O Scale Motor Vehicle Chronicle Aug.15

I really need to get more Packards.  Nothing says 'the '50s' quite as well as a car brand that didn't make it out of them.

I have only one Packard on the layout - this, which is owned by Nick and Nora Charles.  

Here are 2 oldies.

Western Models Darrin Super 8

Minimarque Caribbean

An addition to this week's O scale Motor Vehicle Chronicle

in 1956 Clipper became a separate make. Packard wanted to use the Packard name exclusively on their top of the line cars.

1956 Clipper Hardtop

1956 Packard 400 Hardtop.

1958 Packard Hawk

Studebaker-Packard was almost out of money. They built Studebaker based Packards to keep the name alive while trying to secure financing to tool an all new Packard.

Later they considered assigning the Packard name on the Avanti.

Richard E  thanks for posting this.  as a car nut i enjoy all your posts on these cars and i look forward to the next weeks edition. only down side your costing me money trying to buy some of these.

Just gorgeous.

I was getting cases of those 1940 Rextoy Packards from a wholesaler and selling them in train shows. And then Rextoy vanished, after putting out small brochures promising

a number of new, never delivered, marques.  My dad's last car was a 1938 Packard

110 touring coupe (two door trunk coach).  This was, I think THE cheapest model, but

is a very rare car to find, for most Packard buyers chose business coupes, at least, or

four door sedans, than the coaches favored by young families.  My closest foray to

owning a Packard was as a first car, when a used red two door 1950? with overdrive was located just before leaving on a vacation, with the intent to buy it upon return.  It

was gone.  That mistake is still lamented because the car bought instead was a piece

of junk.  Packard, IMO, made two major errors:  the styling in the fifties period, a

seeming carryover from the Chrysler Airflow, "bathtub Nash" era (error), and in

carrying on with a sidevalve engine when OHV V-8's, from Olds, Cadillac, Stude,

and Chrysler were getting the raves.  And they did not get the bugs out of the V-8

they finally fielded...my great uncle, who once swore by and drove Hudsons, switched to Chevrolet after his last one with the Packard V-8 was problematic, and then Hudson

vanished.  Sure would like to have that choice today...but they would have had to

keep producing the 110/120 low priced line, and be diversified out of the luxury field, to have made it into the 1960's.  Like open cars, I am careful to have only a few

luxury Packards on my layout, or my parking lots would be full of them and Pierce-

Arrows, Stutzes, Marmon 16's, etc.

Just think what it would cost you to purchase real ones.

An additional bit of info from one train/car nut to the rest:  The Russian Gov't purchased the dies to the 41 from Packard to expedite their Zil's production.  It happened again post war.

Yes!  I have a model of that ZIL - but its gone AWOL.  I can't find it.   

This thread is motivating me to get my 1953 Packard road worthy again!

Oh gosh.  Think about it first.  We had a restored '53 Coupe DeVille briefly - painted and trimmed out just like the car my grandfather had from new.  So pretty.  So many memories.  Such a totally  . . . bad car.  It handled like a drunken pig, stopped in sort of a straight line in only about twice the distance you hoped, had a massive, heavy V8 that could actually get it up to highways speeds if you gave it 15 or 20 seconds, and had power steering that left you worried about what direction it was pointed.  It  demanded a gallon of premium gas every 14 miles, and produced enough eye-burning exhaust to smoother a herd of goats. 

We learned just to leave some memories undisturbed.

Gee, I've driven '23,'28, '29, '34. '36, and '40 cars plus driven over the country in

a '54 Chevy, all of which, I think, including the '23 Dodge with reverse shift pattern

and two wheel brakes, drove better than that, and none of them were "luxury" cars.

And some had mechanical brakes that have to be equalized.  Of course, I wonder how

stepping back into my '60 and '66 cars with big V-8's and no power brakes or steering would feel.  I'm probably spoiled.  The '40 Chevy was close to my grandfather's car,

with the memories.

Back in the late 70's I had to pass on a 55 Packard convertible because I had no place to keep it.  I knew the person who bought it, he was complemented on the restoration--except it was not restored it was orrigional.  I lived inan apartment at the time and I was not going to leave it sitting in the parking lot.

I, too, would like to know, for sure, where that Packard V-8 went, but I thought

it was used in Hudson's, briefly.  I would like to also know where the Chevy

348 (had one) and the 409, larger version, went, or was that nowhere but GM

archives?

Charley Mason of Nash was working towards a merger of Nash Hudson Packard & Studebaker. Packard supplied V8 engines for 1955 and 1956 Nashs and Hudsons. The merger ran into problems and by late 1956 AMC offered their own V8 in some models.

The 352 C.I. Packard V8 was used in the '56 Studebaker Golden Hawk.

Chevrolet made a 427 version of that engine as well. I believe it was used as a truck engine for a while and has been long retired.

The 348/409 Chevy was retired in the mid 60's. The 327, a vastly superior engine, was pushed out to 350 rendering the 348 obsolete, and the famous 409 ("She's real fine, my four-oh nine") was superseded by the 427 series, a completely different design. The 396 was the same engine as the 427, slightly reduced in displacement to comply with a GM policy that engines over 400 c.i. would not be used in the Chevelle, Tempest, etc. mid-sized bodies. This policy was later reversed. The 427 was later expanded to 454 c.i. for uses as varied as Corvettes and armored Suburbans (I used to ride in those a lot). This engine was sometimes known to automotive writers as the "Porcupine" because the valves stuck out of the head at odd angles. This was done by GM engineers to get the efficiency benefits of a hemispherical combustion chamber ("Hemi") without the extra expense. 

Richard E~

A technical question.  How many of the cars you run across actually have a steerable front end as opposed to two rigid axles?  I was thinking about making some o gauge cars that operate like the Faller HO car system and I really don't want to build up a movable front axle.

Regards,

Lou N

Very few.  And those that do have assemblies with too much friction, in my opinion, to operate dependably as does the Faller system (which I had in N gauge a few years ago).  I played with some of them and could not get them to work well.  You'd be better off taking the Ackermann steering mechanisms out of remote control cars in the 1;43 scale range.  Some of them have operating Ackermann type steering that works well.  I got them to work okay.

The 396/427 engine is a different engine from the 348/409 based 427. Few were built.

It sure was: it didn't have a strong enough bottom end  like the 396/427/454, and it certainly didn't breath as well.  

Thanks Lee.....

Somehow I knew you'd be the one with the answer.  I should have just asked directly.

There was a demo at the NMRA convention in Cleveland a few weeks ago from Miniature Motor Works LLC which is part of SMARTT Trains in FLorida.  They build their own cars with IR remote.  This reminded me to play again with the autos.  Somehow I am thinking your method of Super Streets is the solution.

Regards,

Lou N