I’ve seen a lot of these vintage dealer promotional films over the years for GM, Ford, and Chrysler: Indeed, YouTube serves up a steady supply to me in their “Recommended Videos.” This is the first one I’ve seen from Packard, which makes is a real gem.
This film is actually a companion to the 1956 Packard Preventive Safety brochure (see link at bottom). It spends a little time covering the push-button automatic transmission and limited-slip differential, but the star of the show, commanding most of the screen time, is the Torsion-Level suspension, and rightly so. Strictly speaking, none of these are actually safety features in the modern sense, but at the time seat belts and padded dashboards were just starting to appear, and modern safety features like airbags and ABS were still far in the future.
The setup of this film, like most of these period dealer movies, is pretty thin. A couple is visiting an older man who may or may not be a Packard dealer (it is never made clear), but in any case, is certainly a Packard enthusiast. As the conversation inevitably turns to torsion beam suspension, the older gentleman just so happens to have a functioning scale model to demonstrate it. Even better yet, his friend who stops by just happens to be an engineer who works for Packard to further explain it. What are the odds?
In all seriousness, though, I found this movie to be quite informative. Packard released its four-wheel torsion bar suspension in 1955, and while I was aware of its existence, I must confess to otherwise being somewhat ignorant of its underlying principles. I had read that it was superior to that of most other cars on the road (at least at the time), but I never really knew how it actually worked, so the video was actually somewhat informative in this regard. Plus it is nice to see all these vintage Packards being put through their paces in a manner that no modern owner would dream of doing.
I must confess, the visual comparison of a conventionally sprung 1954 Packard being chased by a 1956 model with Torsion-Level suspension over a rough road course makes a pretty compelling case for the torsion beam suspension. I certainly regret not having the opportunity to have ever driven or ridden in a Packard so equipped.
One last nifty feature of the Torsion-Level suspension was the electric auto-leveling motor, demonstrated by the goofy kid loading golf clubs into the trunk at the end of the film. Let’s just say that the owner in the movie was a much better sport about kids climbing over his car than I would be.
Both the push-button gear selector and the torsion beam suspension would be soon copied by Chrysler (albeit with torsion beams only on the front wheels, and not all four wheels as on the Packard), showing that Packard still had a little innovation left in it, even as its clock was rapidly winding down.
Related Reading
1956 Packard Preventive Safety Brochure
Curbside Classic: 1956 Packard Patrician – Please Proceed to The Lifeboats
Even though I wasn’t alive when these cars were new, I’ve always wondered what it would have been like to be able to afford a luxury car from the late 1950s through early 1960s.
How impressed some people would be with the power and luxury features: power windows/locks/seats, A/C, cruise control, automatic headlights, etc. Not to mention the engineering developments.
For some of the old-timers of the era, these must have seemed pretty futuristic.
Interesting. I’ve been seeing videos from our European brethren, about BMC’s ‘Hydrolastic’ suspension and Citroen’s ‘Hydropneumatic’. Looks like similar principles, but theirs uses fluid.
Is there any similarity with a Firestone developed (rear) suspension system called Marsh Mellow, which was said to have been intended for Checker’s stillborn Galva II project?
Fwiw in Alex Moulton’s book, there was a story where they received a development contract to convert the GM X Car to Hydragas suspension that while working very well proved to be to complicated for GM to build due to being locked into conventional Detroit Groupthink.
I remain convinced that Packard was the one independent that still retained some serious engineering chops right up to the end. A new V8, the torsion-level system and the twin-traction diff would have been a big deal coming from any of the big companies in a two year span, but Packard did it. John DeLorean was part of the team doing the engineering on these cars, only moving to Pontiac when it became clear that he would have to move to South Bend, Indiana to stay with S-P.
Has anyone else ever linked the front and rear wheels to a single torsion bar since these Packards? It seems like a sound idea and I have read that it worked well in practice, but have no actual experience.
The 57 Packard must have been a tremendous letdown for those who spent time around these. At least the Twin-Traction diff survived the transition.
A man who lived down the street obtained one of these in two tone green. He worked in a bank so I assumed it was a repossession. I used to note it passing by in the night with the C pillar light lit. Since the Packard had some notable engineering advancements,I have always wondered how other luxury cars would have compared with it, but I cannot remember reading any road tests or other evaluations.
A most dismal end to a great motorcar.
Those aren’t C pillars the lights are on, but rather the rear fenders (2 door) or rear doors (4 door), aimed at the front door entry/exit area to illuminate the ground in that area. Their addition was part of Dick Teague’s 1955 facelift that disguised the 1951 bodies so well they looked almost like all-new designs. The body originally had pontoon style rear fenders that had fallen out of style by ’55, so Teague cleverly reshaped and restyled them to disguise that element, adding a vertical vent similar to what Cadillac used at the time, and those lights helped made that bump-out look like it was meant to be there all along.
I found myself mesmerized by the woman’s hat with attached netting over her eyes.
Yes, the hat with netting was a thing in the 50s. I’m pretty sure my mother had at least one like that in the video.
