Re: Comparative Engine Torque ratings Packard Vs Other Fine cars

Posted by su8overdrive On 2012/4/4 5:23:41

Deacon 55Guy -- Perhaps i should clarify. 446 was the number of final year (1939) Packard Twelves produced, each of them to order, essentially leftover '38s with alternately painted grille bars and column shift. Wonderful cars, but like the splendid final year '38 Pierce-Arrows with overdrive standard (!), only 18 produced (leftover '37s);

the 24 leftover '39 Lincoln Ks sold as 1940 models;

and 61 leftover '39 Cadillac V-16s sold as '40 models,

they were rendered obsolete by recent developments in "pocket luxury cars," as well as more egalitarian times.

The 1935-39 Packard Twelve torque figures you ask about are in my above post and Father 58L8134's chart earlier in this thread.

The bigger point is that all other 1939-on Packards were junior based, until the 1941 Clipper, which despite using a high-compression version of the One-Twenty's rugged 282-ci eight, was neither junior nor senior, but priced squarely between them, in the midst of what Packard, and GM, saw as the more vital "Lexus" tier of Buick Roadmaster/Cadillac Series 61/Chrysler New Yorker/Lincoln Zephyr. The 1942 160/180 Clippers were simply this car with the otherwise identical frame 1/64th of an inch thicker --talk about tooling yourself to death--and the senior 356 engine, with limousine editions after the war. The junior 1942-47 Clippers had shorter front end sheet metal on an abbreviated 120" wheelbase.

When you consider how much sleeker these junior Clippers were than the frumpy Standard Steel-bodied 1946 Silver Dawns and R-Type Bentleys on the same 120" wb, you shudder at those ex-GM production men running Packard after the war who insisted on chasing low-rung Buicks and Oldsmobile. 75% of Packard's postwar production was such fare. Packard learnt volume production from GM, but alas, not how to market.

But now we're bleeding into Bishop Green's neighboring advertising lament.

The other half of my point was that ALL Cadillacs 1936-on were junior cars, sharing components with lesser GMobiles. Even the final 1938-40 431-ci flathead V-16 Series 90 shared otherwise the same package as the three-main-bearing V-8 Cadillac Series 75.

Even Rolls-Royce, that "great confidence trick," as one esteemed English motoring journalist referred to the company, knew enough to cadge just production tips from Buick while keeping their own mystique.

Packard blew it. Afraid i agree with "Uncle Tom" McCahill's assessment of the '48 bathtub, "....a goat." And to most people, '51-on Packards looked like little more than bigger, gaudier Fords; also-rans. Packard's sole novel feature of the '50s, Torsion-Level suspension, came from an outside engineer who had to strenuously sell it to Packard's execs. Before y'all hurl brickbats, i had a '51 with only 48,414 miles from new, the little old lady from Hawthorne, if not nearby Pasadena. Good ergonomics, but just being "as good as" or "nearly as powerful as" was not what Packard was all about in their heyday. A Mayfair coupe with stick and overdrive was a nice ride for the '50s. But that's also not enough for the company that was P A C K A R D only a decade earlier.

Hispano-Suiza wound up making pumps for nuclear power plants, most of Rolls-Royce's business 1935-on was aero engines, the cars a boutique sideline, yet still skillfully marketed.

The above heresy's just my 'umble opine. Sorry, but i'm not one of those who bows and scrapes to everything with a Packard badge, tho' i want to emphasize these are only sentiments i've observed at large over the many years and that in the words of the Episcopal Church, at Packard Info.com, "All are welcome."

You asked about Buick's ohv 320 straight eight being something of a dog in its later years. It was detuned from its troublesome, gas-slurping 1941-42 Compound Carburetor guise after the war, but the main problem was that Buicks, like most cars, grew ever heavier. The engine was saddled with the Dynaslush transmission and yes, Ultramatic's direct-drive lock up torque convertor was a vast improvement. But again, just being "better than" Buick, or sorta/maybe/almost as good as Cadillac, Chrysler
wasn't what the car formerly known as the American Rolls-Royce was all about.

As for the variance in specs between Packard's last Packard-built engine, the 352 (the '56 374 was the same block bored out another 1/8th inch) in the junior and senior editions, i leave that to any '50s specialists here gathered. I'm still wondering why the 327 inline L-head in the Packard 300 had five main bearings, while the 327 inline L-head 400 Patrician has nine.

Your family drove that '55 as daily transportation from new through 1969 without any trouble with the oil pump or Torsion-Level control box rusting/shorting out? From what i know of those cars, that's mighty fine.

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