I had a set of building blocks as a kid made by the guys in the Packard tool and die shop. My dad was a line supervisor during part of the war until he got drafted. I have his 10 year anniversary watch that says “Ask the man who owns one”. Still wear it once in a while. It still works.
Constant action Packard wiper's love Packard's one of the USAs finest achievements..RIP PACKARD... you produced by far the best automobiles word wide..
My Mom's first car, received as a birthday present from her first husband, was the newly streamlined, designed by Dutch Darrin/first year of production, 1941 Packard Clipper 4 door sedan. It had a 356 CID 180 HP straight-eight engine. For 1941 that was the most powerful engine of any American production car and used even in the Packard 180 Super limousine. It also had a 3 speed manual transmission with overdrive (three-on-the-tree shifting replaced the floor shift as standard on nearly all American cars by 1940). It had an all black exterior and grey mohair interior. Radio, turn signals, clock, real wood dash and interior door trim, and heater/defroster were standard on Packards, optional or not available on lesser brands. The wide white side-wall Rayon tires, fog lights, spotlight, and exterior windshield visor were OEM/dealer added options. Top speed was 120 MPH. This car climbed Mt. Washington in N. H., and was driven from Boston, MA. to Washington, D. C. 18 years before the Interstate Highway System had been completed! It was a great car. As a luxury car brand along with Cadillac and Lincoln, it sold for about three times as much as the low--priced Big 3 (Chevrolet, Ford, and Plymouth).
Saw & admired the most beautiful car I have ever seen at a show back in the late 1980s 1941 Packard Convertible Had small side door for golf bag transport under the back seat Bright dark blue & absolutely gorgeous.
Packards were utterly amazing jewels of engineering, often clothed with the most beautiful bodies of the times. Modern viewers have little to compare them to. I know times change but nothing like these gorgeous motorcars will ever be produced again. Automotive legends. Thanks from the UK, great video.
We had a 1939 120, a 1949 Super Eight, and a 1951 Patrician 400. Each succeeding model was more refined. My favorite features are: 1939 interior space; 1949 front grille with matching rear trim, 1951 ultramatic transmission.
My grandfather worked as a tool and die maker for packer back in the day I have a dial indicator that has "the packer motor car company" Written on its face... kinda cool
18:00 1937: That year, the Packard Rifle Club shot 3 Cadillacs, 2 Pierce Arrows, 14 Ford V8s and an unspecified number of foreign cars.... Peep Ow ow ow, I looooove the One Twenty two tone coupes, they're sooo cute and elegant at the same time ! And those post war Super 8's.... Wow ! Final Peep
Survival of the fittest thats why the US still has at least some manufacturing left here. Now we are following your path of propping up failing companies with taxpayer money if this keeps happening we will go the way of the UK. Be forewarned, with the exception of isolated cases, seldom does subsidizing failure ever work.
It's clear you're woefully ignorant as to WHY the great American manufacturing companies went out of business: the market was flooded with cheap knockoff parts and eventually products from overseas. There is plenty of evidence showing this, and the most striking comes from the watch industry. Entire towns were shuttered because the government allowed foreign companies (mainly Swiss, who had stayed out of the war) to sell their cheap goods in America - goods that had been made in the United States and had been considered to be among the best in the world. To add insult to injury, as the companies went bankrupt, they were sold to Swiss conglomerates who wanted the prestige of the brand names we'd developed - this is why Hamilton is now a Swiss company, along with many others. @@jamesoliva9531 I hope you think twice before you spout nonsense again - the fittest in the world were being stabbed in the back by their own government, they never had a chance to compete on an even field.
My aunt and uncle oned a early 50s Packard. One time, on decoration day dad told me to go get the flowers pout of Aunt Louise and Uncle walts car, at the cemetery. They had gotten out and went up to visit with my folks and other aunts and uncles. I went down to the car and opened the door. I could smell horse hair. It supprised me, as no car that I knew of had still used horse hair in the upolstery.
