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G'day all. I recently ( 3-6 weeks) ago read in a Packard info.com thread, a comparison table of engine Torque ratings between such as Cadillac V16, Packard Twelve, Marmon, Stutz, Lincoln etc. I have neen unable to relocate this table. Could someone please be kind enough to post the table or provide me with the applicable thread details. Best regards peter Toet

Peter,

Is it this thread?

Did a search using Marmon, a not too common term on a Packard Site, and "voila", narrowed things down considerably!

Hi Peter

Here's the table I was able to gather from my sources. If anyone has other Classic Era torque specifications, please feel free to add them. They're a good standard to consider when pondering how Classics compared with their contemporaries.

Pre-War Torque, 1940-41 Statistics
1953 Chilton Flat Rate Manual, Engine Specification Section

Packard Twelve...............473 ci.....366 lb/ft @ 1400 rpm
Cadillac Sixteen..............431 ci.....324 lb/ft @ 1700 rpm
Lincoln K V-12................414 ci.....312 lb/ft @ 1200 rpm

Packard 8 160/180..........356 ci.....292 lb/ft @ 1800 rpm
Cadillac V-8....................346 ci.....283 lb/ft @ 1700 rpm
Chrysler 8......................323 ci.....260 lb/ft @ 1600 rpm
LaSalle 50, 52, V-8.........322 ci......---- lb/ft @ ------ rpm
Buick 8..........................320 ci.....280 lb/ft @ 2000 rpm

Lincoln H V-12................292 ci......235 lb/ft @ 1800 rpm

Packard 8 120................282 ci.....225 lb/ft @ 1700 rpm

Nash Ambassador 8........261 ci.....200 lb/ft @ 1600 rpm
Oldsmobile 90 8..............257 ci.....200 lb/ft @ 2000 rpm
Hudson 8.......................254 ci.....198 lb/ft @ 1600 rpm
Studebaker President 8...250 ci.....195 lb/ft @ 2000 rpm
Buick 40, 50 8................248 ci.....210 lb/ft @ 2000 rpm
Pontiac 28, 29, 8............248 ci.....175 lb/ft @ 1600 rpm

Note the relatively moderate rpms at which these engine developed maximum torque. And those rpms fall right into the meat of the highway speed driving range, which made those cars with high torque at lower rpms so satisfying to drive.

Steve

Sorry I couldn't find the LaSalle torque statistics in my sources. Anyone have them?
.

Posted on: 2/24 16:47:01

Thanks for the info Steve, it makes for interesting reading. Best regards Peter

The Packard specs from this chart would be useful to those who are considering changing drive axle ratios To match the peak engine torque to the desired car speed.

(o[]o)

Interesting thread. Below are some figures i've unearthed over the years. Am also including a few already listed above, only as they differ slightly in torque or rpm.

1930-36 ohv 452-ci Cadillac V-16, 160 hp/3,400 rpm,
318 ft. lbs. torque/1,000 rpm, which admittedly sounds like a low speed, but that was a fairly august source.

Same engine as above, same compression, in 1937 rated 186 hp/3,800 rpm, but don't know torque figure.

Unable to find torque rating for 1938-40 L-head 431-ci Cadillac V-16, rated 175 hp 1938, 185 hp 1939-40 though compression unchanged. Perhaps Clark Street issued 185 to counter Packard's 175 hp (180 w/ optional high compression heads) Twelve?

1936-37 Cord 810/812, 220 ft. lbs./1,700 rpm
supercharged '37 812, 260 ft. lbs./2,200 rpm
England's respected Autocar magazine reported 272 ft. lbs. @ 3,000 rpm for the blown Cord

Duesenberg J 362 ft. lbs./1,500 rpm

1938-39 Lagonda sohc V-12, about the same cylinder dimensions as the peaky Lincoln Zephyr, 221 ft. lbs./4,000

491-ci ohv Marmon V-16, 6.25 compression, 407 ft. lbs. at
1,600 rpm

'35 Packard 319-ci Eight, 260 ft. lbs./1,600 rpm

'35 Packard 385-ci Super Eight, 300 (est.)ft. lbs./1,600

1932-34 445-ci 160-hp Packard Twelve, 322 ft. lbs/1,400
England's respected Jan P. Norbye cites 348 ft. lbs./1,400 for the above Twelve.
366 ft. lbs./1,400 for the 1935-39 Twelves jives w/ above

