Re: How Packard Builds a Body c1930

Posted by Craig the Clipper Man On 2014/1/11 10:32:46

Thanks for the link ... it is reallhy interesting to see how manufacturers used so much wood in the body production. The last car with an ash frame was a Morgan. I am surprised that Packard and other car manufacturers were so locked into wood when there was so much steel being produced and available. It seems like a hold-over to the wagon and buggy production. What year did Packard finally go over to all-metal frames and bodies?

While being relatively easy to work and shape, wood is great for furniture and other items subjected to low stress; but it seems to me there are obvious down sides to wood as a core structure component of an automobile. After an accident, wood is not malleable like steel and cannot be bent back into shape. The wood elements damaged must be replaced and rebuilt. It seems more like boat building. In a crash a wooden frame would crack and splinter, as opposed to crumpling or bending and staying intact.

Years ago I read an article about an old man whose Pierce-Arrow was involved in a crash. Realizing that there was no body repair shops around who knew how to fix a cracked wooden frame, the gentleman enlisted the assistence of a teenage boy to disassemble the broken pieces and rebuild the frame from scratch. I cannot begin to image the labor involved in such an effort.