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Quote: I hear you Tim, but not everybody died in the war; lots of folks came home and LOTS had opinions about it, or at least in my family they sure did!
I find this whole thread interesting because, to me, it kind of becomes an 'apples/oranges thing'. I agree with you that hand built ANYTHING is probably superior to something spit out of a machine, but the real issue here is taking it FROM hand-built TO mass produced and IMO, that is what Packard accomplished greatly. War is a nasty, ugly business and the men and women that fought in those conflicts are to be honoured and never forgotten. As far as the support they got from the US, Britain and Canada to have the munitions and equipment to continue to fight and defeat the enemy, I don't think that can be understated either. Not the least of which would be companies like Packard who came through in spades with some sixty thousand aircraft engines. Kudos and props to every one of them! Chris

Too much Packard mythology going on as regards the airplane engine. Consider the following:

The redeveloped Ford Trafford Park Factory was bombed only a few days after its opening in May 1941.

As Sir Stanley Hooker stated in his autobiography:

" once the great Ford factory at Manchester started production, Merlins came out like shelling peas at the rate of 400 per week. And very good engines they were too, yet never have I seen mention of this massive contribution which the British Ford company made to the build-up of our air forces. "

Merlin Wartime Production Sources

Derby 32,377

Crewe 26,065

Glasgow 23,675

Trafford Park 30,428

Detroit 55,523

I find the whole legend of Rolls-Royce supposed cobblers not being able to produce engines not supported. The two Rolls plants (Bentley and Rolls-Royce cars) alone built more engines than Packard. You can't do that using 18th century production methods.

"The Rolls-Royce Merlin was manufactured under license from Packard. What are the main differences and are the differences noticeable in maintenance tasks?

In terms of construction, the differences are so small that they are not worth mentioning. Excitingly, the biggest and most important difference from a maintenance perspective is the quality of the manuals. Here the British manual clearly loses out to the Packard manual. Be it because of the clarity or the technical information. This shows that Packard dealt actively and intensively with the Merlin, revised it and not simply recreated it. As is well known, the Packards came from assembly lines, while the British units were built from start to finish by individual teams. The British team also knew all the assemblies inside out, but this was not the case with Packard. The American documentary also had to go deeper."

Felix Ohlhoff, aircraft mechanic and Merlin specialist at MeierMotors GmbH.


Quote:
Confirmed, pls. see below.


Sources
# 1 (above) - flugrevue.de
# 2 (below) - The Liverpool Echo; July 9, 1940

Attach file:

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  July 9, 1940 - The Liverpool Echo.jpg (148.38 KB)

Tim Cole fully sums this Packard/R-R Merlin business. The Autoweek article was a refreshing and accurate overview.

Meanwhile, Packard's taking on the Merlin contract was not an act of altruism, but a business decision, if buoyed by the international drive to stem Germany's madness. East Grand's Merlin agreement was funded by taxpayer money, used to enlist a phalanx of draftsmen to redraw Rolls-Royce's plans to suit Detroit methods. Packard's Vice-President and General Counsel Henry E. Bodman rewrote the Merlin agreement so that it became the basis for government contracts for years to come, such largesse leading to Packard becoming one of two domestic major automakers to emerge from War II profitable. Less hassle govt. and jet engine work resulted in Packard increasingly phoning in automotive me-tooism after the war, as all independents were doomed because of economies of scale, higher unit costs, decreased component purchasing power, less able to afford the increasingly vital annual model change frippery and expensive television advertising.

Packard, GM, Ford, Lockheed-Martin, Chrysler, Grumman, soon Litton, General Dynamics/Electric Boat/Elco and other leading defense contractors demonstrated that the Pentagon’s propensity to protect its big prime contractors outweighed the inclination to hold them to the terms of their contracts, while concurrently the Russian bear inflated, leading to the stalemate of the undeclared wars of the Korean "police action" and loss in Vietnam, today's $1.5 t r i l l i o n F-35 contractors' feeding frenzy.

For decades, the way so many rabid Packardites went on, you'd think it was the "Packard Merlin." While the US was much of the "arsenal of democracy," Britain's manufacturing per capita equaled or exceeded ours.

Improvements, refinements to the Merlin introduced in Britain or the US were immediately adopted in the next series. A longtime Merlin rebuilder told us that the only difference between Detroit and British Merlins, series by series, was the nicer external finishing on those of the Sceptered Isle.

If you know anything of Rolls-Royce's automotive industry, you know that all R-R and 1933-on Bentley engines but the overly complex 710 1936-39 seven-main-bearinged, 447-ci ohv V-12 Phantom IIIs stem from the junior 1922 "owner/driver Small HP" 20, itself a crib of the 1920 Buick Six. Leading English motoring writer/engineer Laurence Pomeroy dismissed Rolls-Royce cars as "a triumph of craftsmanship over engineering," and "a bloody good confidence trick."

But Packard's advertising department would've been lax to not play up the Merlin production, given so many Americans buying into R-R's "best car in the world" rubbish. Only after Napier, long seen in England by those in the know as R-R's superior, could not arrange UK manufacturing rights to Packard, did they try to buy Bentley, only to be sneakily outbid by R-R, as detailed too many times.

Since 1935, Rolls-Royce's mainstay was aero engines, about the time Cadillac/LaSalle, Cord ("the baby Duesenberg" as termed by A-C-D insiders), Lincoln, Packard debuted vital junior cars. Postwar Crewe fare was slightly down-market, assembled, boutique product.

For us Packard owners and fanciers to continue raving about an English engine built at taxpayer expense is laughable, as if our cars elevated by the R-R connection, overlooking that Packard got the contract only after Henry Ford declined.

Perhaps these same war buffs will finally realize that according to JFK and others experienced with both, the Diesel German Schnellboots ("S-Boots, Fast Boats") were faster and superior to the US patrol torpedo boats, the latter's woodworking lovely and impressive, gasoline powered solely to simplify logistics, out of fuel PTs often towed back to base after sortees by destroyers.

While war production is part of Packard history, most of us here gathered would like to focus on the cars, leave the endless military equipment parsing to the nerd sites so devoted to unrequited testosterone, akin to sports team fandom; "'We' beat the Red Sox, the Yankees, the Mets."

There's something sad in the torrent of views this thread's attracted, so many Packardites still desirous of that Rolls-Royce aura.

Let's get back to the cars, remembering, again, that R-R was, in the years before War II, annually dissecting a new Buick Limited to glean the latest Detroit manufacturing tips, even as Packard was increasingly cowed by GM, and run by former big BOPpers, even Chevrolet's sales manager Bill Packer recruited to teach East Grand how to sell on credit, and that the 1940-on 356, an enlarged 120 engine, itself a much refined Pontiac eight, had nine mains solely for marketing cachet, as it did needless hydraulic valve lifters because Cadillac and even the "Ford-and-a-half" Zephyr did.