Re: Electromatic Clutch?

Posted by su8overdrive On 2015/4/8 16:26:57

The above Packard mavens sum it well. My '47 Super was delivered with Electromatic, which a longtime Packard gent who had one in his '47 Custom Super rebuilt. I drove it engaged a couple times, worked fine but disliked the robotic aspect. However, i'm a sports car guy who long ago "fell in" to 1940-47 overdrive Packards and appreciate them as road cars more than the circus wagons plastered with every available option they are for many today.

To Tim's observation about accelerated clutch wear, which makes sense given its real world operation, i'd add hastened throw out bearing wear, since at long lights, the clutch pedal's depressed with ElectroMatic engaged. Savvy drivers of any manual transmission know to always shift into neutral and take your foot off the clutch pedal at long lights.

Electromatic was Packard's response in their box office poison 1941 models (sales down 24% from 1940 while GM's '41s up the same amount) to HydraMatic in the '40 Olds, '41 Cadillac,
just as the Clipper later that year was Packard's better late than never response to GM's racy new '40 "C" bodies, some of which cues it incorporated.
Packard had the finest chassis in the industry, as Dutch Darrin observed, but was also, as he pointed out in early '40, "So afraid of GM they couldn't see straight."

Packard was so cowed by HydraMatic that in ads for the 1941 models with Electromatic and overdrive, suggested motorists in city driving leave the shift lever in second and let overdrive second approximate third gear. Continually starting out in second gear, especially in city traffic, is murder on the pressure plate, but Packard was trying to sell cars, and their desperation creeped into their ads, especially compared with Buick's breezy and Cadillac's self-assured copy. It was a long time since the understatement of Peter Helck's 1933 "Hush."

Packards have a lovely transmission, twice the bearings as a three-speed Cad or Buick manual, and a good clutch, so i'd think much of the draw of owning a Packard is to control them yourself. Off subject a little, but to underscore Packard's thorough engineering without the Hudson Drivermaster-ish Electromatic and other gewgaws, my mechanic happened to be rebuilding a transmission out of a '40 Buick Roadmaster the same time he was rebuilding the overdrive transmission for my earlier '40 Packard One-Twenty. I noted the main shaft of my junior Packard was half again stouter than the senior Buick's.
In his '60s rail dragsters running methanol blown 1,000-hp Chrysler 426 hemis, Don Garlits switched to R-6 junior Packard transmissions (as in your '39 Six) after the Cad-LaSalle boxes' cases shattered.

BTW, HydraMatic is strictly a convenience feature doing nothing for performance, so why would anyone want a desperate response to such? But then, i don't understand "buffs" who want to burden their engines with air conditioning when you've got vent windows, or cope with the extra half ton of limousine.