Thread: PACKARD MUSEUM, DAYTON, OHIO.

Oh that's lovely that is !

It looks very Rollerish,,
was it comparable to RR in its day Brian?

Originally Posted by Pedro_The_Swift

It looks very Rollerish,,
was it comparable to RR in its day Brian?

When Rolls Royce had their Springfield factory in the USA they found that the US luxury makes, Cadillac, Lincoln, Packard, Peerless, Pierce-Arrow, Marmon, Deusenberg, Stutz were of equal and higher quality and performance than the RR's and far cheaper to buy and maintain. This made the Springfield Rolls difficult to sell to pragmatic self-made wealthy Americans.

Have a read of The Magic of a Name, The Rolls Royce Story, The First 40 Years, by Peter Pugh. See if your council library can get it for you.

More Packards.

No. 5, the maroon 1940 convertible is almost the equal in quality to the black boat tail car. Can you imagine these two cars stuffed full of rich young playboys and Ziegfield chorus girls?

No. 4, you will notice has no brightwork. It was ordered this way by the Proctor family of Cincinatti. The Proctors of Proctor and Gamble. Explanation was "we are plain folk who dislike ostentatious display."

I like No. 2 the V12 Speedster. No lights or guards. The wealthy owners kept it at their Northern Michigan family summer estates on the Lake and drove it only on the estate roads and into the service town in daylight hours and didn't need lights. The County law knew who signed the cheques for most of the County's rates and likely provided escorts.

Packard was a quailty car and has along list of firsts in car design.
Like Rolls Royce the radiator had a distintive shape over all the models as well as the red hexagonal on the hubs.
Rolls Royce was using a independant suspension designed and used by Packard in the 1930s as cutting edge suspension in 1950s Rolls Royce cars.
Packard made the Rolls Royce Merlin engine for the allied war effort and produced versions which greatly exceeded the power and reliability of the british built versions when other american manufacturers had trouble just producing the motor to british specs.
My mum has sitting at home a 1939 Packard (the cheaper line of model)
It is a six with a automatic overdrive and radio with low original miles and very good condition.
If you look at other cars of the time the cheapest packard was still a quality car.
Door locks / window winders are brass instead of diecast, brakes are all self energising with finned brake drums( Ford had only just gone to hydraulic brakes in 1938 )
The strenght of the all steel body and chassis is huge.
It goes supprizing well and still can give a modern family car a hard time from the traffic lights.
The overdrive is interesting as it has a free wheel device and it will kick down automatically when over taking and change back up again automatically........the way it works effectively gives the car a 5 speed gearbox.
The interior room puts modern cars to shame , as well as the access though the doors.
You sit in the rear leather seats and streach out your legs and you will not find the front seats and there is room above your head to wear a hat.
Various take overs and and lack of quality in the 1950s while still selling the Packard as a quality car killed the brand .
The last Packards where nothing more than rebadged Studebakers.
The V12 packards of the 1930s were amongst the best in the world and the prices they bring today refect this.

Originally Posted by VladTepes

Oh that's lovely that is !

Indeed. If I was to ram raid a motor museum it would be for that black car. It really is something. One wonders how much it cost and how much the peasants were paid who laboured to build it.

Originally Posted by 101 Ron

Packard was a quailty car and has along list of firsts in car design.
Like Rolls Royce the radiator had a distintive shape over all the models as well as the red hexagonal on the hubs.
Rolls Royce was using a independant suspension designed and used by Packard in the 1930s as cutting edge suspension in 1950s Rolls Royce cars.
Packard made the Rolls Royce Merlin engine for the allied war effort and produced versions which greatly exceeded the power and reliability of the british built versions when other american manufacturers had trouble just producing the motor to british specs.
My mum has sitting at home a 1939 Packard (the cheaper line of model)
It is a six with a automatic overdrive and radio with low original miles and very good condition.
If you look at other cars of the time the cheapest packard was still a quality car.
Door locks / window winders are brass instead of diecast, brakes are all self energising with finned brake drums( Ford had only just gone to hydraulic brakes in 1938 )
The strenght of the all steel body and chassis is huge.
It goes supprizing well and still can give a modern family car a hard time from the traffic lights.
The overdrive is interesting as it has a free wheel device and it will kick down automatically when over taking and change back up again automatically........the way it works effectively gives the car a 5 speed gearbox.
The interior room puts modern cars to shame , as well as the access though the doors.
You sit in the rear leather seats and streach out your legs and you will not find the front seats and there is room above your head to wear a hat.
Various take overs and and lack of quality in the 1950s while still selling the Packard as a quality car killed the brand .
The last Packards where nothing more than rebadged Studebakers.
The V12 packards of the 1930s were amongst the best in the world and the prices they bring today refect this.

Actually it was Ford engineers who showed Rolls Royce how to make the Merlin to accurate mass production standards, so Ford could utilise the plant built at Manchester by the British government. Read "Not Much of an Engineer" by Stanley Hooker. Hooker was the airflow expert and mathematician who designed the Merlin superchargers. Hooker was the equal in these disciplines of Leo Goosen. Any of the North American producers could have made the Merlin but the problem was to find one who was not already so committed to war production that they could participate. Chev. and Ford had the world's biggest aluminium and iron foundries respectively. Buick were flat out making Pratt and Whitney engines. Cadillac were making engines and tanks. Frigidaire were making .5 machine guns like lollipops. Ford were making a B24 at Willow Run every 20 minutes. So, who was left? Packard and Continental had the capacity and the skills and the machinery. Packard and Continental made one third of the Merlins. The rest were made at RR Crewe, Derby, Glasgow, & Ford Manchester. RR do not record any Merlins as "made" in Australia. One can only assume that our production was classed as assembly of engines produced elsewhere, where the major components were produced.

Don't you just love the hipocracy of a family saying "we are plain folk who dislike ostentatious display." so we will have a plain looking expensive luxury car thank you !

The Packard club of Australia had a rally a good few years ago and came through Orange, I made a point of going for a look. It was all I could do to stop myself drooling all over them. Beautiful machines !

Steve