Louis Chevrolet
Also in 1916, American Motors Corporation (unrelated to the later American Motors created by the 1954 merger of Nash-Kelvinator Corporation and Hudson Motor Car Company) was formed in Newark, New Jersey, with Louis Chevrolet as vice president and chief engineer. By 1918 it was producing cars in a plant at Plainfield, New Jersey. In 1923 it merged with the Bessemer Motor Truck Company of Pennsylvania into Bessemer-American Motors Corporation, which lasted less than a year before merging with the Winther and Northway companies into Amalgamated Motors. The latter company apparently ceased soon after.
George W. Mason
The smaller automakers responded to their shrinking market shares by conducting formal and informal merger talks. Willys and Kaiser merged in 1953. Mason brought together Nash and the Hudson Motor Car Company to cut costs and strengthen their sales organizations to meet the intense competition from the Big Three. This merger occurred on May 1, 1954 to form American Motors Corporation (AMC). At the same time, he tried to bring Studebaker and Packard into AMC. He had informal discussions with James J. Nance of Packard to outline his strategic vision for competing with the Big Three. An agreement was reached for parts-sharing arrangements between AMC and Packard and the new Packard V8 engine and Packard's Ultramatic automatic transmission would be used in the 1955 Nash Ambassador and Hudson Hornet models. In July 1954, Packard acquired Studebaker.