Packard Forum Index » Pre-War (1899-1942)

I regularly drive a 100 year old car. It's been completely reliable, even though I often drive it 50 miles or more at a stretch, and often at higher speeds than it was designed to operate at. It's an old cheap Ford. It's lots of fun to drive. I have a choice of several ways to start it, and, often as not, all that's needed to start it is to simply trun the key to "BAT", and the engine starts instantly.

Battery dead? No problem. Turn the key to "MAG" and give the crank a yank and off you go.

BTW, a Triumph can be made to run reliabley.

PS: Almost anytime an electric car is being charged, the power is coming from a combustion process. All primary poower sources have an environmental cost; often a very high and on-going cost.

A lot of power is wasted on its way from the primary source to the electric car or other point of use.


I could probably run a small electric car exclusively on power from my wind power plant ... most of the time. No wind today, so no power. A LARGE battery bank would help with that, at great expense.

My outfit will make 20 KW + on a breezy day. Average output is substantially lower. Average output, less losses in conversion and reconversion and in the devices being powered, take a huge bite out of total power produced. A battery bank and related equipment would add more losses.

This plant is "grid-tied" and has no storage capacity. No wind, no power.
If the grid fails, the plant shuts down instantly and remains down until the grid power is restored.

Cost? Don't ask. I will tell you this: "Free power", from any source derived, is BRUTALLY EXPENSIVE.

Shifting costs and shifting negative impacts does not eliminate them, and it usually magnifies them.

Amen, brother!

I've been saying this all along. Electric cars had their time in the sun, but ultimately failed for many of the same objections we see today.

Hydrogen-powered cars make much better sense - except there might not be as much money to be made.

If you're decrying electrifying old cars, we're with you for the same reason we loathe "retro rods" and the rest of the nonsense. Either have an old, vintage, "Classic," collector, Edwardian, brass, special interest original, or buy something new. Not a fan of what Tim Cole aptly sums "junk rods" or Frankencars.

But let's not live in the past or slam new technology. James Ward Packard, George Westinghouse, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others didn't, or we wouldn't have Packards or be on this or any website today.

Let's not lament "free" energy, either, because because as you observe, there's no such thing, and all energy has its costs. Car & Driver magazine awarded Tesla their Car of the Year award awhile back, and C&D has for years pandered to the "eco-weenie" hating redneck contingent who think there's something manly about bombing around the 'burbs in a noisy, pristine, always empty pick up truck fashion statement. A friend has a Tesla. It is a magnificent conveyance whatever its propulsive force.

Again, if we're serious about a future in which internal combustion cars don't remain the whipping boy for the "round up the usual suspects" crowd, perhaps we listen to the world's scientists, who agree in every poll, including one a decade ago of 2,000 UN scientists, another of 11,000 reported in the 11/5/19 Bloomberg News, that overpopulation remains our by far biggest problem, their words "bigger than climate."

Meanwhile, UN and other vetted studies show animals raised for meat and dairy create more greenhouse gas than all the world's cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes, ships combined.

So if we're serious, instead of attacking EVs, going the us/them route, or dismissing anything we don't want to face as "politics," we revise our antiquated, agrarian tax code from when more babies meant more hands to work the family farm, half of all children not surviving beyond age four, to instead encourage (not mandate) having "one or none," and adopting. We also follow the lead of Lewis Hamilton, the world's leading Formula One driver, in adopting a plant-based, vegan diet, a win-win-win because until people control what they ingest, health care public or private will never be affordable.

Simple, if not EZ. Packards were once driven by Supreme Court justices, university presidents, leaders, writers, scholars, Walter Damrosch, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leading choice of the world's embassies. Instead of parsing, equivocating, debating, buck-passing, let's get cracking.

This is a hobby for many of us embracing both the best of the past and the present. Carly Simon sang truth in "....these are the good old days."

Overpopulation, not prosperity, is the problem. Indeed, general prosperity lowers birth rates, except where idiotic policy interferes, such as in the USA and Western Europe.

Until recent decades, overpopulation was an isolated and local problem. That's becoming less true as the global population grows.

Happily, in "Western Industrialized Societies", birth rates are trending downward, sometimes, as in the case of Japan and Germany, alarmingly so.

It seems that prosperous people are neither motivated to have large numbers of children, nor helpless to avoid it.


I don't think goverment has any business trying to regulate any couple's choices related to how many children they wish to have.

Popular prosperity and applied common sense seems to do a good job of that.

It's also worth remembering that we're all mortal, and that the break-even reproductive rate is somewhere around 3 children per couple. It's certainly more than 2.

We hear you. But being a selfish SOB, i'd like to be able to drive my Packard in broad daylight on more than just one (1) day a year, Stupor Bowl Sunday, other than 5-8am weekends.

Revising antiquated tax codes to save us and the planet is hardly govt. interference.

Meanwhile, Ace Hardware has various corks for those wanting to replace their sending units' original, as i just did. I dipped the NOS gas tank sending unit corks (Packard like many makes used a pair end to end) in Varathane in '87, but they finally became "gas logged" early this year. There are modern materials like poly-nitraphyll closed cellular foam that'll do the trick forever, if you can find in a close enough size, am told balsa wood also works, but c'est la vie. I dipped these twice in POR-15 tank sealer. Make sure to let them dry at least 96 hours before reinstalling.

Let's not forget that, for most people, cars are inherently consumable and 90% will be off the road in 20 years or 200k miles. Of course electric cars have lots of tech but so does every new car, and the difficulties of keeping them going indefinitely are similar. The main difference is of course the electric battery, but as battery technology improves, prices will fall and capacity will go up.

Well, here is some creative usage of old parts.

This electric scooter is made from a pair of 1944 Plymouth front fenders. I bet it would be a hoot to drive around.

Ross, perhaps your next project with a pair of Packard fenders!

Attach file:

---

  ScreenShot 739.jpg (148.82 KB)

That's hysterical. If another old Mopar might be permitted, here's the front clip of a '47 Dodge pick up above my neighbor's garage doors.

Attach file:

---

  Russ's garage art.jpg (180.28 KB)

That would make a neat body for a scooter as well!