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Packard was building DOHC supercharged high performance engines before WWW2...and seemingly taking full advantage of their prowess in advertising.

So why was this so slow in getting into the cars? Clearly the flathead straight eight had pretty much reached a developmental wall.

I could see a v8 in say 1950, with a DOHC version as an option for senior cars....

So obvious in retrospect, so the question should be asked....

Been asked and re-hashed before. Packard never claimed to be a performance car, and its customer base valued silence and smoothness over raw power. They also had a board of directors who valued paying dividends over re-investment in product, and the L-head straight eight engine had taken on an image of stable, reliable quiet power, and the tooling was paid for.
Packard could have gone performance if they wanted to, the Carribbean V-8 engines illustrate this, as do the military applications.
The big answer is in the customer base. Packard had spent decades serving a market to whom raw power was not an attraction. Unfortunately, the world stopped making as many of those kinds of people.

Monsignor Pushbutton above is right, sums it well.

Maurice Hendry recounted one of East Grand's engine designers, Howard Reed, a Buick alumni, before War II, trying to get Packard to produce not just an overhead valve straight eight, but an overhead cam inline 8. Packard management replied that such an engine's added noise would be "unseemly."

The problem with our Monday morning quarterbacking is that we forget the tenor of the times.

But i agree with you. Yet had we been there, our minds filled with that day's knowledge, perspective, what would we have done? Only Buick, Chevy, Nash among all US automakers were ohv. Duesenberg and Stutz sohc and dohc were distant memories.

Lamenting that such engines weren't produced is akin to my wishing Packard had made their heavy seat frames of aluminum, learnt more from the many aircraft they powered,
from Railton how to build lighter but still bespoke automobiles, presaged the Bentley Continentals instead of
Olds Fiesta-, Buick Skylark-, Cadillac Eldorado-aping dreck like the otherwise bone stock Carribeans slathered with 200 lbs. additional "sporty" cues.

They saw that speed/power sells cars; they didn't do some seemingly obvious adding of 2+2 thus putting power IN CARS....

An OHC straight eight would have been fascinating as well. Beyond speculation on stroke length, what would be the advantages/disadvantages of such a configuration. Presumably longer; possibly lower? What about power?

Laid on its side with an offset rear end?

Hi

Although it might seem a missed opportunity for Packard to have built OHC straight eights pre-war as benefit of the aircraft engine work, as has been noted, their buyers sought smooth, quiet, torquey, effortless performance rather than higher performance as the cost of those attributes.

Also recall the gas generally available was in the 65 octane range.....OHC or ohv wasn't going to produce as much benefit for it's cost, complication and noisier operation.

That began to change as WWII progressed with the higher octane fuels being developed, first for aircraft application but then to be brought to market as 'super' or 'premium' which ohv engines with freer-breathing could benefit.

The shame is that their postwar passenger car engine development didn't take full advantage of the knowledge base they had. The minute the ohv Olds and Cadillac V8's caught the popular imagination, no L-Head no matter how refined had much of a future.

Steve

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That has certainly been the accepted mantra here, but you wonder how solid that feeling was? Once the world got a whiff of performance, the race was on. Packard should have anticipated it and led it.

The myth revolves around people dressing for dinner and being incredible snobs. I see successful people as competitive, and I think they were just as competitive in the thirties. They clearly reveled in driving expensive cars when the world was crashing down around their ears. Performance is another competitive attribute to sell.

I won't labor this any more; I've said my bit on this one--but I'd like to see more thoughts on the era....