Re: Racing Packards of the 1930's???

Posted by Rusty O\'Toole On 2010/1/18 21:40:12

I see my answer was a little mixed up.

I meant to say, road racing was out of the question in the USA. It was not permitted anywhere, with few exceptions.

There were some in the New York area, and I think around Savannah Georgia, before WW1. Then again once or twice around New York in about 1937. Other than that, nothing.

The most popular form of racing was on oval tracks. In the teens and twenties there were banked ovals like Indianapolis and some banked oval board tracks notably Beverly Hills in California and Sheepshead Bay near New York.

These went out of business by 1930, except for Indianapolis, which was only open for one race a year.

It was all oval track racing most of them dirt tracks of 1/2 mile to 1 mile.

Any Packard chassis or engine was far too big for such a venue. The biggest engine used was the little Ford V8 60 of 137 cu in or 2.2 liters. The fastest cars used Miller or Offenhauser 4 cylinder OHC units. The others were mostly 4 cylinder Ford Model A engines with various aftermarket heads, flathead OHV or OHC whichever the owner could afford.

For a time in the 30s Indianapolis had what some called the "Junk Formula". They encouraged the use of mass produced chassis and engines suitably hopped up. But I don't believe any Packards raced at Indy under this formula. Studebaker straight eights put up some fast times but no Packards.