Johnny Depp --

No offense, but perhaps such a Packard isn't really for you. JW's right. I know, coincidentally, three (3) fellows who today own '47 senior Packards, one of them a limo, who all owned, at one time or another, a 1956-58 Bentley S-Type Continental with HydraMatic and each of them compare the older Detroit production car favorably with the newer, much pricier, limited-production Crewe product.

Why would you pervert a lovely auld luxe road car, bastardize it with a convenience feature that does nothing for performance? Why not buy a '47 Cadillac, if that's what you want? They're not bad cars, and have nearly the torque if not the horsepower of a Super Clipper.

Back in the '60s when the top fuel blown 1,000-hp 426 hemis literally blew apart Cad-LaSalle gearboxes, Don Garlits switched to Packard R-9 transmissions as in '47 senior Packards in his rail dragsters and the problem ended.

JW's right as rain. Get one with overdrive and skip the ElectroMatic. Or buy a Cadillac-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack.

Of course, i'm a sports car guy who decades ago, long, long ago fell under the spell of 1940-47 overdrive Packards,
the best road cars of the era from either side of the Atlantic, so the Herculean effort of shifting a silky column lever doesn't deter me.

Not what you want to hear, but rethink the driving/foglights. As longtime Packardite Bob Mehl, who grew up in and around Pittsburgh, PA wealth in the '40s recalled, he NEVER saw fog/driving lights on upper end cars in the day. Old street scene photographs from cities around the nation corroborate this.

My '47 Super has driving lights merely as it was a sellers' market and automakers tended to load cars with options after the war, another reason why 1946-47 seniors accounted for 25% of Company sales those years, having been a mere 7% 1941-42. I never use them and leave them in place merely so i won't have to change my front valance pan.

Stl Joe and others, your car(s) look cleaner, more
genuine sans the clutter. Less is more.

If you want brighter headlights, go halogen, etc. or install a bolt-in (no butchering required) six-volt, positive-ground 55-amp alternator like the kind Antique Auto Battery in Youngstown, OH has 1 (800) 426-7580. Tell
them a '47 Packard in Walnut Creek, CA sent you.

Leave all the bolt-on glop to the Cadillac and Chevy suburban concours d' nonelegance crowd, who think they need every option ever offered for their cars. You can't bolt on elegance.

Ever notice that the nicer the car, the less junk?
Look at expensive European and Brit cars from the '30s, '40s. Look how unadorned senior Packards on
big city showrooms in the '30s, early '40s were.

A long pondered question:

Given the money Packard spent on oft unseen quality, needle
and roller bearings where Cadillac and others used plain bushings, wonder if East Grand left the 1940-50 356's exhaust manifold raw simply as it'd better dissipate heat?

Concurrent Cadillac 346 V-8's exhaust manifold was porcenalized. Looks nice, but retains heat, the last thing you want on an already hot manifold.

Or was Packard trying to save another few cents per car. Or both?

As always, i bow to and welcome any of y'all's insight.

Tho' this may not help the poster, on my '47 Super, i brushed on a thin coating of Eastwood silver gray exhaust manifold paint, and on the entire exhaust pipe to the muffler, which imparts enough of a "finished" look for me
and i figure doesn't inhibit too much heat radiation.

BTW, TraumaJag-ue-were, Eastwood offers other colors, if you decide to go that route. Jaguar, an outright performance car, was still porcenalizing their exhaust manifolds in the '60s, despite Bill Lyons famously building to a price, once admitting, i think when he was still on Coventry's board,

"We could never get our XK-series quality near Porsche levels."

So, i remain puzzled.

?

The above isn't a Facel Vega, but a one-off 1948 Vignale body over a bone stock '39 Packard 120 chassis, straight three-speed column shift, no OD.

Marshall Law -- Go with Bridgestone LT V-Steel Rib 220 7.50/R16 GBW. Yokohama makes a similar LT radial in your desired bias size, as did Michelin 'til a decade ago who probably figured there wasn't enough of a market.

