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I'm still hoping someone will see this and recall a Packard based racing special of the 1930's. Surely some enterprising young racer saw the potential of these cars in their day?

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I think just this one last attempt at finding this information (if it exists) - although I still haven't had the chance to drop in on Wade et al to have a look at his "Packards at Speed" book - which I still want to buy a copy of. The usual Xmas financial crunch put stop to my plans to order one of these some weeks ago, but I hope to be able to soon.

However, it seems that there is little or no information about cars of the type that I am after available. I am not going to let this get in the way of my intended project however, and after some research of the Packard history and with my knowledge of GP cars ofthe mid 1930s, I have a pretty good concept of what Packard would have done had they created a racing car in the period.

It would be a fabulous project - a bit of a study in 'what if' automotive design - and one of the best things is that I should be able to create this car without breaking up a complete existing vehicle.

I hope you all stay tuned as I will value your feed back on my concepts of both the styling and components to be used.

Cheers,

Matt Snape

I like your train of thought, Matt!

GP cars of the 1930s are beautiful, IMHO...

Quote:Matt,

The books on Wade's desk in the workshop waiting, waiting, waiting.......

There were plenty of home built racing cars in the US from the 30s but they were much smaller than what you are used to.

The predominant racing venue was the oval dirt track of 1/2 mile to 1 mile per lap. Originally horse tracks were used but later they built tracks exclusively for cars.

There were regular and midget racers in various sizes.

Road racing was out of the question.

Packards and Packard engines were far too big.

Thank you Rusty - that does explain a few things, although I have picked up on another post today about a racer built in Argentina -
packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=4233&forum=1

This is the sort of info I was after so I hope it leads somewhere.

Mal, I hope to see you guys at Wades next week - although the work schedule is starting to build up again...

Thanks all,

Matt Snape

I see my answer was a little mixed up.

I meant to say, road racing was out of the question in the USA. It was not permitted anywhere, with few exceptions.

There were some in the New York area, and I think around Savannah Georgia, before WW1. Then again once or twice around New York in about 1937. Other than that, nothing.

The most popular form of racing was on oval tracks. In the teens and twenties there were banked ovals like Indianapolis and some banked oval board tracks notably Beverly Hills in California and Sheepshead Bay near New York.

These went out of business by 1930, except for Indianapolis, which was only open for one race a year.

It was all oval track racing most of them dirt tracks of 1/2 mile to 1 mile.

Any Packard chassis or engine was far too big for such a venue. The biggest engine used was the little Ford V8 60 of 137 cu in or 2.2 liters. The fastest cars used Miller or Offenhauser 4 cylinder OHC units. The others were mostly 4 cylinder Ford Model A engines with various aftermarket heads, flathead OHV or OHC whichever the owner could afford.

For a time in the 30s Indianapolis had what some called the "Junk Formula". They encouraged the use of mass produced chassis and engines suitably hopped up. But I don't believe any Packards raced at Indy under this formula. Studebaker straight eights put up some fast times but no Packards.

Thank you for the clarification Rusty, although I did understand what you meant in your original post.

I take it that the 'junk formula' (which I may have mistakenly assumed refered to production or salon type cars) was what Oldfield ran his V16 Marmon engined special under in 1937. I believe this was a car he built himself and was largely inspired by the Auto Unions that had been run by the German team in the US in '35 or '36.

But never mind - I intend to run with this project regardless and hope you will all be around to offer your advice. I am very glad that I have found this forum - the attitude and knowledge I have seen here are amongst the best I have found on the net, and you can all be justifiably proud of your involvment in it.

Cheers

Matt Snape

The junk formula name was given by the old timers who had purpose built racing cars. They called the new production based cars "junk". It had a different name officially but was commonly known as the junk formula.

These cars were indeed based on production cars or at least engines. In some cases the chassis were modified production type, in other cases specially constructed.

You should discuss your project with Turbopackman or look up his projects, I believe he is working along similar lines.

I have seen some of Turbopackmans posts and plan to chat with him when I have some more details together - especially since there is likely to be a supercharger involved.