MACAULEY’S GHOST KILLS PACKARD’S LAST CHANCE Barely five years after Packard invested in a new plant to manufacture bodies for the One Twenty, Macauley was outsourcing body production for the Clipper to Briggs Manufacturing Company. Although this was justified at the time as an expedient to get the car into production because Packard’s own facilities…
ALVAN MACAULEY SQUANDERS PACKARD’S CAPITAL, WITH LASTING EFFECT In his Octane magazine column, Jay Leno recently wrote that “one of the final nails in the coffin [of Packard] was bringing in James Nance – a man with absolutely no experience of automobiles who came from a background of selling appliances.” It’s a common myth, one…
JAMES NANCE: THE RIGHT MAN ARRIVES TOO LATE James Nance would become Packard’s president on May 1, 1952. By then, the image of Cadillac as the prestige American automobile was cemented in public perception. On November 5, 1953, a new Broadway production opened at the Belasco Theatre in New York City: “The Solid Gold Cadillac.” …