for '55 Packard guy-regarding the TORSION BAR suspension idea

Yeah - it was fantastic. Have any of you seen the promo film Packard made when they introduced the TORSION BAR system? It is still around.

I was at an auto show in late '54, and I can tell you people's mouths literally dropped open when that film was showed. I personally saw Packard sales people actually run out of their order book paperwork signing people up for new torsion-bar equipped Packards...THAT'S how fantastic even a FILM of this fantastic system was.

The film-strip showed a new torsion bar equipped Packard go over the same extreme bump ( a humped rail-road crossing ) at extreme speeds, and then they took all three luxury car competitors over the same bump at the same speed.

Wow ! Of course the torsion-bar equipped Packard remained unruffled and in control. And of course the bouncing of the competitor cars was pretty extreme and funny.

No wonder those first few months saw Packard sales recovering. How sad Packard's production philosphy caused them to put out such badly assembled cars, with so many "glitches", that the public revolted, with the sad end discussed so many times ( with so many excuses).

FOR "55 Packard"

You raise an interesting question about timing of the introduction, then termination of multi-cyl. motors for Packard's automotive line.

Fact is, the V-12's and V-16's were obsolete even before they hit the show-rooms! There were essentially TWO reasons for this.

FUEL OCTANE IMPROVEMENT
As gasoline fuel octane improved, you didn't need monster engines with long strokes to get good power. With the improved slower burning fuels, compression ratios could be raised, resulting in more efficient and smoother running motors. Motors that put more of the energy from the burning of the fuel into foward motion, with less wasted as heat. Just look at how much smaller the radiators have become, for any given engine size, as compression ratios went up, and stroke length went down.

MOTOR MOUNT IMPROVEMENT
Up until the early thirties, motors were bolted rigidly to the frame, and were actually part of chassis stiffness. Once the rubber "isolater" ( I believe Chrysler started that) came into use, smaller engines with fewer cylinders could be made much smoother-appearing to the car's occupants.

Packard's product research showed most of the motoring public had no idea about cylinders - they just wanted a quiet, smooth car that could give sprightly performance in high gear without a lot of shifting. They gave the public what it wanted, in a reliable quality product, that in each price class, was worth the money. So long as they did that, they were successful. When they stopped doing that, they failed.

Turbo has the right idea. When you see factual info. that conflicts with what you want to believe, CENSOR the guy.

Of course I did not claim "superiority" - I said the opposite - emphasized it was just an "accident of birth timing" that put me into an era and situations where I had exposure that many of you did not. But this fellow has the right idea - when you need to discredit facts, so what if you have to play "fast and loose" with them.

But again, I do understand. Precision of speech and accuracy are passe. Our educational system's rank with other third world countries confirms we do not want or need precise thinking - that is only for countries, cultures, and economies that are upcoming industrial centers.

The rise and fall of the Packard Motor Car Co. is an excellent model of how to build, then destroy excellence.

As for censorship & ridicule when something comes up that interferes with your belief system - nothing new there.

Another great example from Packard. Sometime in the early fifties I ordered a oil cooler for my '34 Super Eight. (incidentally, it was made by the Harrison Div. of GM)

The replacement oil cooler came back from Packard with a letter of apology that the original had failed, and an inquiry as to the nature of the failure. Reason - Packard Stores (what PMCC internal documents called their parts entity), was still doing well for the company, and in Packard's tradition, they were concerned about their product.

Years later (the night before the Packard records were to be destroyed,) a "tip off" by a sympathetic guard led to a pre-dawn break-in by Packard buffs, and some Packard papers were captured and saved. They are now in the Detroit Library. Someone either in this forum or others may have copies that appeared some time ago in one of the Packard buff publications. Amongst them is the interesting document I am about to refer to. If I recall the wording (this was around mid '54) it goes something like this....

"THE CONTINUED APPEARANCE OF PACKARD PRODUCTS FROM
PRIOR ERAS ON THE ROADS OF TODAY, IS CAUSING THE
PUBLIC TO MAKE UNFAIR COMPARISONS WITH OUR PRESENT
PRODUCTS AND PRODUCT PHILOSPHY....

