Re: Did Chevy consider Packard V8 BB Design?

Posted by BH On 2009/3/8 16:10:46

All right, Guy, let's just call it over and done with (and stop splitting hairs).

I do believe you have credibility with regard to your own family ownership of a V8 Packard and your own private readings and online participation. I don't consider myself the end-all authority on any Packard, but have only been studying the V8 cars and collecting related literature, casually, for a few decades. Of course, no matter how much any of us think we know, there always seems to be something more out there to discover. Yet, the facts as we know them are based on our own perception, and perceptions are so often selective.

I admire your want to learn even more about Packards, but sometimes you ask, and repeatedly, for things that the site doesn't have and aren't immediately available. Personally, I feel that if the material is available for posting, without infringment, it will come home to roost - sooner or later - here at P'Info, without a lot of pushing for it.

P'Info has been up and running less than three years, but take a look in the depths of the archives (that is, the Packard Articles section) to see how much has already been donated. You will find as much, maybe more, factory information on the V8s as anywhere else online - even longer.

You will also find reprints of many technical papers for sale at the SAE site on a variety of other topics that were published by Packard engineers that this site doesn't have, but I have my doubts that SAE would agree to online posting of such material.

As regards Wm. E. Schwieder, I've never seen much else written about him, except that his name is cited in conjunction with Wm. Graves, V.P of Engineeering (who headed up the V8 project), in a footnote to a statement about keeping the the V12 revival (based on the V8 tooling) alive in Ward's The Fall of PMCC. Though nothing highly technical, there's a book that is every bit worth a read as the Kimes History... that we all hold in such high regard. (BTW, have you checked out the Packard Bookshelf feature here?) I can only assume that Schwieder was one of the staff eningeers dedicated to the development of the V8.

By all means, move forward on collecting material for donation, but with care. There's no contest here.