Gooding & Co. Lot of the Day- 1935 Packard Eight 1202

"sm70- why not Duesenberg?" (sm70-whynotduesenberg) 04/10/2014 at 15:23 • Filed to: None

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Today's Gooding & Co. Lot of the Day comes from their Amelia Island Auction back in 2011. This 1935 Packard Eight represents one of two styles of car that I love which we lost, for the most part, during the Great Depression. One is the town car-style chauffeured limousine, and the other is a more casual form of limo/luxury car that this Packard represents: the open tourer. Basically, an open tourer was a full-sized sedan or limousine that featured a convertible top. The closest things we have today are the RR Phantom Drophead (which isn't a sedan) and the Maybach Landaulet, which isn't (wasn't) a full convertible. These cars don't present a particular advantage; they are just cool. Another bygone feature this car has which provide no advantage but is very cool is the straight eight engine. It isn't any better than a V8, and it takes up more space, but there is something unbelievably classy and excessive about a straight eight engine. Maybe it's just the way it rhymes. This car did not sell, but the listing does note that it recently underwent nearly $600k worth of restoration, and that it was expected to bring at least $225,000. Obviously, then, if it didn't sell, no one was willing to pay anything near that. So what do you think? Is this classic approveratly priced? Or should that much dough be enough to buy you the more coveted Packard Twelve? Either way, their can be no denying that this deceased style from a deceased maker with a deceased engine has never ceased to be imposing, or awesome.

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JR1 > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 04/10/2014 at 15:37

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The price of this car might be a bit high. I say this because the cars of the 1960s are increasing in value and interest everyday. Therefore the less desirable pre-war era cars might become less collectable because the true legends are now Shelbys, Yenkos, 427 Hemis etc. But I would pay for it. I miss the four door convertibles, be it a phaeton, limo, etc.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 04/10/2014 at 15:42

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Actually, is *is* better than a V8 - sort of. Because V8s share journals, you don't get *precisely* the same even rollover as a straight eight. You're effectively running two fours that are 90 degrees out from one another, rather than just one eight. Granted, the timing spacing is the same, but which cylinders can and cannot fire when is different (thus often exhaust), and vibrations differ as well.

sm70- why not Duesenberg? > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 04/10/2014 at 16:01

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I'm actually not particularly mechanically inclined, so I don't quite understand what you''re saying.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 04/10/2014 at 16:45

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Here's a typical V8 crank. It has four locations for connecting rods to attach, so in that it's exactly like a straight four. Cylinders on opposite sides of the "V" from each other connect to the same ones.

What that means for the typical V8:

When the engine is running, there are two sets of cylinders - one pulling it up/down along one axis, the other pulling it up/down along another axis.

Because cylinders are paired, the cylinder across the V must always be 90 degrees behind in phase - at the half-way point down, the opposite begins to go down, when fully down, the opposite is halfway down, etc. This works well for torque, etc., but it makes for an effect like a big off-center weight swinging from one cylinder bank to the other and back. A good crankshaft balance design helps this, but there are what are called higher order vibrations present. In a straight eight, the pistons are going up and down in one direction only. Four of the cylinders will be 90 degrees out to fire evenly, but they can be chosen more independently of relation to their neighbors. Actually, even chosen to damp their neighbors' vibration.

The firing order has to be somewhat non-intuitive in a normal V8, because it has to be a well-chosen firing order for a four-cylinder and a pattern sort of opposite its mirror image operating at the same time. To evenly space out 8 "bangs" over the two revolutions for every "four strokes", you have to overlay two patterns in such a way that close cylinders to their partners across don't create any secondary issues by firing close to each other all the time, and avoid secondary issues with intake sharing and the like. "Fixing" that causes other issues of resonance, however. Most V8 families with different firing orders sound different because of what combinations they release exhaust in, intake, and how they secondarily vibrate. Compare the Ford flathead below (with sequential firing to the ends, a lot of noise and vibration and inherent bad breathing) with a more modern design to see how that has to be developed - sequential firing is required at some point, but moved to the center of the engine for better breathing and muffling the combined power jolt with engine mass:

You can't *just* mirror one bank to the other, you have to mix and match different kinds of bad vibration to average out in the middle. Pure sequential firing (1-2-5-6-3-4-7-8) would wreck the engine, as would a phase offset (1-5-4-8-3-7-2-6).

A straight eight is more likely to suffer from poor fueling if it has a single carb/etc., but its exhaust, intake, and firing pulses can be evenly distributed along a single bank.

tl;dr: There are issues with a standard V8 typically overcome by good engine design. There are intrinsic qualities of smoothness in a straight eight. However, it is a bitch to make, and typically weighed against the relatively easy fixes in a standard V8, not considered worth it.

sm70- why not Duesenberg? > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 04/10/2014 at 19:11

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Thanks, that helped a lot, actually.