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In the FAQ it states that the Ultramatic was developed completely in house. I beg to differ.

Last Friday I drove my '54 Clipper to work and that prompted my friend, Steve, to come up to talk to me about it. During our conversation he told me he was doing his apprenticeship at a place in Oconto(?), WI and that they were working on the Ultramatic. He told me the guy's name that he was working for but I was lazy and didn't write it down. :facepalm:

Another tidbit he said was that this company he was working for went out of business before his apprenticeship was over so he lost out there. And that the guy he was working for ended up working for GM.

I'll try to get as many details as I can when I see him this Friday.

This guy must be very old.Packard started development on Ultramatic in the 1930s.

Well, to be fair, I would say developement never stopped until Studebaker went out of business.

Why would Studebaker be interested? They used Borg-Warner transmissions in their cars.

That's good to know. I'm very new in the Packard world so I still have a lot to learn. So, what was the last year that an Ultramatic was manufactured?

When Steve approached me with this, I failed miserably in getting info. That's one reason I'm posting this thread now, maybe by weeks end, I'll have a good list of questions for him.

Ultamatic, then known as twin ultramatic,was last used in 1956.It was still called ultramatic when it was used in the Hudson, Nash and Studebaker Golden Hawks equipped with the Packard V8.

Studebaker considered using it, but they were going to rename it UL-TRAUMATIC

He could have been doing work on the later design or refining it or whatnot, but the development would still have been in house, development meaning work and research design and actual product invention.

That'd be like saying the SBC wasn't designed in house because so many other vendors are now doing their own thing with them, making their own blocks, heads, etc. Just because a guy works at dart making custom heads, doesn't mean the original SBC wasn't designed in house.

(That was an example. i don't know that the SBC was really designed in house)

I agree anecdotal comments are not historical facts. This company could have been some kind of subcontractor for parts. Memories and recollections fade as do DD clutch plates.

Perhaps Packard reversed engineered the Ultra from a ZIS/ZIL!!

Kevin, respect! You hit that nail square on the head! That is why the term pre-reinvention became a household word in Moscow and China.




I have it in black and white in the Pravda ("Truth"). The original reversed headline reads:

."citamartlU" eht detnevni sreenigne PCCC 9591 nI

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