1939. On all models but the 446 leftover Twelves. Standard on all last-generation Pierce-Arrows 1936-38, available on Chryslers since 1934 model year. To dramatize the optional overdrive, Packard offered a '39-only 5,000 rpm (ridiculous, if deft marketing) tachometer, which replaced the clock in the glovebox door, imagining its monitoring of more interest to passenger than driver, apparently.

The '39 R6 version fully mechanical, akin to the R1 in Pierce and others earlier. 1940-early '48 used an electrically monitored R9 variant, later '48-'54 a slightly simplified R11.

If you're considering adding overdrive, use an R11, since they're more plentiful, so less expensive. Jeff Adkins, Moose Motors, Penngrove (Petaluma), CA call or text (707 792-9985, or email: packardguy54@sbcglobal.net Jeff has all versions, junior and senior, and their parts, also rebuilds same, being a lifelong Packard wrench tho' now focused on selling 1935-56 Packard mechanical and electrical parts, drum brake parts for all domestics Auburn through Zephyr. Tell him Mike, '47 Super Clipper, Walnut Creek, referred you.

The above another of those basic queries the Search box would've answered in moments, as well as a list of Packard vendors, including Jeff and the savvy, cordial Mike Grimes, at Merritt Packard in Indiana mike@packardparts.com (317) 736-6233, ext. 103 www.packardparts.com

There are dozens of fine, dependable Packard parts suppliers as you'll see, but the above two are my go-to's; Jeff because i've known him 35+ years and is not far from me, Mike Grimes because he is not only an unstinting gentleman, but a former industrial engine man.

Have sung this worthy's praises before, but afeared some just do not grasp its import. Those long experienced with pre-1950 automobiles know the two best things you can do for them, other than not ripping out their souls--their engines/drivetrains-- is to use radial tires and add overdrive or at least the tallest rear axle ratio. To those advisos we might only add: Install a stone-simple, utterly durable, yet nuanced MasterLube device.

Has worked just fine protecting my '47 Packard Super Clipper's 356 since 1997.

Degreed engineer, patent holder founder/president of MasterLube, Kerry McCracken, could not be a more helpful, upbeat fount of experience and sagacity.

Have noted that a pair of '50s Ferrari friends, one also with a rigorously tended, highly fettled '63 Lusso, were both quick to grasp the MasterLube device, while many old domestic car owners, inc. a couple lifelong Cordites, even a fellow on his third Duesenberg (not that wealth always confluent with knowledge), did and do not. The last time i tried to explain the benefits, the old domestic car sorts replied with howlers like, "You get plenty of oil pressure just turning your starter." Ignorance in-car-nate. They're oblivious to those first revolutions, most oil having drained from cam, main bearings and elsewhere after three days dormancy. Since most of us rebuilt, at great time and expense, not to drive to Safeway, not that we can't, our wheeled alter egos can sit for weeks, even months at a time.

McDonnell Douglas, Continental, and the SAE agree that 80-90% of all engine wear is during those first moments of operation.

To those still unconvinced, and who use this wonderful site as an automotive MyFace/Spacebook, please parse and equivocate 'mongst yourselves, lest you're an SAE member. And please....do not invoke some special oil purporting to magically adhere to bearings and engine surfaces. That's called marketing.

For the rest here gathered wanting to preserve, to safeguard their engines, keep them at their mechanical peak, contact Kerry at info@masterlube.net, call or text (970)867-5154.
Back in 1997, tho' being a Letterman fan, wanting to garner MasterLube more publicity, i wrote Jay Leno, whose chief mechanic immediately installed MasterLube devices, or their quick disconnect and so hard to detect, fittings, on every vehicle in Leno's two big Burbank Airport hangars.

Tell Kerry that a '47 Packard Super Clipper owner in Walnut Creek, CA, Mike, referred you.

www.masterlube.net

Installed this in pampered dry day garage queen in case caught in bad traffic on scorching day, but never used. Cost new $171.64. Your price, $90 postpaid.

PM, please.

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Mayhaps, PackardNewberry, but if you note the last paragraph of my post above, the fourth of this thread, you'll see some of us who see Packards first as serious road cars, luxe or not, don't consider a tachometer a gew gaw.

No slight intended, DM37. Having had Packards with both installations, only observing it makes more sense to have the tach with the rest of the instruments. Remember, the '39 optional tachometer was to dramatically show the benefits of overdrive, which became a Packard option for the first time that year.

If someone can find the clock-replacing Packard glovebox tach, it's a novel accessory.

DM37's ".... so all I have to do is open the glovebox door and I can see the tachometer without any ugly steering column..." puzzles. In my '40 120 i had the '39 tach option since the dashboards were nearly the same.
Having now a tach front and center beats looking over at the glovebox door at the other side of the cockpit.

By the way, the ugly steering column installation in my '47 Super Clipper is Stewart-Warner, and once common in cars owned by serious motorists. It is a benign bolt-on affair. No Packards were harmed in the making of this picture.

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HPH, "Give that man a Macanudo." Long week, but good to see someone's paying attention. 2007, 2017, and most probably 2027, we'll still be seeing such inept prose. It's also been a long time since Ralph Estep and then Frank G. Eastman edited The Packard, but you got my point. No doubt this site attracts visitors from Dearborn, Flint, Coventry and Crewe at times, so let's set a better example. Packard's refinement extended beyond their engineering lab.

The much missed Hans Edwards, whom some of you may recall, told me of his then young friend who worked at Leonard Williams, only to depart on his bicycle to make a bank deposit for the agency, Wednesday, March 21st, 1945, while everyone out for lunch. That was when the V-2 rocket decimated the facilities.