THE BOARD HAS CONCLUDED THAT OUR CURRENT
MARKETING EFFORTS AND CORPORATE OBJECTIVES
ARE BETTER SERVED BY TERMINATING PMCC SUPPORT
OF PRODUCTS FOR WHICH WE ARE NO LONGER
RESPONSIBLE.....

PACKARD STORES INVENTORY OF PRODUCTS
FOR WHICH WE ARE NO LONGER RESPONSIBLE, SHOULD
BE TERMINATED IN SUCH A WAY THAT THEY CAN NO LONGER
BE UTILIZED IN A MANNER CONTRARY TO OUR CURRENT
OBJECTIVESS...."

This is about as close to the wording as I can recall. Dosn't matter. The point is, you can't have real-world facts screwing up what you want to believe. Sic Transit Gloria

Big Kev - you are wrong about this "delay in getting a V-8" excuse.

I was "there", and you werent. The simple fact is that ever-worsening "build quality" drove away Packard customers, and created an atmosphere of contempt by which they couldn't get new customers. The sales figures towards the end are not debatable. The figures are a fact. "New" unsold 1956 Packards sat out in the open in various dealers lots that I am personally aware of, clear into summer of '57. Have no idea how they finally got rid of them.

And dont try and tell me the '51's and later didn't have an axle-breaking problem. I broke enough of them myself, and I changed dozens more.

The sad fact is, while Packard in its "glory" years set standards for excellence, and pioneered all kinds of interesting engineering, towards the end, it pioneered failure. Sadly, our entire industry has copied that "suicide" method of doing business that Packard "pioneered" towards the end.

Yes, I remember those lying promo statements Packard put out after the war, saying over-head valve engines were "too complicated". What a crock. SHAME on Packard.

Packard was mass-producing quality, reliable over-head cam and over-head valve engines back during World War One.

Later on, Packard took the Rolls Royce "Merlin" (which RR CLAIMS originated with the famous "SuperMarine" racers of the early 30's, but was in fact copied from Packard's aircraft engines) re-engineering the Merlin from a motor that had to be over-hauled every 200 hours, to one that would run way past 1,00 hrs before TBO.

But after the war, new and ever-more-greedy management just wanted to make a fast buck without "wasting" money on product development & quality. Sound familiar ? I call it the "suicide gene".

Outmoded designs ? So what! Make em right, and people will buy them. Damiler Benz's post war Mercedes were obsolete pre-war designs too. But THEY had quality, and customers came back for more.

You folks can huff and puff, wish all this wasnt true, try and close your eyes to the simple facts, but there they are. Your attempts to find excuses for the simple obvious facts are just plain silly.

Yes - I agree - we owned several Packard from that era. But bear in mind they were still "pre-war" in design, execution, and to some extent, material. As I noted elsewhere, I was particularly fond of our '47 Super Clipper which, with the pre-war "356" engine, transmission, and overdrive, would eat anything I came across, for breakfast.

I dont know how you'd research it, but the auto industry news of the early-mid 50's had a ball with the famous incident at an auto show. A Packard executive had to KICK his way out of the back of a new Packard, in front of the news media, because the door fit was so miserable it wouldn't open when he tried to climb back out after a "photo op". By '51, the cars would break axles if you sneezed near them ( I dont now recall where Packard bought its axles). The gross inadequacy of that miserable "Ultramatic" transmission has been beaten to death elsewhere in this and other forums.

I can drive my pre-war Packard over the dismal conditions of the sorry excuses for cow-trails we call roads here in northern Arizona at any speed, without rattle or hood/body "flutter". Compare that with what happens when you hit a road imperfection with a 1951 or later Packard. The later hood stampings had NO bracing whatsoever.

Compare that "fluttery" feeling of the '51 and later, with the solid feel of a General Motors luxury car of the that era.

I once severly lacerated my hand because I got careless, and rested it between the back of the front door and the body of my '51 convertible - that's how bad those weak bodies would flex and flutter on anything but a smooth road surface. General Motors convertibles, by the 50's, had a nice tight draft-fee snug convertible top design. Packard was still using the old-style snaps to fasten the back quarter of the convertible top. Forget to un-hook them when lowering the top, and you'd often tear your top's fabric. If you rememberd to snap em after raising the top, you still had drafts unknown in the GMC products.