Let us not forget that Packard built the Marine engines that powered the PT Boats in WW2. My Grandfather was in the Navy from 1927 to 1932 (discharged off the Arizona BB39) Then after the attack on Pearl immediately reinlisted and was sent to British Samoa in charge of a PT repair base. With the help of Samoans who are master boat builders.
It's worse than that - the same thing happened to the great American watch companies! The administration at the time allowed cheap foreign goods to flood the market which devalued the goods we made here.
I think probably the same thing that eventually happened to all the independents. They just didn’t have the cash to compete with the big three. It’s amazing that AMC was able to hang on as long as it did.
@@bitterclinger5876 - It's a shame that the Nash/Hudson AMC merger didn't include Studebaker-Packard as well as Willys and Kaiser. We would probably have a Big 4 to this day.
They say that Mr.Packard bought his first car from a Mr.Winton. I wonder if it was THAT Mr. Winton who went on to develop Diesel engines for locomotives.
Interesting note. During WW2 Packard built Rolls Royce Merlin aircraft engines under contract. The Packard built engines were of higher quality, more powerful, and more reliable than the RR built versions.
Errr no actually! All Rolls Royce assembled engines were essentially blue printed by highly skilled workers as the manufacturing tolerances at Rolls were lower than those at Packard. Packard engines were mass produced by unskilled workers on a production line. Rolls engines were more powerful and reliable but Packard assembled Rolls Royce engines were made faster and cheaper. Packard made half as many engines in one factory as Rolls made in three. Packard made changes to the Rolls design to make assembly faster and lower the cost of manufacture. You can have fast, cheap or good but may only choose two!
@@andrewallen9993 You are only partially correct. Parts on Merlins initially built by RR were not interchangeable because they did not machine to defined tolerances. Each piston, ring, bearing, etc. was individually fitted to each engine. Packard was the only American company willing to build Merlins and they were appalled by the amateurish plans RR furnished. They went over the entire design and produced comprehensive plans with defined tolerances for every part. This dramatically improved production efficiency and resulted in a much better product. RR adopted Packard's specifications and production methods and was able to match Packard's quality. RR's were NEVER better than Packard's by any metric. After the war, these engines became highly sought after for hydroplane racing, and Packard's were everyone's first choice. Packard already had extensive experience with this type of engine from their Liberty engine program. They were way ahead of RR's manufacturing abilities at this time. As a side note, Ford developed an engine to replace Merlins prior to the start of the war that was vastly superior. They made both 8 and 12 cylinder versions, GAA and GAC. Henry, the ardent capitalist, was opposed to US involvement in WWII and FDR, the ardent socialist, and his administration, did not want to do business with him. So they adopted Alison's inferior engine over Ford's. Later, they went with Merlins. Reluctantly, they did purchase some of Ford's engines for tanks, where they preformed far better than any other engine at that time. One of the huge benefits of Ford's engine was that they were aluminum mono blocks verses Merlin's separate castings for the crankcase and each cylinder bank. Also, Ford's were DOHC verses Merlin's crappy SOHC. After the war, these engines became the standard for unlimited tractor pulls. They were beasts capable of incredible horsepower.
@@EDesigns_FL Modern automotive engines are made to far higher/tighter tolerances than Packard Merlin's in WW2, when used for standard class racing the way to get far higher performance and reliability over a stock engine is to hand assemble and "blueprint" everything, in other words take something made to Packard standards and then assemble it to Rolls Royce standards. It's how a 300 horsepower engine is able to pass scrutineering the same as a 260 horsepower engine and they are both "identical"
@@andrewallen9993 You are conflating standards and have made some incorrect assumptions. The engines RR built for WWII were built to EXTREMELY LOW STANDARDS, not "blueprinted" to a .001" as is typical today. They were only expected to last a few short flights. Prior to Operation Barbarossa, Germany had a HUGE advantage in the air and the British were rightfully scared that they were going to be overrun like the French. They were just trying to get equipment into combat. To illustrate the awful shortcuts the British made in the Spitfire, the main wing spare is made from STEEL. They took roll formed steel plate and made box sections. Several of these boxes where shoved inside one another and then it was bent to create dihedral and hold them together. Aluminum would have been a much better choice, but it was more expensive than steel and harder to work with. Beyond the weight penalty of using steel, there was another problem with it: rust. It's one of the primary reasons there are so few Spitfires airworthy today. The British had a very different attitude about the general quality of military equipment at that time verses the Germans and Americans. While the Germans were building extremely complicated and intricate equipment like Tiger tanks, the British were mass producing crappy Sterling SMG's. America was making Thompsons and BAR's, which are works of art in comparison to Sterlings. British solders loved our equipment, but their government bitched that it was too expensive. So their government gave them crap. It was the same with their airplanes.
