Re: Hot Rod Packards

Posted by Eric Boyle On 2009/12/28 22:28:19

Quote:

Right here.

Unfortunately, when I think of performance engines, the Packard Six isn't one of them. I know of no add-on performance parts for the Packard Six, but that doesn't mean that they weren't made.

The thing to keep in mind is this, the last publicly US available Packard Six was in 1947, after that it was taxi and export only. Then of course the Six went on to live in White? trucks. Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that Packards were never advertised to be performance cars like Ford and Chevy were, they were silent comfortable luxury cars for people who drove them as such. In the early '50s, with Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Chrysler, and FOMOCO cars being the source of "hot rod engines" the Packard engines were overlooked. The transmissions however, were not. To have a Packard gearbox in your rod back in the '50s was to be avant garde`. Most of the time it was behind a Chrysler HEMI and a Caddy V8, as those were the engines to have back then.

I've always said that if Packard would have come out with even the 320 V8 back in '48-'50 (or even '51) the story of Packard would have been totally different. But making an engine for only two years in numbers that Chevrolet outproduced in a week doesn't give much credence to hot rodders. They used the most popular and most plentiful engines of the times, and any Packard engine wasn't one of them. The only reason why people used the V8's later was because they were being sold by the likes of JC Whitney for a lot less than it cost to buy and rebuild the other engines. And it's the same reason why they're not popular now, as no one is doing anything performance-wise to them, and those that do are having to make their own parts, as you can't buy performance parts for any Packard engine like you can with a Hudson six, early HEMI's, Olds, Caddy, and Ford flatheads. Any performance parts you can find for Packard engines will be old stuff from the '50s, expensive and rare. Try and find a performance exhaust manifold/headers for an inline Packard engine, not going to happen. Try the Packard V8, off the shelf. Not going to happen. If you want performance parts you're gonna have to do like me and everyone else that's tinkering with them, make them yourself or pay out the hiney to have someone make them for you, one-off of course.

Now, I'm not saying that you can make adequate power out of any Packard engine, you can, but it's going to take a LOT of work and ingenuity to get it done, and after all the money spent and time wasted, you will still have something that will be walked all over by a contemporary OHV V8. BUT, you'll be the coolest kid on the block with a 4bbl Packard Six, multi-carbed Packard I8, or a supercharged Packard V8. Trust me, I know, been there, done that, got the t-shirt.