I've been running Bridgestone LT R230 7.00/R15s on my '47 Super for years. Terrific and the single best thing you can do for a vintage/Classic other than overdrive and a pre-oil device for full oil pressure before cranking the engine.
Sam's Club and other discount outlets carry the above 220.
The above two sizes are the only bias-sized radials being produced today, lucky us, which means your sidemounted black beauty and my car are among the few survivors that can have the benefits of radials without the too wide, dorky, obviously inauthentic look of metric radials.

If you're dying for the done to death cliche of whitewalls, DiamondBack Classic Tires in South Carolina (www.dbtires.com) used to vulcanize widish whitewalls on the above Yokohamas, if not the identically spec Bridgestone.
But just checking their website, noticed they had only Cooper bias-sized LTs w/ whitewalls in your 7.50/16 size,
for $279 each. But at least one dealer online sells the same Courser (Cooper) R/D LT 7.50/R16s in blackwall for $135.

You've got an inherently elegant car in your 138" wb sidemounted black sedan. Leave the monkey see/monkey do suburban concours whitewalls to the '41 Cadillac, Chevy club coupe crowd. Packard put horizontal side grilles on the traditional bodied cars like yours in '42 to make them jibe with the new Clippers, which other than convertibles,
were the only way you could get a 127-inch wb 160/180 that year. So your '42 already has a racier motif than its '41 160 forebear and can really carry off blackwalls. It'll look like an embassy car.

Less is more with any good design.

You really see the car w/ blackwalls, and you'll be historically correct, esp. as most wealthy folk thought them gauche in the day. A friend put blackwalls on his black '40 180 Darrin, black top, gray interior, no fog/driving lights that you rarely saw in the day, just the standard baled feather hood ornamet, no gargoyle hood ornament.

And that car is s l e e k.

You may have to push the local tire shop or even "Classic" tire dealer to order the above for you, and tire salesmen make car salesmen seem like Milquetoasts, so stick to your guns.

Goodyear and others make 7.50/16 bias sized LT radials--
one site listed 16 different models. I mention Bridgestone because i'm using them, and the Coopers only as i had a set on my '70 Polara conv. decades ago and drove the wheels---
oops, you're law enforcement and the statute of limitations mightn't have run out.

Don't let any misery loves company types try to sell you metric SUV radials, or tell you "LT (light truck)" tires
will do this and that. Fullsize SUVs are built on pickup truck platforms.

Do not use tubes. You don't need them. Just make sure your rivets are tight, your inner wheel smooth.

You can remove any offensive lettering with a die grinder tho' there's none on my Bridgestones.

Bottom line. I know many '30s and '40s Cadillackers and Packardites running bias-sized LT radials without a hitch. The first drive after installing them on my '47 Super i couldn't believe the difference over the Denman bias plies i'd been running. No strange sounds. Felt like power steering and amazingly, the car
even stopped quicker. Yes, really. It is so. Verdad. But the whys of that are beyond my tech knowledge.

The o n l y drawback is that radials make your car handle so much better, you'll start to take sharp curves faster than you ordinarily would, to "outdrive" your car, fine road cars that Packards are.

Every last one of the 1936-37 Cord folk i've long known are immensely happy with radials, even tho' they're forced to run metric sized, which nonetheless look okay on their cars.
But since we can run b i a s - s i z e d (7.50/16, 7.00/15) radials on our Packards, we get the best of both worlds.

We get a kick out of characters paying a fortune for funky bias plies people in third world countries wouldn't touch, but slap wide whitewalls and some "authentic" tread pattern on them, and "hobbyists" will pay a fortune for 'em.

If you catch anyone laying on the ground scrutinizing
your tread pattern, tell the poor sap to get a life.

My aim was not to "disparage" the Duesenberg as much as to provide perspective, even as i've posted a few times to debunk Rolls-Royce, thinking it unfortunate so many Packardites are still, at this late date, cowed by such myth and hyperbole, tho' my effort likely a fool's errand.