A minor note, but all the sources i've seen cite the Packard 282-ci engine producing peak torque at 1,800, not 1,700 rpm

Packard, Motor Manual, Chilton, all sources cite 292 ft. lbs. at 1,800 for the 160-hp 1940-41, 6.41:1 compressioned 356. All sources retain the 292 ft. lbs. figure through 1950, though at 2,000 rpm 1942-on, when compression was raised to 6.85:1.
Curiously, Packard listed 160 hp 1948-50, which makes you wonder if 165 hp was simply to counter the 1941-42 senior Buick, and East Grand retained that figure after the war not knowing if Flint would reprise their troublesome Compound Carburetion. Poured bearings notwithstanding, the 1941-42 Buick had a fairly wild cam for a passenger car engine, and a split exhaust manifold, pretty racy stuff.

We know Packard was and is a finer car, but Dutch Darrin accurately, succinctly summed Packard's desperate situation when they asked him to render what became the Clipper:

"Packard was so afraid of GM they couldn't see straight."

Darrin said then, and in the decades after, that Packard had the finest chassis in the industry. And we here gathered know Packards were and are finer road cars than the concurrect GMobiles. But Packard's unseen quality was lost on most new car buyers as they headed for showrooms before the war. Consider GM's racy new C bodies that came out halfway into the '40 model year, toss in Hydramatic, and Packard was clearly on the ropes with shopworn bodies from 1938.

Packard themselves had to recruit GM production men to build the One Twenty, and in the years leading up to the war, Rolls-Royce annually disassembled a new Buick Limited for the latest Detroit production tips. All 1939-on Packards except the final 446 Twelves were junior-based.
Of course, so were the 1936-on Cadillacs. But this is car buff jazz, and Darrin's comment says it all. In the marketplace, it's about perception, image.

Again, am not interested in coulda, woulda, shoulda. Only in what was. I'm sold. Already own a Packard. But some of us want "just the facts, ma'am," not buff spin.

Hope the above figures help, or are at least interesting.

Perhaps one of these days, someone will unearth sanctioned top speeds of the 1941-42 Buick Century/Roadmaster with the rare no-cost optional "economy" 3.6:1 rear axle in place of the standard 3.9, and the 1942-47 Packard 160/Super Clipper with overdrive. I won't lose much sleep if the 3.6-cogged Buick's half a click faster. We already know the Packard will cruise extreme speeds longer with less wear and drama, corner flatter than Buick's cheap rear coil springs shared with Oldsmobile. But it would be interesting to find absolute speeds for both cars.

The war may've overshadowed everything, but someone, somewhere, must've timed these two fastest cars of the '40s 'til the '49 Cadillac ohv and '51 Chrysler hemi V-8s.

Please, no hearsay. Sanctioned results only.

What years and models were the "final 446 twelves"? I don't see the specs for these listed on this thread, either.

Just a bit of hearsay in the form of a question: Wasn't the Buick OHV straight 8 considered kind of a dog in its later years? Were the earlier editions superior, or was it just that the new V8s outshone it so much in its dotage?

I would like to include the odd differences in hp and torque figures between the '55 senior and junior 352 engines, identically equipped, which no one has ever been able to explain thoroughly (that discussion was started on another thread).

Hope to see this topic continue.

Deacon 55Guy -- Perhaps i should clarify. 446 was the number of final year (1939) Packard Twelves produced, each of them to order, essentially leftover '38s with alternately painted grille bars and column shift. Wonderful cars, but like the splendid final year '38 Pierce-Arrows with overdrive standard (!), only 18 produced (leftover '37s);

the 24 leftover '39 Lincoln Ks sold as 1940 models;

and 61 leftover '39 Cadillac V-16s sold as '40 models,

they were rendered obsolete by recent developments in "pocket luxury cars," as well as more egalitarian times.

The 1935-39 Packard Twelve torque figures you ask about are in my above post and Father 58L8134's chart earlier in this thread.

The bigger point is that all other 1939-on Packards were junior based, until the 1941 Clipper, which despite using a high-compression version of the One-Twenty's rugged 282-ci eight, was neither junior nor senior, but priced squarely between them, in the midst of what Packard, and GM, saw as the more vital "Lexus" tier of Buick Roadmaster/Cadillac Series 61/Chrysler New Yorker/Lincoln Zephyr. The 1942 160/180 Clippers were simply this car with the otherwise identical frame 1/64th of an inch thicker --talk about tooling yourself to death--and the senior 356 engine, with limousine editions after the war. The junior 1942-47 Clippers had shorter front end sheet metal on an abbreviated 120" wheelbase.

