Saturday, April 25, 2015
Another Willys thought
Another haphazard automotive thought, related to Willys as usual.
Why didn't Willys join the postwar seller's market by resuming production of its '42 models like everyone else did? The '42 Americar was up to date in styling and mechanics, and would have sold well. It was smaller than most, a foot shorter than a Ford or Chevy, but it wasn't TINY like Crosley. The Americar was fully equipped and fully capable of doing everything an American car was asked to do. The TINY Crosley, which wasn't a Real Car and couldn't hit highway speeds, sold like hotcakes for a few years.
Books say that Willys had outsourced its bodies to Briggs, and all the body-makers were fully occupied by the Big Three after the war. They didn't want to bother with a smaller customer. So Willys had to switch to truck-like station wagons and pickups with squared-off surfaces. The deep-draw presses needed for the curvy Americar were exclusively owned by the body-makers.
Why was that an obstacle? Willys had the engineers and facilities to make frames and engines. They could have built several deep-draw presses for their own use, which would free them from dependence on the Big Body Boys. Or they could have hired a West Coast machine-tool builder who was hungry for business after wartime aircraft production stopped.
The usual story simply doesn't make sense. Nearsighted management always makes sense as an explanation for management mistakes.
¶ 4:59 PM 