Consumer Reports, September 1955, compared a Packard Clipper Custom with a more expensive Cadillac 62. No surprise…they disliked both of them, in many respects. They summed up: “CU would place the Clipper Custom ahead of the Cadillac in having better power steering, a better driving position, and better forward vision…[T]he rear seat is at a more comfortable height than the Cadillac’s. At its best, the Clipper Custom is a better riding car than the Cadillac—or any other car, for that matter—but the Cadillac’s overall ride pattern is more satisfactory. The Clipper Custom is capable of moving off from traffic lights without jerking, though with uninspiring acceleration; the Cadillac starts with a jerk, but with a lot more pep.”
“It must be said that compared with guiding the non-power-steered 1955 Plymouth or Chevrolet V-8s, steering the Cadillac is an out-and-out affliction. As to undesirable body shaking on rough roads, the cheapest Rambler is more staunch. As to control at speed over that unexpected big bump, the Hudson Hornet or any Chrysler Corporation car will protect the back seat passenger’s pate where the Cadillac fails to do so. Several transmissions are smoother in run-of-the-mill service than the Hydra-Matic in the Cadillac. What the Cadillac does offer is a roomy machine, with top-notch stamina, delivering smoothly upon demand and with outstanding absence of noise, a tremendous amount of oomph and wasting a minimum of its premium fuel in the process.”
The Packard came off against the Cadillac better than I would have expected. But then it was Consumer Reports and not Motor Trend or Car Life.
Wondering about the ride comments in this CR review in relation to the main article. I’m not sure but I think I read somewhere that the 55 Clipper did not have the torsion level ride, instead carrying on with the old suspension. Also, I wonder why they compared Clipper to the Caddy. An Olds would be more in line.
Not to mention the only independent to engineer its own automatic a few years before with Ultradrive.
Great find. I particularly like the upscale but not-quite rich suburb at the end. And the “club” could be any curved driveway, and probably is – you never see the building.
Looks like this was filmed in and around Chicago – the UP/MILW passenger train on the bridge, Lake Shore drive with its movable divider bars, and I’d bet that estate is in Lake Forest or Libertyville.
Pity Chrysler didn’t buy them after the war.
Great to see the cars in action, the styling works better when they are on the move. I was a bit surprised to see how happy they were to knock their own products from years previous, planned obsolescence in action I suppose…
Yeah, I’m surprised they used older Packards rather than current Cadillacs for that role. Old Packards weren’t their competition.
Owned a 56 Clipper Super 4 Dr for several years in the early 80’s… Super ride… surprising cornering ability and general suspension control… but tended to exhibit a weird yawl from front to back/back to front especially at speed (i.e. Merritt Parkway (raceway of the “CT Gold Coast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merritt_Parkway)….
That’s a great video… saw it a while back… there are a few more available on YouTube, too…
Too bad about Packard… The dealer network should have picked up Mercedes instead of Studebaker…. the blending of the two (M-B and Packard) products perhaps along with Volvo might have been awesome… (or not!)
Back then, Studebaker also distributed the smaller and cheaper DKW which was owned by Mercedes at this time. DKWs were nasty little front-wheel drive cars with 3-cylinder 2-stroke engines. DKW ended up being sold to Volkswagen in 1964.
VW phased in a new 4-cylinder and a revived a long-dormant name, “Audi” to attach to the cars with the 4-cylinder engine. The DKW name was phased out along with the 3-cylinder engines. Audi would evolve into a credible competitor to M-B and BMW.
They could have had MB, Packard and DKW/Audi.
I cant imagine the “electronic” push button shifter or the in-the-splash-zone leveling motor lasting very long in service. Still, I have to give them credit for innovative engineering nearly to the end.
The leveling system proved quite robust. The electronic push button Ultramatic was troublesome though, especially as it aged. Using this design though made Packard confidant enough to put the controls in their usual position on the right side of the steering wheel, unworried that a curious child in the passenger seat could cause havoc by pressing random buttons. It also allowed for a Park button, while the purely mechanical Mopar push button transmissions had to rely on a separate slide control.
“Pardon my female mind”- ( Don’t worry though, I decide which car we purchase and thanks for the test drive.) !”
All and all a very elegant examples of suspension design. The starter motor device to pre load the bars for leveling must have affected the ride a little. Was the system dampened with standard style shock absorbers?
“Hey John – I’ve been showing this wonderful Guadalcanal veteran and his wife how torsion bar handling lets today’s fastest sport cars handle speeds up to 120 miles per hour in this fascinating movie. Why don’t you take them over to that wall of etches of Turn of the Century Packards that are in those frames, take them down one by one, and describe how those cars handled driving before we had paved roads?”
“You could tell them that story”
“Hell yes I could, but you actually stretch this film out another 30 minutes by going into painful detail about your personal involvement in designing Packards starting in 1930, and going year by year until we go out of business next year!”
