Years ago

["Mahoney, John" <JMahoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Correction: it was -80-, not "75" years that Buick had trouble with Packard's hood.  Time flies when you're having fun remembering old cars.  

>>
You're *TWEAKY* John, that much I'm certain.

Thank you again for a picture of the car that started
me car crazy:

http://mclellansautomotive.com/photos/B5420.jpg
<<

Thank you, Brien, for reading (and thankfully, I'm not yet bone-creaky), but thank the longest-serving AMC style guru for your Packard epiphany: Richard Teague put that 1955-up face on the 1951-up John Reinhart body.

Remember that Packard was the only American Independent to build its own automatic.  Poor little old Packard even beat rich big modern GM in that game of highest [for the late '40s, at least] auto technology: Packard's torque converter provided higher multiplication than did Hydramatic plus a final direct-drive locked the transmission driveline.  After the final shift, a torque converter was unneeded.  Straight-through power with no slippage.

Read up on it if you want to.  After all, it's a part of AMC history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramatic


Leaks and creaks?  Sure!  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

When America's "finest" most "fabulous" ride hit the skids,

http://mclellansautomotive.com/photos/B6600.jpg
http://mclellansautomotive.com/photos/B6600-2.jpg

the ride of America's most famous fine-car maker was over. 

On November 3, 1955, the 56th Series' Packards (the Patrician, 400, and Caribbean) were introduced.  Packard built the most powerful V-8 engine in America.  310 horsepower and 405 foot-pounds; Ultramatic as standard; standard (w/OD) as an option.  They would be the last real Packard cars.

On November 3, 1955, the Clippers (Deluxe, Super, and Custom; Panama and Constellation) and Brien's Executive (which supplanted Clipper Custom on March 5, 1956) were introduced.  320 cubic inches became 352: 240-hp and 350-lbs.  Twin Ultramatic became electrically selected by the push of a button.  They would be the final fine cars Detroit Packard would build.

But they were a failure.  They would cause S-P to kill Packard two years after AM had cause to kill Hudson.  Independent American fine-car making was finally dying.  There would only be a Big-3.  The best was not good enough.  The biggest was the key.  

AFA selection, remember Cord's?  On November 2, 1935, the New York Auto Show opened at the Grand Central Palace.  Cord 810, designed in a hurry by an AMC Pacer owner-to-be, was the hit of the show.  At $3,000, it was three times the cost of the average 1935 car.  AMA-required 100 examples hadn't yet been built.  The show car transmissions didn't have gears in their cases.  But Cord 810 was among the most coveted cars in the world. It became one of the most influential on the future.  It would become a Full Classic.  And, if we read more than standard AMC history, it would influence the classic AMX --- to an interesting degree.

But it was a failure.  Deliveries could not even begin until February of 1936.  The body suffered from shaking and vibrations.  The transmissions would suddenly slip out of gear (or overheat and seize up.)  The engines were prone to vapor lock.  And yes, the Cord 810s were considered leaky.

Leaky or creaky, tweaky or freaky?  That's what's fun about automobiles.    

AFA as how fine was America's Packard, I recently saw some of those PBS
WWII films.  Everyone has surely seen MacArthur's Cadillac in Japan and Eisenhower's Packard throughout Europe.  Impressive autos in olive drab livery.  Most AMC fans have seen FDR in a Jeep also, although it wasn't his usual set of wheels.  Some of you may even have seen some Nash cars done up as staff vehicles: memories of a time when America's leadership saved a world for the future and America's might seemed invincible.  On this Veterans Day, that's definitely an American era worth remembering.

One scene; however, may not be remembered, but it's also worthy.  When Hirohito drove to meet his Supreme Council (the Japanese Imperial war council) on August 9, 1945 --- a very long meeting on the question of surrender (which he did, to MacArthur, on August 15th), his God-endowed body rode in one of the palace Packards.  Not in one of the newest ones, the 1935 Model 1202 limousine now in a different Imperial Palace, in Las Vegas), but in an older town car.  When "His Majesty the Son of Heaven" rode to debate his fate and our future; to decide if and when America's technology, power, and war supremacy would be acknowledged by Japan, he did so in one of the finest cars by one of the oldest makers of America.  He didn't go in his Rolls-Royce or Mercedes-Benz.  He went in a Packard. And he did by his own volition: Packard still was America's finest make.

Today, the General's old olive drab Cadillac is in an Atsugi [Japan] bar (named "MacArthur's Garage"), his shiny black Cadillac, after appearing in a Madonna <gag> movie, is in a museum in the UK) and the finest cars by Cadillac in America --- if those are what we are supposed to pretend transport the US president --- are merely warmed-over, newly face-lifted versions of old SDVs, blinged up with gigantic shiny grilles as DTS for Fiddy Cent, for you or for your dad.  'Sclade may be yesterday; Bentley may be for Paris and denting; a Benz may be a Magnum with a higher MSRP, but today, the Emperor has clothes, and no need for a Packard, for even the most "American-contented" of Toyotas is a Packard-quality limousine.

I saw an elderly couple in a 2006 Avalon Limited recently; he, so old, he nearly hit a pedestrian and almost sideswiped two parked cars before coming to a stop.  She, wearing chic fall fashion in the best of taste, tottered off to her errand while he waited in lap of luxury. (His foot on [LED] stoplight pedal.)  Dealership name on glistening white oh-so-subtly-spoilered trunklid was that of a once-Buick-only, Buick-Toyota-Scion (and more) store.  I wondered if this was their first sin against GM, or if they'd been buying Japanese cars for years.  They surely were Buick types had today been back when Packards and Ambassadors were sold.  But now, when the finer cars on America's roads might possibly be built in Japan, they drive (and the Emperor rides) in Toyota.  No Duesenbergs, no Packards, no Ambassadors, no Buicks are required now.  1945 or 2005?    
    
As we remember cars and wars, past and present, change in the world of auto history is always interesting.  The first Hydramatic transmission GM developed had eight speeds.  Back in about 1945.  The next Lexus LS 460 will have the world's most advanced automatic transmission.  Eight speeds.  The US President's Cadillac ('06 street version) has but four.

Then an Emperor chose a Packard; now America has no clothes: what the future of cars, countries, wars, and the world will be, no one knows.