I was at the Salem Fly-In at McNary Field this weekend, both to examine the Lacey Lady and to see what else was there. A B-25 named ‘Grumpy’ in RAF colors, A 1937 DC-3, and several single engine birds were giving rides to customers…and an unexpected bonus. A car show. I perused the usual selection of machinery; Mustangs, Camaros, a Malibu or two. But there was one very special car that no one was really paying attention to. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you an unrestored 1939 Packard Twelve.
I wasn’t able to locate the owner but they did have this handy little story for the curious.
(cribbed from the ‘Net) This is a Series 1507. 175 bhp, 473 cu. in. 67-degree V-12 engine, three-speed synchromesh manual transmission, independent front suspension with coil springs, live rear axle with semi-elliptic leaf springs, and four-wheel, vacuum-assisted hydraulic drum brakes. Wheelbase: 139″
Ironically, many of the greatest automobiles of the classic era arose from the depths of the Great Depression. The Packard Twelve had few peers and was acknowledged as one of the finest automobiles of its time, and Packard’s relentless and careful refinement ensured that these hand-built “Senior” Packard models continue to rank among the most highly prized and sought-after classics today.
By the 1930s, the Packard Motor Car Company already possessed a wealth of experience with 12-cylinder engines. Their first, the Twin Six of 1916-1923, had become almost synonymous with the genre and was phased out in favor of the simpler and more advanced Single Eight that was introduced in 1924. While the Single Eight set new standards for smoothness and agility during the late 1920s, the rekindled multi-cylinder wars had resumed in earnest by the onset of the 1930s in Detroit. Cadillac introduced both its V-16 in 1930 and its V-12 in 1931, while Auburn, Marmon, Pierce-Arrow and even Franklin had their own 12-cylinder engines in the wings for 1932.
Resurrecting the “Twin Six” name, Packard met this new competitive threat with a completely new engine. A large-displacement V-12 design with a 67-degree cylinder-bank angle, development of this new power unit was the happy by-product of an aborted front-wheel drive development project. As released, the new Twelve initially displaced 445 cubic inches, 20 more than the old Twin Six, while developing 75 percent more power. In 1933, the model name was simplified to “Packard Twelve,” and two years later, engine displacement rose to 473 cubic inches, and output now climbed accordingly to 175 brake horsepower.
Overall, the Packard Twelve was a conservative car with finely tailored lines, elegant appointments, a refined chassis and a whisper-quiet, 12-cylinder engine. All-new bodies introduced for 1935 offered true envelope styling with the body, hood, fenders and running boards incorporated into a smooth design. In addition, increased horsepower and improvements in suspension and steering, along with improved engine mounts, provided ease of operation and dramatically improved passenger comfort.
Even during the height of the Depression, the Packard Twelve sold for approximately $5,000 to $6,000, the cost of at least 10 new popular-priced cars at the time.
I like the subdued Art-Deco chromework.
Dig the political license plate circa 1940. I’m not sure how well Wilkie would have rallied the nation after the events of 1941, but I’ll leave that exercise to writers like Harry Turtledove.
The detailing on the hubcap is exquisite.
I wasn’t able to get into the interior for a decent shot, so I stuck my camera inside the open window and snapped a few photos.
The original paint has held up well.
The V-12 motor with Stromberg carbs.
That’s an imposing looking grill.
Suicide doors are very cool, and look at the condition of the paint around the handles. Did they wear gloves to open the doors?
The Packard Cormorant bows and thanks you for visiting!
How could anyone NOT pay attention to THAT? Wonderful, marvelous!
Especially since most of the restored Mustangs and Camaros were probably counterfeits cobbled up from base models to simulate high-end ones.
+1 There are no cloned Packard’s because they are True classics. Mechanical works of art.
The last of the Grand luxury Packards, before they started to sell lower priced models and became an “also ran” car company.
Their downfall was losing sales to Cadillac and Lincoln in their once prominent domain… The luxury car segment.
The suicidal move for Packard, was the merger with Studebaker. Pathetic, for a once noble car company that ranked with Pierce-Arrow and Duesenberg.
Also, that’s a swan not a cormorant, if you check Packard’s later iterations of it’s bird ornaments. 😉
The swan also appears on the Packard crest marque. Also love their Goddess hood ornament.
Love the pics, how could anyone NOT notice that timeless piece of grandiose Americana?
I guessed it was a cormorant because of their newsletter that popped up during my research for this. I also goofed on the number, it should be a 1707, not a 1507 as stated in the text.
NOT a swan, it’s referred to in some Packard literature as a Pelican, or a Cormorant (related to the Pelican), but it was never referred to as a Swan. Growing up in the late 50s, early 60s, my father had an affinity for the 50s Packards, and accumulated over 200. Never, in all my experience dealing with Packards over the years, have I ever heard it called a Swan.