Of course the Model J was impressive. That was 10th grade dropout, former car salesman, stock market marauder E. L. Cord's sole wish, and why it was given a fanciful 265 hp rating, solely to trump the perhaps also inflated claim of a very limited production Mercedes SSK as "most powerful car in the world." Human nature likes to imagine a single "best," in any field, to vaunt the perceived Olympian, the gee whiz in us all.

The Duesenberg J was ridiculously priced and for such sum should've been able to fly and triple as submarine.
For perspective, look at the specs of the 1926-27 nine-main, twin ohc Delage 1.5-liter Grand Prix engine, which has 62 roller and needle bearings.
Such a car scaled up would be impressive. That there were even in the Depression look at me Hollywood types and scions of industrial wealth willing to make such a statement doesn't discount Richard Hough's and others assessment that "other than ball-bearinged king pins and extreme quality throughout, there was nothing remarkable about the Model J's chassis."

Packard had ball-bearing king pins, but then so much of Packard's quality was unseen.

Much was made over the well finished, enameled components in the Model J's engine bay. Forgetting an era Rolls-Royce, either Phantom or Small HP, an Isotta-Fraschini, or next year's ('30) Cadillac V-16, look at a mint original or authentically restored higher end Massey-Ferguson tractor from those years. Few color photos survive, but such upper echelon farm equipment was the J's cosmetic equal, ferociously courting what money remained in those grim years.

Fred Duesenberg had wanted to build something closer in size to his earlier Model A or X. Think of the ohc 1929 Stutz or '31 Stutz DV32 (twin cam, four valves per cylinder)eights, every bit as sophisticated as the Model J, and for a fraction the price. But E. L. Cord owned the Duesenberg brother's company and name, and so Fred Duesenberg had his marching orders.

Of course any huge, glitzy car with a rorty exhaust will be impressive, as with the ancient fire truck you describe.
But if you're talking about refined automobile, another matter.

The Model J could've had a huskier front u-joint, better transmission, something Packard always got right. The long timing chains stretched at high rpm upsetting valve timing.

It's still a helluva a car. But for such a ludicrous price, it should've been. Maurice Hendry and others ascribe 105 mph as the real world top speed for most Model Js in road trim, 3.8, 4.0, 4.1 and 4.3:1 rear axles, the middle two being most common. This was 10mph faster than
a 1931-33 Chrysler Imperial, arguably better looking, also with, like Duesenberg and Stutz, hydraulic brakes, and like the Delage, Packard, Pierce-Arrow, nine main bearings.

That the Model J sought to get by with only five main bearings underscores the car was all about mass, flash, dash, not smoothness or even durability. The long crankshaft demanded a mercury-filled vibration dampener, something Packard never needed.

Wish i could recall his name, but there's a longtime Packard man, among others, who cleanly illustrated not just the competiveness on a quality basis---if not outright top speed-- even the superiority, of certain Packard speed models from the same era.

So what did the Model J owner get beyond the chimeral benefits of public perception for over quintuple the price of a Chrysler Imperial? 10 additional mph. Twin overhead cams. And gearboxes that flashed warning/refill lights for
battery water, motor oil, and the periodic chassis lube, the latter Packard and many others having, tho' the driver having to make the heroic effort of pulling a wee handle on the dash daily.

Another old friend (been fooling with old cars all my life, reading the usual books when i was a boy) owned a pair of Duesenbergs, tho' not concurrently, a convertible sedan and a Murphy Custom Beverly sedan both on the lwb. Yes, impressive, like the fire truck you mention. But that much more so than a lovelier, lower Chrysler Imperial?

But i'm bigger on cars than hero worshipping. As for the staggering amounts Model Js bring at auction, consider the ridiculous sums people willingly part with for '57 Chevies and matching numbers '60s bucket mill muscle cars.
Inflated money's hardly a concise barometer of intrinsic worth.