Might we take a moment to proof these posts, certainly the subject heading at least, out of respect for readers? Why is Packards (Imported to England) hyphenated? And it should be exported to England.

Clearly, a long time since Packard advertised in the New Yorker, Literary Digest, the National Geographic, Newsweek, TIME, Fortune.

Tim Cole fully sums this Packard/R-R Merlin business. The Autoweek article was a refreshing and accurate overview.

Meanwhile, Packard's taking on the Merlin contract was not an act of altruism, but a business decision, if buoyed by the international drive to stem Germany's madness. East Grand's Merlin agreement was funded by taxpayer money, used to enlist a phalanx of draftsmen to redraw Rolls-Royce's plans to suit Detroit methods. Packard's Vice-President and General Counsel Henry E. Bodman rewrote the Merlin agreement so that it became the basis for government contracts for years to come, such largesse leading to Packard becoming one of two domestic major automakers to emerge from War II profitable. Less hassle govt. and jet engine work resulted in Packard increasingly phoning in automotive me-tooism after the war, as all independents were doomed because of economies of scale, higher unit costs, decreased component purchasing power, less able to afford the increasingly vital annual model change frippery and expensive television advertising.

Packard, GM, Ford, Lockheed-Martin, Chrysler, Grumman, soon Litton, General Dynamics/Electric Boat/Elco and other leading defense contractors demonstrated that the Pentagon’s propensity to protect its big prime contractors outweighed the inclination to hold them to the terms of their contracts, while concurrently the Russian bear inflated, leading to the stalemate of the undeclared wars of the Korean "police action" and loss in Vietnam, today's $1.5 t r i l l i o n F-35 contractors' feeding frenzy.

For decades, the way so many rabid Packardites went on, you'd think it was the "Packard Merlin." While the US was much of the "arsenal of democracy," Britain's manufacturing per capita equaled or exceeded ours.

Improvements, refinements to the Merlin introduced in Britain or the US were immediately adopted in the next series. A longtime Merlin rebuilder told us that the only difference between Detroit and British Merlins, series by series, was the nicer external finishing on those of the Sceptered Isle.

If you know anything of Rolls-Royce's automotive industry, you know that all R-R and 1933-on Bentley engines but the overly complex 710 1936-39 seven-main-bearinged, 447-ci ohv V-12 Phantom IIIs stem from the junior 1922 "owner/driver Small HP" 20, itself a crib of the 1920 Buick Six. Leading English motoring writer/engineer Laurence Pomeroy dismissed Rolls-Royce cars as "a triumph of craftsmanship over engineering," and "a bloody good confidence trick."

But Packard's advertising department would've been lax to not play up the Merlin production, given so many Americans buying into R-R's "best car in the world" rubbish. Only after Napier, long seen in England by those in the know as R-R's superior, could not arrange UK manufacturing rights to Packard, did they try to buy Bentley, only to be sneakily outbid by R-R, as detailed too many times.

Since 1935, Rolls-Royce's mainstay was aero engines, about the time Cadillac/LaSalle, Cord ("the baby Duesenberg" as termed by A-C-D insiders), Lincoln, Packard debuted vital junior cars. Postwar Crewe fare was slightly down-market, assembled, boutique product.

For us Packard owners and fanciers to continue raving about an English engine built at taxpayer expense is laughable, as if our cars elevated by the R-R connection, overlooking that Packard got the contract only after Henry Ford declined.

Perhaps these same war buffs will finally realize that according to JFK and others experienced with both, the Diesel German Schnellboots ("S-Boots, Fast Boats") were faster and superior to the US patrol torpedo boats, the latter's woodworking lovely and impressive, gasoline powered solely to simplify logistics, out of fuel PTs often towed back to base after sortees by destroyers.

While war production is part of Packard history, most of us here gathered would like to focus on the cars, leave the endless military equipment parsing to the nerd sites so devoted to unrequited testosterone, akin to sports team fandom; "'We' beat the Red Sox, the Yankees, the Mets."

There's something sad in the torrent of views this thread's attracted, so many Packardites still desirous of that Rolls-Royce aura.

Let's get back to the cars, remembering, again, that R-R was, in the years before War II, annually dissecting a new Buick Limited to glean the latest Detroit manufacturing tips, even as Packard was increasingly cowed by GM, and run by former big BOPpers, even Chevrolet's sales manager Bill Packer recruited to teach East Grand how to sell on credit, and that the 1940-on 356, an enlarged 120 engine, itself a much refined Pontiac eight, had nine mains solely for marketing cachet, as it did needless hydraulic valve lifters because Cadillac and even the "Ford-and-a-half" Zephyr did.

GB -- Howard HH56 is right as always. I had a '40 120 that had the optional '39 tachometer, different face for the junior and senior tachs but both read to 5,000 rpm (! never approach more than 3,600 which is maximum hp, anyway, max torque at 1,800-2,000). Since '40 essentially the same dash, i added it, and it ran off the generator per HH56's above photo; like a T-series MG or very early Corvette.

The tach was a '39-only option since that was the year Packard finally offered overdrive--Chrysler offered it since 1934-- and it dramatically showed the efficacy of this new to Packard option. Overdrive was available on all 1939 Packards other than the 446 leftover Twelves. The final generation 1936-38 Pierce-Arrow 8s and 12s came with overdrive standard, coincentric rings on the speedometer showed the rpm in under and overdrive at various mph.

My '47 Super Clipper has a period 4,500 rpm steering column mounted Stewart-Warner tach. Can't imagine having any manual shift car without a tach. Do you "need" one? Of course not, unless you like engines. A tach, oil pressure, ammeter and temp gauge are all you really need.