Keep in mind that after 1930's, Packard had pretty well abandoned the actual manufacture of autombiles, being essentially an assembler of parts designed and produced by others.

Of course Packard, even before WW II, like other manufacturers, purchased starters, generators, carbs., interior fittings, brakes, wheels, in fact, even entire chassis frames from outside suppliers. I believe it was for the 1940 model year that Packard bodies were no longer built by Packard.

So there wasnt much left for Packard management to screw up. But a combination of management greed and incompetent..well, they sure found a way to do that !

John:

First and foremost, please PLEASE be assured I value your contributions from your apparently excellent and vast research sources. But, as usual, you let your enthusiasm get the best of you. You keep forgetting that there is a little teeny weenie itty bitty difference between us. I owned, drove, worked on and became familiar, in a 'hands on' basis, with most of the big engined classics. And, of course Packards of just about all descriptions, when I worked in a garage in the 1950's, and you didnt.

That dosnt make me any smarter than you - I just thru no clever-ness of my own, happen to have born into a time and era where I got more REAL info. on SOME of this stuff than you do.

Let me get you straightened out.

First of all, Packard's famous reputation for quality DID NOT CONTINUE as you claim "even thru the 50's and to the end". Wrong wrong wrong.

By late '54, their ever more horrid post-war build quality had become an industry bad joke. All the fancy claims and advertising in the world, that came to help sell the '55's, couldn't stop customers from rejecting Packard products when it turned out they were being shoved out of the factory doors as "do it yourself" kits. THAT is what killed Packard, plain and simple. All you have to do is look at the sales figures, to see how much the car buying public WISHED that Packard's claims were true. The '55's sold like hot-cakes for the first few months. Then, the "down-side" of that famous Packard advertisement about the "duties of reputation" caught up with them, and that was the end. Sales went thru the floor, and you couldn't give them away.

The Germans came out of the 2nd World War with labor, production, supply, and plant facilities issues that made Packard's problems look like kid stuff. And they, too, put out a lot of lower priced cars, even taxi cabs. But unlike Packard, they were DETERMINED to keep up their quality image, so buying THEIR products after the war didnt leave a bad taste in the consumer's mouth - insead, a desire to buy more.

Bottom line - what killed Packard was its management, setting a model for the kind of business practice that is now killing American industry.

Very simply - "screw the consumer - get the product out the door as cheaply as possible, and use whatever money you get in from the sales, to inflate management salaries".

Did you ever follow my suggestion and take a good look underneath the front-end of a '53 Cad., Buick Roadmaster, or Olds 98, and compare its strength and quality, with your '53 Packard ?

Did you ever try and "go off" at a stop-light with that '53 Packard, against one of the above ? THAT is what killed Packard, and all the fancy attempts at complex issues wont disguse that simple fact that Packard went out of its way to go down-hill.

A '52 Cadillac is a better, faster, nicer driving, more comfortable car that a '42 Cadillac. A '52 Packard "400/Patrician" is a slower, poorer quality, nastier driving hood fluttering piece of junk compared to a '42 Packard "180". THAT was only part of the problem, but when you combine an inferior performing product with bad built quality, you go out of business. It is that simple.

Going back to the thirites - you are totally wrong about the ACD Company. You ever actually owned an Aburn, Cord, or Duesenburg ? Much less worked on or even driven them ?

True, the Duesenburgs had good build-quality. But the others. Yuch. I know that Packard sold ten of its V-12's for every Cad. V-16, but I dont know how many HUNDREDS of Packard V-12's were sold (probably closer to THOUSANDS) for every Marmon V-16 or Duesenburg.

The front-wheel drive Cords had TERRIBLE reliability issues, scaring off the public. The Aburn build quality was not the best.

I dont know where you got your info. about Marmon complete car weights. I do know that most of the Marmon V-16's I have seen had ALUMINUM bodies, which resulted in a significantly lighter car, body design for body design, than, for example, my own '38 Packard V-12 Formal Sedan.

As for Duesenburg power, modern dyno tests show it was VASTLY over-rated, and the Packard V-12 UNDER-rated.

