Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

Back in 1976 an 18 year old freshman at Virginia Tech was crazy about Packards and fascinated with details of Torsion Level. And he could write a letter to one of Packard's engineers and get a hand typed response. Found this in a box of old letters. A very fine and interesting man was Mr. Allison.

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Ross, we are almost of the same age and at the begin of the 1980s I wrote a letter to a German car engineer, a former Horch employee. I believe to know what you've felt when receiving the written reply from Mr. Allison. I enshrine even the envelope.


Horch P240 - handmade in East Germany



[picture source: www.causa-nostra.com]

I have just finished repairing my TL system and find that I am totally in awe of it's simplicity and effective design.

In an earlier thread, during the diagnosis of my car's TL issues, I made a very poor and tasteless comment of the systems design. I had apologized then, and will apologize again for my nieve and rash posting. Boy was I wrong about Mr. Allison's TL system.

Yes, the TL system's beauty lies in its simplicity. GM's airbag system which was brought about because of the Packard torsion bars was a complicated Rube Goldberg design in comparison.
The KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is a good rule to go with. As a programmer for many years, I used to read IBM's code to see how they resolved problems. Those folks resolved problems with the least amount of coding and sometimes the simplicity of their solutions was brilliant. I copied their style and tried to write code in the same manner. When you see a system that works, you study it and learn from it. The Allison TL system is, in a word, brilliant.

Thanks Ross for sharing that letter.

Mr Allison was a member of Motor City Packards and brought his cycle car to Perrysburg for us all to see. He had many patents and was interested in wind power when we visited him for an interview all those years ago.