AUTOS: Packard Shifts Gears

When Packard finally cleaned up the design of its autos two years ago, it had a sleek, modern-looking car. All it lacked was an aggressive sales organization and a vigorous boss. At 65, veteran Treasurer

Hugh Ferry had merely taken the presidency as a stop-gap after President George Christopher quit in a huff (TIME, Aug. 28, 1950). The quarreling stockholder factions who forced Christopher out have been wrangling ever since, but last week they finally agreed on a president: James J. Nance, 51, president of G.E.'s Hotpoint, Inc.

In Nance, Packard got one of the ablest salesmen and shrewdest analysts of new markets in U.S. industry. In four years he had built Hotpoint's sales from $20 million to $200 million, made it one of the stiffest competitors of G.E.'s own lines of freezers, refrigerators, stoves, etc. (TIME, Nov. 26). While G.E. welcomed this kind of aggressiveness, Nance ran his show so much like an independent kingdom that his elbows stuck out in G.E.'s hierarchical command. When Nance, by turning down a G.E. executive vice-presidency last year, refused to take his place in the G.E. waiting line, Packard went after him. To get him, they reportedly boosted the $120,000 he got at Hotpoint to $200,000 and threw in a stock deal as well.