When you consider how much sleeker these junior Clippers were than the frumpy Standard Steel-bodied 1946 Silver Dawns and R-Type Bentleys on the same 120" wb, you shudder at those ex-GM production men running Packard after the war who insisted on chasing low-rung Buicks and Oldsmobile. 75% of Packard's postwar production was such fare. Packard learnt volume production from GM, but alas, not how to market.

But now we're bleeding into Bishop Green's neighboring advertising lament.

The other half of my point was that ALL Cadillacs 1936-on were junior cars, sharing components with lesser GMobiles. Even the final 1938-40 431-ci flathead V-16 Series 90 shared otherwise the same package as the three-main-bearing V-8 Cadillac Series 75.

Even Rolls-Royce, that "great confidence trick," as one esteemed English motoring journalist referred to the company, knew enough to cadge just production tips from Buick while keeping their own mystique.

Packard blew it. Afraid i agree with "Uncle Tom" McCahill's assessment of the '48 bathtub, "....a goat." And to most people, '51-on Packards looked like little more than bigger, gaudier Fords; also-rans. Packard's sole novel feature of the '50s, Torsion-Level suspension, came from an outside engineer who had to strenuously sell it to Packard's execs. Before y'all hurl brickbats, i had a '51 with only 48,414 miles from new, the little old lady from Hawthorne, if not nearby Pasadena. Good ergonomics, but just being "as good as" or "nearly as powerful as" was not what Packard was all about in their heyday. A Mayfair coupe with stick and overdrive was a nice ride for the '50s. But that's also not enough for the company that was P A C K A R D only a decade earlier.

Hispano-Suiza wound up making pumps for nuclear power plants, most of Rolls-Royce's business 1935-on was aero engines, the cars a boutique sideline, yet still skillfully marketed.

The above heresy's just my 'umble opine. Sorry, but i'm not one of those who bows and scrapes to everything with a Packard badge, tho' i want to emphasize these are only sentiments i've observed at large over the many years and that in the words of the Episcopal Church, at Packard Info.com, "All are welcome."

You asked about Buick's ohv 320 straight eight being something of a dog in its later years. It was detuned from its troublesome, gas-slurping 1941-42 Compound Carburetor guise after the war, but the main problem was that Buicks, like most cars, grew ever heavier. The engine was saddled with the Dynaslush transmission and yes, Ultramatic's direct-drive lock up torque convertor was a vast improvement. But again, just being "better than" Buick, or sorta/maybe/almost as good as Cadillac, Chrysler
wasn't what the car formerly known as the American Rolls-Royce was all about.

As for the variance in specs between Packard's last Packard-built engine, the 352 (the '56 374 was the same block bored out another 1/8th inch) in the junior and senior editions, i leave that to any '50s specialists here gathered. I'm still wondering why the 327 inline L-head in the Packard 300 had five main bearings, while the 327 inline L-head 400 Patrician has nine.

Your family drove that '55 as daily transportation from new through 1969 without any trouble with the oil pump or Torsion-Level control box rusting/shorting out? From what i know of those cars, that's mighty fine.

Address brickbats to: P. O. Box 194856
Del Rio, TX

"The clowns at the circus, they're real funny. On the
highway, they're murder."

-- Broderick Crawford (Dan Mathews), Highway Patrol

Hi Su8overdrive

"Father" 58L8134 here! Thanks for the torque specification additions you've researched, I'll add them to my list for reference. Thanks also for your realistic, well-reasoned assessment of how Packard's position deteriorated with settling management complacency.

Your statement ".....just being "better than" Buick, or sorta/maybe/almost as good as Cadillac, Chrysler wasn't what the car formerly known as the American Rolls-Royce was all about." is as succinct a statement of their decline as I've ever read, wished I'd written it myself!

I, too, can stand the brickbats should they be hurled my way, since they're just hard-won personal opinions after much study. Opposing viewpoints always considered as long as they're thoroughly reasoned and presented in a civil manner.

When the scales of idealism for a marque fall away, surprisingly, one's preference and respect for it actually deepens.

Steve

Thank you, Padre. I never cease to be impressed by the depth, thoughtfulness, thoroughness, scope and civility encountered on this site, which reflects the refinement of Packard in their heyday, enhancing our stewardship, making us all the prouder to own Packards.