Packard 180
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The Packard Custom Super Eight One-Eighty was introduced for the 1940 model year (18th series) by the
Packard Packard or Packard Motor Car Company was an American luxury automobile company located in Detroit, Michigan. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last Packards were built in South Bend, Indiana in 1958. One of the "Thr ...
Motor Car Company to replace the discontinued
Packard Twelve The Packard Twelve was a range of V12-engined luxury automobiles built by the Packard Motor Car Company in Detroit, Michigan. The car was built from model year 1916 until 1923, then it returned 1933 until 1939. As a sign of changing times, the m ...
as their top-of-the-line luxury model. The car was derived from the Packard Super Eight One-Sixty with which it shared the complete running gear including the in-line eight-cylinder, engine that developed 160
horsepower Horsepower (hp) is a unit of measurement of power, or the rate at which work is done, usually in reference to the output of engines or motors. There are many different standards and types of horsepower. Two common definitions used today are the ...
. It was advertised as the most powerful eight-cylinder engine offered by any automobile manufacturer in 1940. (By contrast, the
Cadillac Series 70 The Cadillac Series 70 (models 70 and 75) is a full-size V8 engine, V8-powered series of cars that were produced by Cadillac from the 1930s to the 1980s. It replaced the 1935 Cadillac Series 355, 355E as the company's mainstream car just as the mu ...
346 cubic inch V-8 developed 150 hp). It was complemented and gradually replaced by the more modern looking and mid-level
Packard Clipper The Packard Clipper is an automobile which was built by the Packard Motor Car Company (and by the later Studebaker-Packard Corporation) for model years 1941–1942, 1946–1947 and 1953–1957. For 1956 only, Clipper was classified as a stand-alo ...
in 1941 and integrated into the
Super Eight Super 8 or Super Eight may refer to: Film * Super 8 film, a motion picture film format released in 1965 * Super 8 film camera, a motion picture camera used to film Super 8mm motion picture format * ''Super 8'' (2011 film), a science-fiction fi ...
after the war. Packards of all series (110, 120, 160, 180) shared similar body styling in 1940 (which some later said led to a "cheapening" of the once-exclusive luxury marque), using the same bodies with hoods and front fenders of different length to meet their respective chassis. Thus the 160 and 180 got identical bodies. However, the 180s featured finer interior detailing with the best fabrics, leather, and carpeting available. Packard used a special woolen ceiling in these cars only which was sewn longitudinally. Packard built the partition in its Limousines in a way that there was no hint of it when the partition glass was lowered, allowing the owner to use the car by himself as a sedan (thus the designation "Sedan Limousine" by Packard). In 1940, Packard made
air conditioning Air conditioning, often abbreviated as A/C or AC, is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior environment (sometimes referred to as 'comfort cooling') and in some cases also strictly controlling ...
an option. It was developed by the
Henney Motor Company Henney Motor Company was an American manufacturer of limousine, hearse, ambulance taxicab bodies in Freeport, Illinois from 1927 to 1954. Some operations were moved to Canastota, New York to make an electric car, the Henney Kilowatt The Henney ...
, with whom Packard had a long-standing business connection. Air conditioning had been used on Henney-bodied ambulances as early as 1938. It was the first time that air conditioning was available on a stock automobile. The Packard 180 was also the first car to have
power window Power windows or electric windows are automobile windows which can be raised and lowered by pressing a button or switch, as opposed to using a crank handle. History Packard had introduced hydraulic window lifts (power windows) in fall of ...
s. In an exclusive agreement with Packard from 1937 until Henney's demise in 1954, Henney provided bodies for Packards's
ambulance An ambulance is a medically equipped vehicle which transports patients to treatment facilities, such as hospitals. Typically, out-of-hospital medical care is provided to the patient during the transport. Ambulances are used to respond to medi ...
s,
hearse A hearse is a large vehicle, originally a horse carriage but later with the introduction of motor vehicles, a car, used to carry the body of a deceased person in a coffin at a funeral, wake, or memorial service. They range from deliberately ano ...
s and
flower car A flower car is a type of vehicle used in the funeral industry of the United States, frequently under the Cadillac brand.https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/you-dont-bring-me-flowers/amp It is used to carry flowers for the burial service, or ...
s, and they often provided special custom bodywork for passenger cars. The pre-World War II Henney models usually had 160-180 trim but were actually constructed on the Packard 120A 156" wheelbase chassis with the smaller 288 cubic inch engine although there were also 160 and 180 versions available. Packard offered exclusive coachwork beginning in 1937 with the LeBaron
Cabriolet A convertible or cabriolet () is a passenger car that can be driven with or without a roof in place. The methods of retracting and storing the roof vary among eras and manufacturers. A convertible car's design allows an open-air driving expe ...
body series L-394 for US$4,850 ($ in dollars ) and the LeBaron
Town car The Lincoln Town Car is a model line of luxury vehicle#High-end luxury/full-size luxury cars, full-size luxury sedans that was marketed by the Lincoln Motor Company, Lincoln division of the American automaker Ford Motor Company. Deriving its na ...
body series L-395 for US$4,990 ($ in dollars ). In 1938 through 1942
Rollston Rollston Company was an American coachbuilder producing luxury automobile bodies during the 1920s and 1930s readily acknowledged to be of the very highest quality. After bankruptcy in 1938 some of the same owners began a very similar business und ...
and
Brunn & Company Brunn & Company was an American coachbuilding business founded in 1908 by carriage designer Hermann A. Brunn (1874-1941) in Buffalo, New York. He was the father of Hermann C. (1908-1989) who initially worked for his father, then was employed by th ...
offered several custom coachwork options to the exclusive list. There were minor styling changes in the 1941 and 1942 models (19th and 20th series), the most notable of which were the moving of the headlamps into the fenders. Also for the first time, running boards could be deleted with a rocker panel put in their place to cover the chassis, and two-tone paint schemes were available. New for 1941 was the '' Electromatic Drive'', a vacuum-operated clutch system for the conventional 3-speed manual transmission. Packard's own
automatic transmission An automatic transmission (sometimes abbreviated to auto or AT) is a multi-speed transmission used in internal combustion engine-based motor vehicles that does not require any input from the driver to change forward gears under normal driving c ...
, the ''
Ultramatic Ultramatic was the trademarked name of the Packard Motor Car Company's automatic transmission introduced in 1949 and produced until 1954, at Packard's Detroit, Michigan East Grand Boulevard factory. It was produced thereafter from late 1954, thru ...
'', would not be ready until 1949. The final 180s rolled off the Packard assembly line in February 1942, as production restrictions of World War II brought a halt to civilian automobile production. There have been allegations that
dies Dies may refer to: * Dies (deity), the Roman counterpart of the Greek goddess Hemera, the personification of day, daughter of Nox (Night) and Erebus (Darkness). * Albert Christoph Dies (1755–1822), German painter, composer, and biographer * Jos ...
for both Junior and Senior models were sold to the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
during World War II, and production continued until 1959 as the
ZIS-110 The ZIS-110 is a Soviet Union, Soviet limousine from Zavod Imeni Likhacheva, ZIL introduced in 1946. The 110 was developed from the reverse engineering of a 1942 Packard Super Eight during 1944. The first five prototypes were completed by Augus ...
. James Ward found no supporting evidence in the Packard archives of such a transfer. Also, the ZIS-110 shares no sheet metal with any Packard, despite the fact that its external decor elements were intentionally designed to heavily resemble pre-war Packards, favoured by Stalin after he had received a '38 Super Eight convertible sedan as gift from
Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
.


