the postwar independents. We could debate some of the specifics, e.g., my sense of Studebaker is that it lost altitude quickly after shifting away from its focus on low-priced economy cars. There wasn’t enough of market to support the Loewy coupes and Studebaker’s increasing emphasis on V8, upper-end sedans didn’t pan out very well. Meanwhile, Rambler did quite well in the low-end of the market.
What’s interesting about Packard is that in the postwar years is it maintained a foothold in the premium-priced class but largely departed the luxury-car market. That was a meaningful shift in strategy but I could see how it may have made sense to management. They didn’t know what was going to happen to luxury-car sales after the war. It could have been more of the same. If so, that may not have penciled out very well for such a small automaker.
I think you’re right that Nash continued to focus on cars with low running costs, but they at least diversified their lineup with the Rambler and Metropolitan. So as big-car sales declined, smaller-car sales took up the slack. Even in 1955 the Rambler kept the company afloat.