Ditto; it’s not a swan. it’s most often referred to as a cormorant.
Packard had been selling lower priced cars throughout the 1920s. The Single Six of the 1920s was the pioneer of what we would today call the “near luxury” market. The LaSalle was introduced in response to the success of the Packard Single Six.
The One Twenty debuted for 1935, and kept Packard in business. Production of the “senior” Packards had been declining throughout the 1930s. It was the same story over at Cadillac and Lincoln. If Packard hadn’t brought out the One Twenty in 1935, it probably would have gone out of business by 1940. Packard could not survive by selling 3-4,000 ultra-luxury cars annually for the rapidly dwindling carriage trade.
Packard’s mistake was not successfully countering the Cadillac Series 60, which redefined the luxury market in the late 1930s. Packard also stuck with its conservative styling themes for too long, while Cadillac and Lincoln were coming up with more modern, streamlined looks for their cars.
The Packard Clipper was the venerable firm’s response to the trend, and it was a success. Unfortunately, it debuted in early 1941, and its momentum was destroyed when the production of civilian passenger cars was suspended in the wake of Pearl Harbor.
The LaSalle was one of four companion cars that GM brought out. After World War One, Sloan took over leadership at GM. The was a panic (now called a recession) which was not good for the automobile industry. Sloan had GM’s business model looked over and only Cadillac and Buick were making any money. The line up was considered to be a mess. Oldsmobile and Buick’s companion cars were short lived. Pontiac took over Oakland. The LaSalle lasted over 10 years, but customers looking at Packard saw they could get a real Packard for the same money as the LaSalle, which wasn’t a real Cadillac.
Packard, Peerless and Pierce Arrow all had cars priced below Cadillac’s low end in the 20’s. Lincoln and Pierce Arrow also had cars priced well over Cadillac’s high end.
I think the LaSalle was to keep Cadillac in the high priced end, while allowing the LaSalle to compete at a lower price. It was supposed to fill in the price gap between the low end of Cadillac and the high end of Buick.
Ultimately Packard’s problem was that they did not have a good low priced car to help the luxury end. By low priced, I mean something like a Ford or Chevy.
Well said Geeber. I’ve come to the conclusion that nobody could compete with GMs pocketbook or Harley Earls styling. After these cars went away they didn’t have a good second act. They concentrated on down market after the war when they should have gone high end-low volume due to pent up demand. I always wondered if they had merged with Studebaker in 1937 instead of 1956 would they have survived longer?
Good morning!
Simply wonderful. Packards have a dignified air about them nothing else can even approximate.
Especially true of the senior models like this.
I think I saw that Packard at the Toronto classic car auction last fall. The story behind it sounds familiar. Will have to look through my photos from the auction.
Also, that B25 Mitchell is from the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ontario.
I must’ve been thinking of this one. Not the same car.
http://www.collectorcarproductions.com/lot-details.php?RefNum=r083&EventID=88
Geez, I’m 0 for 2 today. The CWHM B-25 was formerly known as Grumpy but is now “Hot Gen!”. Grumpy is a different B-25 owned by the Historic Flight Foundation in Mukilteo, WA.
Beautiful. Good to see a car that has always been loved and stayed so original.
Fantastic. Maybe they just wore gloves all the time. (and hats)
From an instance I thought you were talking about the air show in Gaylord, Mi as there is a B-25 too plus a C-47. A ’30s Buick showed up too
Love those Mitchells, I didn’t know any survivors had RAF livery. Just make sure you have ear? protection if you ever fly in one!
Tips & tricks of B-25 operations in the Southwest Pacific:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjA9v4xPZPA
Film was aimed at Europe veterans redeployed there.
They rescued 18 B-25s to film in Catch-22. If you’ve never seen the takeoff scene, you need to:
https://youtu.be/At88Fcdgv0g
That Packard is all kinds of awesome! A cool find.
My uncle was a flight trainer on B-25’s during WW2. They have a few bright moments in history but are seldom mentioned.
Bob
I almost saw that many takeoff. The only difference was that there were 14 on the flight line along with Mustangs, a Sea Fury, a Bearcat, a Hellcat, a Wildcat, an Avenger, a Corsair, a Texan and a DC-3 to name a few. The Wednesday before the Saturday show all the planes flew over the USS Hornet in Alameda in salute.
That Saturday the field was open to view the planes and later that afternoon they were going to takeoff for a fly over show. The crowd stood no more than 150 feet behind the 11 that took part in the show started their engines. I was engulfed in clouds of blue smoke. Once in the air each B-25 did a 100 foot fly over of the airstrip for pictures by the crowd.
https://youtu.be/Sgg3oQu2o8w
Excellent, thanks. That really shows off its gull-wing, a revision of the prototype design.
