Re: Ok, I'm calling your bluff. Show me how Packards were "better".

Posted by Tim Cole On 2012/6/19 16:42:41

Dear Pat:

I really couldn't agree more and will try to be objective.

Packard was always trying to bill itself as the greatest thing on wheels and probably achieved that with the Twin-Six.

The single cylinder stuff was Winton engineering AKA William Hatcher. Later the four and six cylnder cars were plain old T-heads with lots of cubic inches. For my money though I have heard owners of all kinds of big ticket brass cars tell me "The Model T is the ultimate."

Back in the 1960's and 70's you could take a good running pre-war Packard out and it drove better than a brand new Chevrolet. And mile for mile the only car that could match the Packards for longevity was a well maintained Roll-Royce.
If you get behind the wheel of a 734 Speedster and bring it up to 55-60 it does pretty good. George Jepson told me he thought it was a better car than the Duesy. And any of the Packard twelves were superlative when fitted with high speed ring and pinion ratios. Good low mileage classic era Packards really do perform although they burn gas like crazy. But they do wear out and most of the stuff today shows it.

Now I'm gonna tell you something. I have met a few Packard nuts who are just plain rude, obnoxious, uncultured, and uncivilized. I even knew some old time Packard guys who switched to Cadillac because they were treated badly by some people. Some of the old car politics is just plain ridiculous and the way people spit at each other is terrible. And I won't even start about the people who were friendly until they found out I wasn't going to buy their freaking cars. Back in the old days you weren't going to get anywhere with people unless they knew you weren't jealous of their cars. Imagine me having lunch with George Jepson and talking about how much I wanted his car. He had a little favorite restaurant in Hillsdale and we would have some lunch with cocktails. He drank Manhattans. We talked about everything except other people's cars.

A lot of this is about money and with what it costs to restore a car I really can't blame people for having some religion. But here at this forum I just try to help people. I am actually happier since I stopped dealing with Packards and some of those cuckoo birds. The money isn't as good due to the depression, but at least the workplace isn't a war zone. We're dealing with sophisticated problems over here.