All other things being equal, torque is almost a direct linear function of compression. Both had about the same compression. Because the Packard V-12 was "cammed" and set up to deliver max. power in the lower rpm ranges where most of its buyers would operate it, of course the MUCH more expensive Duesenburg motor was better suited to extreme speed operation, at least as far as valve and combustion chamber design goes.

I doubt if any present Duesenburg owner is going to go racing me these days, with those things worth nearly a million bucks, and fewer and fewer people capable of maintaining them properly. But it dosnt matter - the cars were not competitive. WAY different markets and price class. And dont try and tell me the manufacturer didnt WANT to sell cars. C'mon..man.

Incidentally, most closed Duesenburgs had VERY heavy HIGHEST quality bodies, which meant they had to be crippled with absurdly "low" final drive ratios to give decent performance.

Yes, I was beaten badly in a "flying mile" race by a late J Dusie, but a very high geared rear end. I never did a "flying mile" with a stock-geared closed Duesenburg - my suspicion is I had "no takers" because they knew they couldn't beat a high geared Packard V-12.

Where did you get the idea that ANY Packard V-12 from the 1930's would weigh only 4,950 lbs ? The lighest 2 door coupe, if I recall correctly, weighed in at around 5,400 lbs. Perhaps you got your reading sources confused ? My recollection is that we weighed my friend's Marmon V-16 couple that I raced, and it came in at around 4,600 lbs.

John - you are missing the point about what Packard was all about. It produced, in my view, about the best car you could buy in any given price class it chose to compete in.

It would be just as silly to compare a Packard Six with a Packard Super Eight, as it would be to compare a Packard Twelve with a Duesenburg or Marmon. You could buy three or four Packard Twelves for the cost of ONE of those.

As a Packard buff, you can take pride in the fact that Packard products were often near as much, if as not as much car as many other make's cars that cost much more.

Next time you get your hands on a Duesenburg or Marmon V-16, look under the hood at the carbs. Depending on the year, you will see carbs with only about two thirds of the "swept volume" of the Stromberg EE-3. All the fancy engine design in the world ( The Lycoming engine in the Duesenburg was pretty advanced, but in many Dusenburgs CRIPPLED by the smaller carb, they just couldn't BREATHE).

So of course the clearly RACING type engine of the Dusenberg (four valves per cyl., over-head valves with cross-flow heads, etc) made them faster than a Packard Twelve, but, depending on how they were set up and what bodies they carried. not by all that much. (UNLESS you are talking about one of the later ones which WERE also equipped with the same Stromberg EE-3 as the Packard V-12 used.)

Same goes for the Marmon. Bigger displacement motor in, in may cases, a MUCH lighter car. I road-raced a couple of times a friend of mine who had a Marmon V-16 coupe. Of COURSE he pulled away from me, but not by all that much.

The bottom line was that Packard was a success, and Marmon and Dusenburgs were failures in the market-place. Take a look at the photos of fancy diplomatic receptions, operas, estate parties, etc. And look at the sales figures. The big Packard outsold by many times EVERY other make ANYWHERE in the world. The wealthy car buyers of that era, test-driving a Packard Twelve, a Cad. V-16, Duesenburg, or Marmon, made their choice for good reason. A PROPERLY MAINTAINED Packard is by any COMPETENT writer who KNOWS what they are talking about, by far the most pleasant to drive.

Judging by what the Packard philosphy was all about, I believe that had Packard chosen to compete in the same price class as the Marmon V-16 and the Duesenburg, they would have been hopelessly out-classed by the Packard product.

John - you did fine in your disc. of what you read on tech. info. on the 1930's era Packard V-12.

To add to your discussion, let me explain more about the layout of the combustion chamber and induction and exhaust systems, and why all this resulted in a MUCH more raw power at the rear wheels, then either of the two Cadillac V-16s (the earlier over-head valve one, and the 1938-40 "flat head") (both of which were significantly smaller than the Packard V-12.

Incidentally, Auburn, to my knowledge, did not have much to do with its own V-12. That was a Lycoming design, engineered and built in the Lycoming shops. About the size of a Packard Super Eight. Good engine - tooling purchased by American La France and, with some mods, used for many years in their smaller fire engines. But NOWHERE near the raw power of a Packard V-12 (as a side note, the Pierce Arrow V-12, about the same size as the Packard V-12, lived on clear into the early 1960's, in smaller Seagrave fire engines.

