Packard Forum Index » Pre-War (1899-1942)

Quote:I will make sure I put the whites on the inside when you are around

Coker is reproducing the split lock ring. I have Bedfords. They look great, but I have nothing to compare them against.

The first part of this post won't help Tom, but for those of you whose cars take 7.50/17, Bridgestone, and Yokohama, still offer a 7.50/17 bias-sized radial LT that several '30s Packard and Cadillac owners are happily using. I don't know if Michelin is still offering theirs.

You don't need tubes. Just make sure your rivets are tight, your wheels smooth, painted or powdercoated.

Tom, on page one of this thread, you ruminated blackwalls for sportiness vs. whitewalls for "class." Be assured there is nothing "classy" about whitewalls. Old money eschewed them in the day, considered them gauche, tacky.
Only one in 30 or 40 cars had whitewalls when your car was new. You'll always get people trotting out the occasional magazine ad from such and such a year, or a photo of a similar car on a Packard dealer's showroom with whitewalls.
But you'll also note the most elegant ads in your car's day often as not showed the taste and understatement of blackwalls, and again, we've seen many period photos of big city Packard showrooms with senior cars parked on Persian carpets surrounded by potted palms, shod in black pumps, sans
fog/driving lights, without deluxe hood ornaments.

Whitewalls were almost never seen on highend Brit and European barouches, other than later in the '30s, on a few impractical Figone et Falaschi, or, as they were called then, "Phony & Flashy" one-offs with skirted fenders fore and aft, that sort of nonsense.

Live dangerously. Go blackwalls, let your car do the talking. You can't add class. Your Packard came standard from East Grand Avenue with class. Less is more.

Or, if you're dying to look like every other car at a suburban concours d' nonelegance or the page after page after page of monkey see/monkey do jalopies in the Classic Car Club of America quarterly, i'll leave it to the others above as to which brand of bias ply 19-inch tires is best,
whether black or whitewall.

In the days long ago when i thought i somehow had to have whitewalls, i got good service from Denman. But for those with cars a few years later than Tom's, the entire Lester, Coker, Denman, Firestone discussion is mote when you can get the bias size with the benefits of radials.
Packard built automobiles, not rolling floor lamps. Packard was not in the tire nor battery business. Get an Optima battery while you're at it. They make camouflaged cases but since your battery's covered anyway, who cares?

Anyone demanding to open your battery compartment and inspect your battery needs to get a life. What's next? Will they take a sample from your dipstick and have it analyzed by a lab if it's a tiebreaker?

If you want your car to stand out with both "sporty" and historical correctness in the sea of whitewalls, go black.

Some of us have brought up this blackwall/whitewall 800-lb. gorilla before, only to be greeted with some nervous laughter, the usual excuses, and then business as usual.
But this is a savvy site devoted to Packards. The buck stops here.

Why don't we leave the whitewalls to the Kadillac konkours krowd?

Just because a few period ads and showrooms had whitewalls means nothing. Again, if you're in business and want to stay in business, you offer what people want or think they need.

But in Tom's year, 1931, and before the pug ugly bathtubs and '50s hohum, Packard was still the soft-spoken boss of the road, the leader, slightly apart and above the fray,

not an also-ran.

So why are we so eager, desperate to reduce our cars
with whitewalls and the fog/driving lights you rarely saw
in the day? Longtime Packard owner Bob Mehl recalled never seeing fog or driving lights on the "fine cars" of his 1940s Pittsburgh, PA boyhood, when you'd still see cars like Tom's in good repair, parked casually.


Rebuild your fine, rare Packard for yourself, not clipboard-wielding twits. A friend who runs a shop devoted to making "restored" 1930s and '40s Packards run like the automobiles they once were had to run a die grinder over the engine block of a '34 Graber-bodied Standard Eight. The car won best in class at Pebble Beach.

Ralph Lauren buys a nice late '30s Bugatti Type 57 coupe which left Molshien with its wire wheels painted body color. Lauren chromes them.

That's the sort of nonsense shows care about. Get the car right, and don't sweat nonsense like tire valves and hoseclamps. Leave the aligning of screwheads to the Model A Ford crowd. It's the same at Meadow Brook, all of them.
The usual crowd will sputter, beg to differ, point out a few instances of hyper correctness. But most of the cars are parodies.

Don't join them, Tom. You've got a terrific Packard as is,
the epitome of class.

Su8overdrive: I'm not really disagreeing with you, in general I'm also a fan of blackwalls on many of the body styles and car colors of the Classic era and I'd clearly prefer blackwalls on Tom's car.

I just browsed the original Packard factory photos for 1933 in MMM; of those where the tire type is apparent, 27 have blackwalls and 25 have whitewalls. Now factory photos don't necessarily show the proportion of actual production but it is an indicator of how Packard felt about displaying cars with whitewalls.

PS - doing the same analysis from the MMM factory photos for 1931 does indeed show a ratio of about 30 to 1.

PS - do you recall the study CCCA did some years ago about the ratio of white- versus blackwall? As I recall it has data for both European and American makes, by year or groups of years.

As mentioned above, i've no doubt Packard released various promotional papers depicting whitewalls, as they did in magazine ads, even many showrooms. A few years later than
Tom's car, the Company would even paint the odd car a garish
hue to draw attention at a new car show. I recall seeing an otherwise lovely '40 160 convertible painted a glaring look-at-me red displayed at a concours a decade ago.
The owner justified it with, "Well, Packard painted a car this color once. See (holding up the ancient press release)?"

But in street scenes in Manhattan, Boston, Chicago, 1931-47, you see few whitewalls.

BTW, i'm not telling anyone what to do, or not to do.
Some cars look fine shod in white sneakers. Your club sedan looks lovely. I was happy with wide white Denmans on my black '47 Super Clipper for years. But that spoilt rotten gothic-grilled b__ch looks much the more serious, international embassy or road car wearing black pumps.

I'm just trying to get people to think outside the box, as 'twere.

No, don't recall the CCCA poll, but would love to. Would
and could you post it here?

Thank you, sir.

"I'm a cranky old Yank in a clanky old tank, on the streets of Yokohama (or Bridgestone) with my Honolulu mama singing those beat-o, flat on my seat-o, Hirohito blues..."

-- Hoagy Carmichael (recorded 1944 by Bing Crosby)

'Course, the poor guy was probably driving a '41 Cadillac.