Don’t forget the Doolittle Raid takeoff footage, too. It was the only medium bomber able to do this.
Beautiful looking car. I’ve always preferred pre-WWII Packarďs.
Those prewar senior Packards are mesmerizing to me. Finding one that is original is icing on cake. Such a beautiful body style.
With that huge displacement V12, I cannot imagine that the car got a lot of use during the fuel rationing years of the War. That kind of displacement and weight with 1930s carburetion probably makes for eye-poppingly bad fuel mileage.
Cadillac’s V16 could get 8 to 9 MPG @60-65 MPH. I would think the Packard’s V12 would be around 8 or so. My Grandmother’s 1950 Buick with Dynaflow did not get much over 12 MPG I don’t think.
Wow that is a NICE car! And fitting to be there given how many aircraft engines Packard built.
Beautiful! Should I assume it was a factory body? Many cars of that class could be had with 3rd-party coachwork.
There are a fair number of flyable B-25s & B-17s on the airshow circuit. The Fortress, with its small bomb bay & large radio compartment, was practical VIP transport like the Packard; MacArthur had one (his car was a Cadillac V-16).
I`m speechless, everybody else said it all.
The Mid-America Aviation Museum in Reading, PA has a flying B-25 Mitchell. They have a terrific show in early June each year that includes period vehicles of all kinds.
Attached is a pic of my Dad at the 2011 meet, pointing to the Seabee logo on a small dozer that the NCB4 re-enactment group had on the field, with the museum’s B-25 behind it. The dozer is a meme that hearkens back to “The Fighting Seabees”, a wartime propaganda movie starring John Wayne in which he meets his demise when he drives a large dozer into a tank of fuel in an enemy camp.
Dad was in a Seabee maintenance unit during the last two years of the War.
Fifi, the B-29 was also at the meet. I have some video of her landing. What a sound those big round engines make!
Fifi flew over my friend’s house yesterday in northern NJ. She was supposed to be in Nashua NH, so I don’t know what she was doing down here, especially on a weekend with lots of rain. She is scheduled to arrive at the New England Air Museum at Bradley Airport, above Hartford, CT on Wednesday, June 24 so you folks near there should watch the skies!
She will be available to view from Thursday the 25th through Sunday, the 28th of June, along with a Curtis Helldiver and a Beechcraft Expeditor.
Any CC’ers in the NE/NY area who like vintage aircraft should see this amazing plane.
The museum has some wonderful planes, including a couple of beautiful Sikorsky flying boats, one of which was once owned by actress Maureen O’Hara (the love interest in “The Quiet Man”, another Wayne vehicle). They also have, outside in the elements, an imaginative Burnelli lifting body aircraft, which, If I were to win the lottery, I would give a couple of million to restore.
As for the total 1939 Packard Seventeenth Series Twelve, Model 1707 on the 134-3/8″ wheelbase and Model 1708 on the 139-3/8″ wheelbase production: 446 units. This magnificent original example is a Model 1707, Body Style No. 1236 Club Sedan, five passenger, Factory Price: $4,255, Shipping Weight: 5590.
Lucky you were to find such a rare, elegant, wonderfully-preserve example of the last of the hand-built grand motorcars from the last years such cars would be produced in American.
Yeah real nice cars in their day I had a look round one at Art Deco weekend probably restored but beggars cant be choosers
You look at that Packard and then at the stuff coming off the line today and you can see how far we have fallen when it comes to workmanship. Yes, I know it’s a different world, but can you imagine the feeling of accomplishment those old craftsmen had when they built one of those?
Jay Leno said some Packard enthusiasts believe that even by the ’30s, quality had slipped & that they were at their best during the Teens. There’s just no pleasing some people.
There is a small herd of junior Packards working as tour hire cars in Napier right now, they are subject to biannual safety inspections for commercial hire cars like any taxi cab, quality cant have been too bad these cars though restored are still working 70 years after they rolled off the line.
And this was being ignored at a car show? Staggering!
Lovely car!
Absolutely amazing that it’s in original condition. That shows dedication! And that the original owner knew exactly what a special machine he had, and gave it the care it deserved over the years. Just a magnificent automobile.
When I was a boy, my dad, knowing of my fascination with cars, picked me up after school one afternoon and drove me to a house in my grandmother’s neighborhood, saying only that he had a surprise for me. When we pulled into the driveway, I saw a man polishing the chrome on an immaculate mid-30’s sedan, regally imposing and sporting dual sidemounts and a lovely shade of Norfolk gray. Dad introduced us, and the gentleman explained that what I was by this time ogling unabashedly was a 1934 Packard. He said it had a V-12 engine.
Me, with all my 10-year-old engineering confidence:
“Can we hear it run?”
Him, in gentle reply:
“It is running.”
That was my introduction to Packards.