So much fun here. Despite reference to the “female mind,” this film seems pretty progressive for the mid-50’s. The woman is fully included in the conversation and asks a question that anyone not an engineer or mechanic might have asked. And having her drive three men to the country club was not something often seen at the time. I was a little kid in the 1950’s and well remember how rare (and somewhat threatening) it was for men to be driven by women. My aunt regularly drove while my uncle was the passenger due to his poor eyesight and penchant for drinking far more than she did in the evening and he took it on the chin for this activity a number of times.
I don’t recall that Chrysler took the idea for pushbutton drive from Packard’s lead. Both systems were introduced in 1956. And wasn’t Chrysler’s system mechanical rather than “electronic” right on through 1964? IIRC Chrysler’s system was pretty failsafe but Packard’s was a problem.
Packard also sometimes featured women driving with a male passenger in their advertising, rare for the time unless she was obviously dropping off or picking him up from the office.
The film could have been shortened by about 1/3 and made more effective by dropping most of the dialogue before the model of the chassis gets rolled out. Only then does it really get moving and become surprisingly informative and easy to understand compared to most such films.
See my earlier response re: Packard vs. Chrysler pushbutton transmissions.
The image of women in 1940’s/wartime films was often one of competence and independence – many were working of course, and in critical industries. It sometimes seems that the 1950’s slammed the brakes on that, and shifted into reverse. I think hiring practices changed after the war, to give more of the available jobs back to men & encourage women back into the home. Must have been a frustrating experience for some.
Packard unfortunately didn’t have a road ahead, safe or otherwise, in 1956. I hope that engineer who was working on ideas for the next 5 or 10 years of Packards found another job,
Did traffic lights really used to work the way the one at 6:20 does, with both the green and yellow lights on at the same time, before just the yellow briefly then red?
This car seems to have both a perimeter frame and an X member, plus the fancy suspension bits connecting the front and rear wheels, plus the levelizer motor. How narrow were the footwells? Or did it not have footwells? I’ve seen a more complicated version of the Torsion Level suspension that I recall was planned for the revamped ’57 models had the funding been there, but can’t find it.
Traffic lights within the city limits of Pittsburgh, PA used to have a green and yellow, then yellow only, before the red light came on (both sequences were of equal duration). The idea is that it would give drivers advance warning of the red, but as you can imagine, some drivers took advantage of that to speed up!
This pattern went away in 1972 or so, at the same time center lines (and left edge lines on divided highways) were mandated to be yellow nationwide.
In the UK, the sequence is green – amber – red – red & amber – green.
Red and amber should be the driver’s signal to release the handbrake and engage first gear. Not to accelerate forward (with a cursory glance at crossing traffic) in order to get ahead of everyone else, absolutely not!
Well… I watched that all through.
I want to buy one now! Pity I’m 60 odd years too late
Packard, a subject near and dear to me…although I have yet to ride or drive in one with torsion level!
The push button shifter can be rebuilt to have many foibles fixed. And as mentioned above, the TL system proved itself over time.
All of the independents should have gotten together and each company built exactly one vehicle for the new American Motors Corporation!
The Packard = Luxury
The Studebaker = Engineering and performance (supercharged 289!)
The Hudson = Posh Touring car
The Kaiser = Middle class family car
The Rambler = Affordable and reliable entry level
The Willys = Jeep / Pickup truck
Perhaps it might have worked and kept the names alive until the oil shocks of the 70s
The time to do this was just after the war, when demand for cars vastly exceeded the ability to make them with material shortages and limited supplies (and the idea was floated by Nash with little interest from the others when they could still sell everything they could build and name their price). Instead, the independents waited until they were on the ropes before the three two-way mergers they did manage, and by then it was too late to merge them all together with their different cultures, lack of common parts, too-distant physical locations, and relentless competition from the big 3.
You could have called it the American Leyland Motor Corporation…
My uncle had and I drove his ’55 Patrician.Quite a ride I can remember to this day.Chrycos had the lever in the dash for ’55, then MECHANICAL push buttons til ’64.I used them in a ’61 Valiant, a new addition was a park lever that when dropped put the tranny in Park.Neat stuff .It was written in Parade magazine in ’57 that Chrysler was going to put the ’57 torsion bars in their ’55’s but did not because they thought that people would thing they had half (of a Packards system)!Imagine.Losing Packard was inevitable as we still today have more than we need
Sweet. Wish I had that chassis model on my shelf !
Gotta love the dirty thumbnail at 13:50 . . .
The dirty fingernails have always bothered me too!
Interesting but as tom implies a bit laboured. Lockdown helps give the time to watch it.
On YouTube is the Periscope Films channel, which is a gold mine for those who like these sort of films. It also has all kinds of 1940s-1950s social guidance films and drug-scare films that are hilarious to watch now.
Not one mention in the video of William Allison, the former Hudson engineer who developed the system and pitched it to Packard.
Am referring to Allison’s Torsion-Level system.
I think that Ford tried selling safety in 1956, but the safety belts seemed to remind consumers of the possibility of crashing instead of the potential for surviving the crash.