Studebaker bought Pierce-Arrow in the late '20s (IIRC), and decided to cut their losses by selling Pierce in 1934. If not for Studebaker’s financial support for several years, Pierce-Arrow likely would have gone out of business even sooner.
1 Like
More Packard Trivia: James Ward Packard, class of 1884, gave the money for and named Packard Laboratory at his alma mater, Lehigh University. That was in 1928. The building is still in use today, and will probably be in use 100 years from now.
1 Like
Packard had impressive proving grounds and high speed test track. One of their test drivers who was a friend of my grandfather (who was production manager of Budd Wheel’s Detroit plant) taught my mother to drive on the Packard proving grounds when she was sixteen. Log roads, oil slicks, etc. Her final lesson was to take a special roll reinforced car on the vertical speed track where she had the speed up over 100mph. And that was in 1936. 
I reject many more posts, as in don’t even bother to read them, than I used to. The first screening is scanning the titles. For the new posts, I probably average opening 5% of them and reject the rest based on title alone. If I do open and haven’t the slightest idea what is being asked, it goes to the reject pile, too. I figure that if a poster is either unwilling or unable to articulate a question, I don’t really need to bother spending time and effort on their query.
3 Likes
+1
Similarly, failure to provide necessary details will cause me to… move along.
On a different site that I frequent, somebody asked a question regarding “Poplar Street”, but failed to provide the name of the municipality where that particular street was located. Why would I waste any time trying to “tease” the vital details from that person?
Many posts originate from cellphones and sent on the go.
Those incomplete and often illiterate posts don’t really deserve an answer.
This is not solely for Docnick. It’s true that many posts come from cell phones, but that’s not going to change and is pretty much the way the world works.
And you’re free not to answer those posts. We’ve always had people who posted a question and didn’t come back. This feature was designed as a way to bring more traffic to the site to keep it going.
Many of those Ask Someone discussions do take place via email for those users, but to return to a subject that comes up now and again: for people who come to the site and see others talking about folks who aren’t here very often in such terms…I can imagine they might not come back.
3 Likes
I agree heartily with Carolyn, and might add that by driving more traffic to the community, there is also the opportunity to convince some of these guests to join up, buy they will only do that if they feel welcomed.
The original North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft used our Allison V12 engines. Packard manufactured the Rolls Royce Merlin engines that transformed the decent Mustang into a true air superiority fighter.
Packard was considered to be the only US automaker capable of manufacturing the incredibly-complex Merlin engines.
I can manage to understand most posts, not all. Some sites are worse than others, agree the ask someone seem to be the worst. ie “Car is hosed, what is wrong?”
1 Like
Clearly, if the car is hosed, the owner is a hoser. Problem solved!
1 Like
My grandfather said that during WWII that Packard was the best of the companies to work with on war production, whereas Ford was the worst.
Ford was always the worst to work for until Henry died in 1945. Truly a reprehensible individual.
1 Like
@old_mopar_guy I should have clarified my comment. It was because Packard was best at placing orders for war production parts which were accurate and needed few change orders on a daily basis. Whereas Ford often called in so many confusing and contradictory change orders many times each day, oftentimes multiple times within minutes that it was extremely difficult to plan production at Budd Wheel’s Detroit plant.
Henry was the last of the old style “Capitalists” with a “my way or the highway” style of management. Never mind that he virtually created the modern auto industry; there are several excellent books written about the company. One volume is called “Decline and Rebirth” It’s about the tragic decent in to almost bankruptcy in 1946 and Henry II’s effort to revive the company with his Wizkids buddies from the military. Robert MacNamera played a key role in its revival. Henry II took all the credit.
As a kid then I was awestruck by the new streamlined 1949 Ford models. That car is in he Ford museum in Dearborn as the “car that recued the company”.
Well, that was the same period of time that bookkeeping at Ford was so chaotic that–allegedly–accountants decided to budget for expenses by weighing piles of invoices. When a company is led by an autocratic crazy person–and there is no doubt that old Henry was seriously mentally-disturbed by this time–bizarre things can happen at that company.