Letters
Dear Classic American,
I received my regular copy of Classic American the other day and was pleased to see a piece on the Soviet ZIS 110. The article is totally right in explaining that there was no direct connection with Packard. There was, however, another US connection and that was with the Edward G Budd Manufacturing Co. The role of Budd in the history of mass production is generally overlooked, but the company was directly involved in setting up body production for ZIS in the Thirties, notably for the 101 model. I attach a couple of pages from one of my books (Nieuwenhuis, P and Wells, P, 2003, The Automotive Industry and the Environment, Cambridge: Woodhead and Boca Raton FL: CRC) as a scan.
In addition to the short section on ZIS, you will also spot a short section on Ford. One of our key findings in researching Budd was that Ford could not mass-produce complete cars at Highland Park, as he could not mass-produce bodies. That technology was developed by Edward Budd and first used by Dodge Brothers in 1915, i.e. well before Ford adopted that technology at ‘The Rouge’ in 1925/6.
Dr Paul Nieuwenhuis
Via email
And indeed Dr Nieuwenhuis did send those pages, which we can’t reproduce here due to space restrictions and they confirm Budd’s role in setting up not only the ZIS manufacturing set-up, but also Ford’s. Thanks for your input, it’s always fascinating to get more information from our readers!