Téma
Topic
Heritage of past
At the historic car show Piešťanské Zlaté Stuhy 2013 we had the
possibility to see floods of beautiful vehicles of well-known brands,
but also many of those which belonged to the automobile top in its
era. At the mentioned exhibition in Piešťany the elegant Packards,
mainly the model 38, roused our interest as well in the amount of
shiny veteran cars.
The luxury cars of brand Pac
kard are a thing of past. That
past which we know only from
black and white photos and
period short films. And just the
refore these huge vehicles have
the immutable charm and ele
gancy which either the premium
producers can not go about up
to now with.
Packard Model 38
Packard 740 Coupe (1930)
Automobiles Packard have not very long
but colourful and rich past. In the course of
very short time they became the representatives of prestige, high social status and first
class taste. The first car with brand Packard
came from the production in year 1899 as the
product of company Packard Electric Company. Its founders were the brothers William
Doud Packard and James Ward Packard who
decided to establish another firm only for the
purpose of building cars - Ohio Automobile
Company, after the prime success of their
car. This company was finally renamed in year
1902 on Packard Motor Car Company, by the
basis for production of that time most luxury
automobile in the world was created.
Size, power, high sale price, an extraordinary technical reliability and conservative
elegant design. These qualities determined
the presumptuous sale of cars Packard which
became typical for the American cream of
society, but also for the statesmen and even
bosses of underworld, the real gangsters.
Model Packard Twelve Sedan from the year
1934 owned also famous Al Capone. The
technical speciality of car maker was the
using of the series 8-cylinder engine also at
time when the other producers of big cars
started to use engines of type V8 - so those
with V-arranging of cylinders.
Packard offered at time of its biggest
fame big amount of vehicles divided to model series and class, whereupon it used great
amount of constructional variants. The great
amount of model series was produced also
as the classic sedan (at that time with other
design than today), Touring and also as Convertible. The sum of all vehicles including the
bespoke ones is astounding - Packard made
between 1899 and 1958 to 1553 types of
cars. The first was today antiquarian and extremely valuable Packard Model A and the
last was Packard Series 58L in version Station
Wagon.
During the Second World War the
activities of company Packard Motor Car
Company diverted from the automobile
production and it started with production
of air engines. From that time and also todays leader in production of big engines,
Rolls-Royce, Packard gained the licence for
production of engine Merlin V-1650 and he
succeeded to sell it with an extraordinary
success. The engine of type Merlin was fitted to American and British aeroplanes too.
Despite of that the Second World War was
an unbelievable intervention to the world
economy and it had as result the long lasting period of failures, for Packard this period showed as profitable.
The war ended in 1945 and for Packard
it meant the end of very successful times.
The company returned to production of big
luxury automobiles, however the demand
was not actually so big as it was expected.
The period which meant a new start for human being, meant the begin of the end for
Packard. Despite of that from the year 1946
Packard produced to 146 models of cars, it
did not find customers for them. In year 1954
Packard Motor Company fused with the firm
Studenbaker with the aim to improve the financial situation and they renamed the cars
on Packardbaker. The last produced automobile 58L in year 1958 meant the end of the
brand which vehicles belong today to the top
in the world of vintage cars. Contradictory,
A