Anyway, the key to understanding the genius of Packard engineers (again, not Van Ranst - he was a DRIVE-LINE engineer - I dont know what, if anything, he had to do with power-plant design ? ? ? ? ) is to look at a cross-section of the Packard V-12.

First, you see that the top of the block is NOT directly 90 degrees to the bores. It is at an ANGLE, permitting a wedge-shaped combustion chamber. This, coupled with "wedge shaped" pistons, gives vastly superior "burn" characteristics to an ordinary "flat head".

Secondly, look at the induction system. As to the intake manifold, note that it was one of the first, if not THE first, attempts at what Chrysler, some 20 years later, called "ram induction". meaning a balanced even flow.

The Stromberg EE-3 carb. was, if my understanding is correct, the largest 'swept volume" of any automotice carb. until the four barrels of the 1950's. Thus the Packard Twelve could BREATHE. Look at how much smaller the carbs and their volume were, on any other big multi-cyl. luxury car of that era, and you can see why, bone stock, I had much sadistic fun "blowing the doors" off of other big classic car owners when we were wild kids in the first years of the Classic Car Club Of America.

Now look at the exhaust system. I am unaware of ANY production auto motor of that era where they went to such great pains to have unrestricted "breathing".

Bottom line - you got a damn good buy when you bought a Packard.

Bev - I am pretty lame with computers. Seems to work now. I'll try and let you know SOMEHOW if I have trouble with this thing in the future.

Pete Hartmann

Hi Ozst...

In answer to your many questions and comments. First of all, I was apparently thrown out of this forum while I was on a trip - came back, asked Bev thru an E mail, got no answer, so I just re-registered under a slightly different name.

I am glad you appreciate my intention, which is to sing to the world how marvelous Packard was as an institution, and how marvelous ALL Packards were, regardless of which price class any particular Packard model was in.

Obviously, some Packards are bigger, better, faster than others - I have to continually remind people that it is nonsence to accuse the Packard Company of de-frauding its customers, of COURSE the more you paid to Packard, the more car you got.

Let's take your situation for example. Packard "120"s were damn good cars. I'll match a "120" series Packard pound for pound, performance for performance, against ANY car in ITS price range. That is...WHEN IT IS FIXED ! FIXED RIGHT !

I am not so sure I accept your story as to why that car of yours is so screwed up. hARD USE DOSNT HURT A PACKARD IF IT IS FIXED RIGHT.

My own Packard is coming up on 200,000 HARD miles. When it was in service with its first owner, it was driven hard at high speeds all over the California, Arizona, and Nevada deserts, and when it wasnt doing that, it spent a lot of time in Los Angeles traffic (then, as now, a lot of stop and go). It was left outside on occasion, getting wet.

In 1955...it was purchased by a wild and crazy teen-ager, who beat the hell out of it and drove it even faster....( I still do ! ).

I re-wired and got re-finished reflectors for it about 30 years ago. Guess what-its headlights are NOT yellow- they are BRIGHT and WHITE. And the lenses of those Flex-Beam headlights it came with when new, are still clear.

And be assured then when I am four-wheel drifting it around some of our sorry excuses for roads here in northern Arizona, I dont hear funny noises ...if I did..I'd FIX EM !

Bottom line - that's my message..my relgion...YOU GOT A PACKARD ? FIX IT RIGHT, AND DRIVE THE HELL OUT OF IT WHERE THE PUBLIC CAN SEE IT !

Mine had to be towed ONCE. That was in the summer of '57. Coming up the Cahuenga Pass on an extremely hot day, the $(##(@* vapor-locked. The cops came along with a tow truck and told me they wouldn't wait two minutes...it had to be gotten off the road NOW. Again...towed ONCE. By evening, it had TWO electric fuel pumps. Hasn't been towed since.

(actually..there is more to that story of getting vapor-lock and having to be towed, in the Cahuenga Pass that summer of '57....you see..I had this really foxy girl in the car..and she got mad at being stuck...and ditched me...so I didn't get to...hmmm....guess the rest of that story isn't for a technical chat room on Packards.....!)