You want an era barouche to be impressed with, try the 1931 Marmon 16, which put out an honest 190-200 hp, each of which did two laps at the nearby Indy brickyard at 105 mph before delivery. My Delahaye, Bugatti, Hisso-owning late friend had one of these, said his wife could park it with ease.
A 1983 poll of SAE members included the Marmon 16, not the Duesenberg, among the 30 greatest automotive engines of all time.

Am sure to take some heat even here at Packard Central
for refusing to buy into the Duesenberg golly gee whiz, but
there you have it and this cleans me out.

Meanwhile, i've asked before but would love to hear any vetted technical insight, firsthand knowledge, SAE papers on the relative merits of the 384-ci Chrysler Imperial, Packard and Pierce-Arrow nine main straight eights, all sharing the identical bore/stroke.

'37 seniors are nice because they got the Saft-t-fleX IFS introduced in the '35 120, a fine suspension copied nut for bolt after the war in R-R/Bentley, and as rear suspension, in the W.O. Bentley-designed postwar Lagonda. The later big Healey (100-6, 3000) had a version of it, as did recent Ford F-series pickup.

Stick to your guns, buy only what really sings to you. I've seen some '37 Su8s in nice, solid shape for reasonable sums lately, one or two right here on PI. Robert Cumberford, writing in a glowing profile of a '37 Packard Twelve club sedan in Automobile magazine a dozen years ago, suggested, as did Maurice Hendry and other knowledgeable souls long before, that the '30s Packard Twelve was overall the finest luxury car of that decade from either side of the Atlantic, bar none.

My aforementioned Delahaye/Bugatti friend once owned an Hispano-Suiza J12, one of only 120 built, a supercar that made a Duesenberg look like the overrated, overhyped, overpriced, twin cam glitzmobile it was. Quintuple the price of the lovelier, 95mph (4.06 std. cog) 1931-33 Chrysler Imperial.... Really?
Yet even the lavishly engineered V-12 Hisso suffered from too tall a first gear, a juddering clutch.

The upshot is that such would never have happened in a Packard, East Grand always getting it right across the board and the o n l y quality glitch i ever heard of in prewar Packards, the occasionally recalcitrant Handishift in 1940-42 old body-style models notwithstanding, was some of the 1938 319-ci Super Eight blocks having a casting irregularity, the concise truth of which i still have yet to hear.

But a Twelve is, to me, more of a silky fire truck than automobile, 1,300 lbs. engine/clutch, but then i'm just a sports car guy who got sidetracked by the more reasonably sized '40s Packards, and so also appreciate the solid, thoroughly engineered juniors.

Since from the advent of the ohv V-8s over 60 years ago
through today's slick, efficient marvels, few cars have, for me, a vestige of prewar charm, i'm the wrong person to ask what engine shoulda been used in any Packard "Parisian," tho' i think Facel Vega got it right since Chrysler had the day's best drivetrain.

Having a few too many at the press conference unveiling
of their new V-8 in the Silver Cloud II/Bentley S-II, autumn, 1959, its chief engineer blurted out, "It's bloody near as good as the Chrysler."

I'm also the wrong person to query about the proper placement of rear door hinges, believing two doors enough for any but livery car. I make exceptions for a very few barouches, like a coupla Railton saloons and my '47 Super,
merely as i like its lines better than the two-door club sedan, which looks better on paper from front 3/4 view, a mite humpy from the rear, one place GM's '40s "sedanettes," and the '52 R-Type, '56 S-Type Bentley Continentals got it right.
That, and elegance is a subset of an understated road car for me, not the main event, but then '60s Continentals are monstrous if clean limbed tuna boats to me.

Can't quarrel with Tim Cole's recent post that he prefers the junior Clippers, which, trimmed with restraint, low key, have plenty of presence, warm up faster, are less of a handful to drive than my gas hog Super locomotive.

Again, IMHO, if you "need" an engine larger than 390 ci,
you should be building trucks, vans, busses, not automobiles.

