I give up - you got me - you are right !

Those 1950's era Packard products were so wonderful, such blazing performance and reliability, that Ultramatic so true to the Packard quality tradition of old, each year people stood in line outside Packard dealers, lining up to buy each year's new Packards.

East Grand Ave couldn't build em fast enough to meet the increasing demand....which explains the heavy traffic in down-town Los Angeles today - everyone's headed to the Earl C Anthony dealership hoping to get in line...( well not EVERYONE - a lot of that traffic on Wilshire Blvd. is waiting to turn one block south to get to Packard La Brea)

And on Western Ave around 3rd St - impossible to get thru, so Packard Frost & French has asked for LAPD protection against the hordes demanding a spot on the waiting list for the glorious new 2017 Packards. Hmm - Packard dealer on Magnolia Blvd right here in North Hollywood : wonder how bad the traffic is there? I'd go over there & buy one myself , but I already have a Packard - no place to put still another one !

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Mr. Dyneto - we are in PARTIAL agreement. I am well aware (painfully aware...but that is too long a story for this forum...!) that the Ultramatic "Twin" (introduced..? Hmm...my recollection ? was around June '54) ( ? ? ) had a very poor reliability record - bad behind the straight eights of '54 - even worse, as you are apparently aware, behind the significantly more powerful V-8's.

May I respectfully suggest that your pointing out that the "Twin" Ultramatic had a worse service record than the late '49 - mid '54 version dosnt say much for the record of the first one !

As Packard fanatics, of course we want to re-invent history to help our "religion". But you need to wait some more years before those of us WHO WERE THERE die off, before you can get away with that !

I once drove my '51 "250" convertible from the New York State side of the George Washington Bridge, to the Barham Blvd. off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway in two and a half days AND I SLEPT AT NIGHT . BOTH NIGHTS ! And since there were no "Interstates" that meant I was really "cooking" on straight sections of those dangerous two and three-lane highways !

So be assured I know what those cars could do when they were running right ( I wonder what happened to that car - should be easy to spot - after I "blew" its motor I installed a 327 motor I got out of a wrecked '54 Cavalier - that four barrel helped a bit........! )

You guys are thinking about this the wrong way.

A review of auto test magazines in the early 1950's confirms that Packards of that era, equipped with the absurdly fragile 1st Generation Ultramatics, were the slowest, most sluggish cars of the day - other than a 1949 Chevrolet with PowerGlide (GM did something to the 1950 Chevrolet that made them a little faster, so we should rule that out).

If you are looking to create a real "slug" of a car, even worse than a stock early 50's Packard with Ultramatic , using a pre-war Packard "six" would be a good start, but I have a better idea.

My recommendation would be a Briggs & Stratton 3 h.p. lawn-mower engine, coupled to a 1949-1952 Buick's "Dynaflow".

Those first-generation Buick Dynaflow transmissions were almost as sluggish as the first-generation Ultramatics....but big difference...they had a pretty good service-reliability record - didn't have that fragile "lock-up" clutch to burn out that the Ultramatic had.

[quote]
RogerDetroit wrote:
SaddleRider Wrote: Relax - just a bunch of guys having a little fun making up stories.


screen problem ? I don't see any Saddledriver post so what's the deal? why are door handles important?

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. . .

You lost me with that "typical under-dash switch" comment. May I presume you meant an "after-market" heater switch?

I know - I know - of COURSE it can get damn cold in the winter even in the coastal cities of Southern California!

But times and culture have changed - then, it was quite common for folks not to want to pay for car heaters, which were universally an extra cost option! Then, after a while, common sense could take over, and they'd go hunting around for "after-market" compromises, sometimes even going to a legit Packard dealer for help.

Yes, Packard dealers did have "after-market" heaters to sell, made by outside suppliers, but often provided with Packard "logo". I presume that is what happened with your car, and explains the "under-dash" heater switch.

The only "under-dash" switches on '38 Senior Packards as they came out of East Grand Avenue would have been switches for the interior and dash lights, the rheostat to dim the dash panel lights, and of course the clock re-set knob.