The borrowing from their suppliers was in the form of returning the invoice
to the supplier and telling them that when they recieved a corrected
invoice, they'd pay it. Like I said, my Dad was in the supplier business.
For certain things, it was a 30 day cycle. In our part of the business,
1/100 of a cent per piece would be the difference between getting the job
and being shut down for the month. You'd bid the job, and the tooling would
show up around the 28th (depending upon which month it was, and how the days
of the week fell). The people to run the job kind of followed the tooling.
they were all UAW members, too. They officially worked out of the union
hall, much like construction workers do, but mainly, they followed the dies.
When you bid a job, you pretty much knew who would be running your machines
for the next month. We pretty much already had their employment information
on file. Your steel would arrive the first business day of the month, and
you'd run 24/7 for 2 weeks getting the parts made and then ship about the
17th. Payment was due around the 27th, and you'd pay for your steel by the
30th, taking the 2% net, which was pretty much your profit. If you recieved
your invoice instead of a check, you had to find money to pay off the steel
supplier, or you wouldn't get any next time around. This went on for about
6 months until we figured out that the printer had made a punctuation error
in our bill form. We used white out, and got our money within 10 days.
My Dad never bid another Chrysler job, and even bought a 57
Mercury--which was a monumental piece of crap.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Watson" <wwatson@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 12:20 PM
Subject: Re: IML: Quality of the 1957 Imperial
>
> Chrysler's new line of 1957 models put General Motors to shame.
Oldsmobile,
> Buick and Cadillac used brand new bodies, but as one wag put it, although
> Plymouth was "Suddenly It's 1960", Oldsmobile was "Suddenly It's 1950".
> Popular Mechanics did an owner's report on a new 1957 Oldsmobile and the
> assembly line worker that installed the grille nameplate installed the
> letters "O-L-D-D-M-O-B-I-L-E" on the grille.
>
> 1957 was a disaster for Buick and Oldsmobile, by the way. Buick model
year
> production fell from 583,181 in 1955 to 572,024 in 1956 to 405,086 in
1957,
> while Oldsmobile dropped from 554,090 in 1955 to 485,459 in 1956 and to
> 384,392 in 1957. Cadillac production also dropped, but by a much smaller
> amount from 154,631 in 1956 (up from 1955's 140,778) to 146,840 in 1957.
>
> As for the borrowed money, Chrysler borrowed $250 million from the
> Prudential Insurance Company in 1954. This gave the corporation the
> financial foundation to go ahead with the complete retooling needed for
the
> 1957 models, plus plant expansion and modernization. And they had one
> hundred years to repay it The money did not come from their suppliers,
> although the suppliers generally foor the bill for tooling the parts they
> produced. Thus if Chrysler redesigned a part midway through the year a
> supplier might be caught footing the bill for tooling a part twice. But
> Chrysler did not actually borrow money from them.
>
> Bill
> Vancouver, BC
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: John Harvey
> To: mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 9:10 AM
> Subject: Re: IML: Quality of the 1957 Imperial
>
>
> Quality on all 57 models was not very good, even by 1957 standards. It is
> claimed that the reason 57 Chrysler products were so bad is that they
rushed
> them into production a year before they originally planned (the 55-56 were
> only a 2 year cycle, instead of the common 3 years) because of what Ford
> did with their styling for 57. Believe me, Ford had real quality problems
> of their own in 57. Buick produced a whole bunch more cars than the
factory
> was designed to build, and quality on 57 Buicks supposedly really
suffered.
> Chrysler pulled a trick in 56 on their suppliers that resulted in them in
> effect borrowing, interest free, several hundred million dollars from
these
> suppliers for about a year. As a result, Chrysler had to find new
> suppliers, because the old ones refused to sell to them, except cash out
> front. My dad was one of these suppliers. He made washers, shims, and
> spacers. That didn't help quality in 57 for Chrysler, either.
> Another problem was that they really didn't understand how to design
to
> fight the tinworm.
> My suspicion is that the surviving cars we have now were the "good"
> cars. The ones that needed a repair just now and then, but were otherwise
> pretty dependable. People who had "lemons", dumped them quickly, and
these
> quickly went down the value line and suffered a life ending repair early
> (cars depreciated really fast back then, a typical new car lost 1/4 of its
> value just driving out of the dealership, and by the time it was 2 years
> old, it had to be really nice to be worth 1/3 the original price. By the
> time it was 5, you would be lucky to get 10% of original cost on trade).
You
> had to put some real money out front to finance a new car; none of this
> 0-0-0 stuff we have now. People weren't "upside down" in their cars,
like
> is real common with the real low down payments, and 60 or 72 month payment
> books of today. Goes to show you how much cars have improved over the
last
> 40 years--that someone will loan money on one for 5 or 6 years. Back in
57,
> 24 or 30 month contracts were just about as long as they would go. Maybe
> 36.
>
>
>
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