New-to-me Packard V-8 trivia!

Posted by Dan On 2009/12/10 22:29:30

I was thumbing through a copy of the new book "Merchants of Speed: The Men Who Built America's Performance Industry" by Paul D. Smith.

I started looking through the chapter about Lou Senter (founder of Ansen).

According to this chapter, a dragster built by Senter and powered by a blown Packard V-8 (bored out to 435 ci!)was the first gasoline-powered dragster to reach 150 MPH!

Seems Senter got a deal on 50 1956 Packard V-8s that were shipped to the wrong destination (or something like that).

According to him, the rest of the engines sold quickly once word got out about the way the car performed! There's a really good B&W photo of it, too.