I happened to get to speak with (when I was very young) one of the older owners of Packard. They were so angry that the owner of Cadillac had colluded with congress to renege on their Agreements to repay Packard, so that Packard would go under and Cadillac could steal their patients. Packard was the first with power windows, power steering, power breaks, and power seats. Cadillac stole all of these patients. You didn't cover any of this. Packard made engines for WWII plane engines, in agreement with the US, that they would pay for them after the war, yet after the war, the US never paid a dime. Packard had used all of their money, to make engines to help us win the war, and then got totally screwed as the US Gov just sat back and laughed as Packard went under, and Cadillac step up, steelling many of Packard's patients and got credit for many of their inventions.
Thank you for your reply. This film was actually produced by the Packard Motor Car company. Packard was treated very unfairly. It is a shame they aren't still around.
Ralph DePalma worked with Packard in the 1920's and built a race car with a specially designed 6 cylinder engine which he drove at Indianapolis. It's performance was not as good as was expected and it's fate is unknown to me. I hope Packard or someone preserved it. I notice it was not mentioned in this history. Wat a shame. The racing cars mentioned were adaptions of regular Packard engines.
The old Packard factory on East Grand Boulevard in Detroit sits crumbling in a largely abandoned area of town like an eerie skeleton of a bygone era. If only Packard had merged with Nash, Hudson, and Studebaker. They (AMC) might still be around today.
In the video, it mentions at 17:44 that in the year 1937 the soon to be famous Packard plant bridge was built. That bridge unexpectedly collapsed in the year 2019 (after 82 years), so that's not there anymore but some of the ruins of the long abanded plant still remain - but for how long one wonders.
My two bits worth: If only they could have built a reliable automatic transmission. The "Ultramatic" failed due to poor hydraulic sealing between the case and rotating drum. No sealing rings as we know them. Perhaps a case of NIH. (Not invented here). Back in '58 or so when I was a teen, if I was curious I would ask a shop if I could watch. Most said yes. I hung around a transmission shop where I saw the blue discs in a 56 Hudson with a Packard V8 engine. The reason the discs fried is because the hydraulic pressure leaked away in the bushing. The technician was not impressed,
Packard would have been much better off if they had continued using GM's Hydramatic transmission instead of designing their own which cost the company around 10 million dollars to build and of which they also got sued by Buick. The case was dropped after they stopped making Packards. 😒
“53 days!” 😐 there is no way. What did they eat. Water?! Sleep?! Like really?! Tools 🛠?! Who worked on the cars 🚘. I’m sure they broke down. It’s an American car. Lights.
Lo bueno no dura para siempre Los años de los 50 no fueron buenos para Packard La asociación con Studebaker terminaría con lo inevitable Tanto la gloriosa Studebaker y la poderosa Packard terminarían pasando a la historia ...
When this video was made in the year 1949 celebrating its half-century Packard was at that time still selling more cars than Cadillac, and Lincoln sold a surprising 73,000 models that same year. The next year everything changed in Cadillac's favor and permanently.
@@robj2704 The 1980's were pretty lean years for AMC. Before that they were doing alright. Our family bought a 1976 Pacer, it was a pretty good car. After that in the 80's my parents went European - as did a lot of people.
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