G'luck. Faith and begorrah, why not find a Facel Vega Excellence with needs and retrim it as the Packard you saw as a lad? Tail lights, interior, etc.

Lotta insight from the gents above and here in general to guide you regardless what you wind up with.

Good point contrasting the "Packard" Facel Vega with the Crown Imperial Ghia and Eldorado Pininfarina, even tho' i care nothing for anything domestic after the war (my '47's just a warmed over '42) other than a couple '50s Chrysler New Yorkers and a Packard Mayfair coupe w/ stick and OD.

Your "French Connection" makes perfect sense, given the last Packard w/ elan was inspired by tho' we can quibble over how much design by, Dutch Darrin, who made his name in Paris.

Packard was the first American car to have "that French thing," as it was derisively called, a steering wheel.

Gasoline, carburetor, chassis are French words, the French more than anyone else refining the initial German forays.

A late friend had a number of Delahayes, which were good cars, better real world machines than his Bugatti, which i also drove, despite Delahaye retaining mechanical brakes through the end in '54, using a rugged pushrod ohv inline 6 akin to a Gallic GMC.

The only hitch is that if the soul of any automobile is its engine, your Packard "Parisian" --- as novel a barouche as anyone might desire in the '50s --- would really be a Chrysler.

What "Packard" Packard do you have, or do you want? You'll certainly find it here, PackardInfo being best of all automotive websites, tho' for sheer spirit, the Railton Club is also nice.

Never cared for suicide doors, thinking them well named.
What good are they, other than serving as emergency air brakes?

The junior Packards 1935-47 were wonderful cars, none better on either side of the Atlantic. My '40 120 was road car incarnate. At the same time my mechanic was rebuilding its transmission he was doing a '40 Buick Roadmaster gearbox. The junior Packard transmission mainshaft was half again thicker and had nearly twice the bearings than the more powerful senior Buick. A Packard 160/180 mainshaft thicker still. The number of needle and roller bearings throughout a junior Packard's chassis, insistence on fine threaded nuts and bolts, trivialize any upper echelon GMobile or anything else on the road, make them easily as fine as the Rolls-Royce/Bentley Silver Dawn/R-Type junior cars.

Packard's o n l y blunder was in not marketing them upscale, as R-R did, as Cadillac did from '36-on when ALL their cars were essentially rationalized juniors;

as Mercedes and BMW, Toyota/Lexus, Audi manage today.

More sophisticated marketing would've helped Packard, but again, ALL independents were doomed by the '50s regardless. Those limping into the '50s were increasingly badge engineered, Packard not even making their own bodies since 1941.

Monsignor Fyreline -- Wonderful firsthand story, thank you.
Amazes some of us that a dying Packard brought Mercedes-Benz to our shores, an automaker managing to retain their hallmark vertical grille while selling similar-looking cars at different price ranges without bleeding a proud name white, something BMW also managed. C-E-S Class. 3- 5- 7-Series. Six, Eight, Super Eight.

Not so much today, but for decades we heard how the One Twenty "tarnished" the Packard name. No one ever said that about the lower Mercedes and BMW lines. Unlike the German companies, Rolls-Royce with their funky little Silver Dawns/Bentley R-Types, even GM, Packard never learned how to market downscale as upscale.

As mentioned, a l l the independents were doomed by the '50s simply as they couldn't match Big Two (Chrysler's market share only 12.9% in 1954) unit cost, tool amortization, or afford the increasingly "necessary" silly annual model changes and expensive TV advertising. This was underscored by the Facel Vega using a Chrysler drivetrain.

For a few dollars more, a 1951-52 200 could be ordered with hydraulic valve lifters in its 288, o r , with a 327, which should answer your question. But if your car has stick and OD, given the price of gas, why not stick with the 288, which is a husky, woefully underrated engine, short stroke and spunky enough.

Regardless what i think of Packard after Macauley left the Company, given that East Grand Avenue's focus was their jet engine contracts, they did have flathead straight eights down to a bloomin' science.