Re: The Second Packard "Twin Six"

Posted by PackardV12fan On 2008/9/20 12:07:29
John:

First and foremost, please PLEASE be assured I value your contributions from your apparently excellent and vast research sources. But, as usual, you let your enthusiasm get the best of you. You keep forgetting that there is a little teeny weenie itty bitty difference between us. I owned, drove, worked on and became familiar, in a 'hands on' basis, with most of the big engined classics. And, of course Packards of just about all descriptions, when I worked in a garage in the 1950's, and you didnt.

That dosnt make me any smarter than you - I just thru no clever-ness of my own, happen to have born into a time and era where I got more REAL info. on SOME of this stuff than you do.

Let me get you straightened out.

First of all, Packard's famous reputation for quality DID NOT CONTINUE as you claim "even thru the 50's and to the end". Wrong wrong wrong.

By late '54, their ever more horrid post-war build quality had become an industry bad joke. All the fancy claims and advertising in the world, that came to help sell the '55's, couldn't stop customers from rejecting Packard products when it turned out they were being shoved out of the factory doors as "do it yourself" kits. THAT is what killed Packard, plain and simple. All you have to do is look at the sales figures, to see how much the car buying public WISHED that Packard's claims were true. The '55's sold like hot-cakes for the first few months. Then, the "down-side" of that famous Packard advertisement about the "duties of reputation" caught up with them, and that was the end. Sales went thru the floor, and you couldn't give them away.

The Germans came out of the 2nd World War with labor, production, supply, and plant facilities issues that made Packard's problems look like kid stuff. And they, too, put out a lot of lower priced cars, even taxi cabs. But unlike Packard, they were DETERMINED to keep up their quality image, so buying THEIR products after the war didnt leave a bad taste in the consumer's mouth - insead, a desire to buy more.

Bottom line - what killed Packard was its management, setting a model for the kind of business practice that is now killing American industry.

Very simply - "screw the consumer - get the product out the door as cheaply as possible, and use whatever money you get in from the sales, to inflate management salaries".

Did you ever follow my suggestion and take a good look underneath the front-end of a '53 Cad., Buick Roadmaster, or Olds 98, and compare its strength and quality, with your '53 Packard ?

Did you ever try and "go off" at a stop-light with that '53 Packard, against one of the above ? THAT is what killed Packard, and all the fancy attempts at complex issues wont disguse that simple fact that Packard went out of its way to go down-hill.

A '52 Cadillac is a better, faster, nicer driving, more comfortable car that a '42 Cadillac. A '52 Packard "400/Patrician" is a slower, poorer quality, nastier driving hood fluttering piece of junk compared to a '42 Packard "180". THAT was only part of the problem, but when you combine an inferior performing product with bad built quality, you go out of business. It is that simple.

Going back to the thirites - you are totally wrong about the ACD Company. You ever actually owned an Aburn, Cord, or Duesenburg ? Much less worked on or even driven them ?

True, the Duesenburgs had good build-quality. But the others. Yuch. I know that Packard sold ten of its V-12's for every Cad. V-16, but I dont know how many HUNDREDS of Packard V-12's were sold (probably closer to THOUSANDS) for every Marmon V-16 or Duesenburg.

The front-wheel drive Cords had TERRIBLE reliability issues, scaring off the public. The Aburn build quality was not the best.

I dont know where you got your info. about Marmon complete car weights. I do know that most of the Marmon V-16's I have seen had ALUMINUM bodies, which resulted in a significantly lighter car, body design for body design, than, for example, my own '38 Packard V-12 Formal Sedan.

As for Duesenburg power, modern dyno tests show it was VASTLY over-rated, and the Packard V-12 UNDER-rated.

All other things being equal, torque is almost a direct linear function of compression. Both had about the same compression. Because the Packard V-12 was "cammed" and set up to deliver max. power in the lower rpm ranges where most of its buyers would operate it, of course the MUCH more expensive Duesenburg motor was better suited to extreme speed operation, at least as far as valve and combustion chamber design goes.

I doubt if any present Duesenburg owner is going to go racing me these days, with those things worth nearly a million bucks, and fewer and fewer people capable of maintaining them properly. But it dosnt matter - the cars were not competitive. WAY different markets and price class. And dont try and tell me the manufacturer didnt WANT to sell cars. C'mon..man.

Incidentally, most closed Duesenburgs had VERY heavy HIGHEST quality bodies, which meant they had to be crippled with absurdly "low" final drive ratios to give decent performance.

Yes, I was beaten badly in a "flying mile" race by a late J Dusie, but a very high geared rear end. I never did a "flying mile" with a stock-geared closed Duesenburg - my suspicion is I had "no takers" because they knew they couldn't beat a high geared Packard V-12.

Where did you get the idea that ANY Packard V-12 from the 1930's would weigh only 4,950 lbs ? The lighest 2 door coupe, if I recall correctly, weighed in at around 5,400 lbs. Perhaps you got your reading sources confused ? My recollection is that we weighed my friend's Marmon V-16 couple that I raced, and it came in at around 4,600 lbs.

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