Darrin-bodied cars

Designer
Howard "Dutch" Darrin Howard "Dutch" Darrin (1897–1982) was an American free-lance automotive stylist born in Cranford, New Jersey. Darrin had been a US pilot serving in France in the last years of World War I when he met fellow countryman Thomas Hibbard. They were ...
had made a few special bodies on Packard-basis, beginning in 1937. He tried to sell Packard on the idea of Darrin-bodied cars being offered directly by Packard, and finally got his way after parking one if his creations outside the Packard dealers' annual conference. For the 1940 model year, three Darrin bodystyles were available: the closed four-door Sport Sedan, the four-door Convertible Sedan, and the two-door Convertible Victoria. About 100 Packard Darrins were built until 1942, when production of private cars ended because of the war. This was much fewer than planned. Building even this number of cars would have overstretched Darrin's Hollywood workshops so they were built by American Central Manufacturing - one of the last remnants of the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg conglomerate - in
Connersville Connersville is a city in Fayette County, east central Indiana, United States, east by southeast of Indianapolis. The population was 13,481 at the 2010 census. The city is the county seat of and the largest and only incorporated town in Fa ...
("Little Detroit")
Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...
instead. Darrin would travel back and forth between California and Indiana supervising construction. This work was shifted to Sayers & Scovill in
Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...
(the company became Hess & Eisenhardt in 1942) to let ACM concentrate on building Jeep bodies. Between 59 and 72 Packard Darrins were built in 1940, of which 44 (or 48) were One-Eighties and the remainder One-Twenties. For the 1941 and 1942 model years the four-door Darrins were discontinued, leaving only the Convertible Victoria.


References

*Ward, James A. The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company, Copyright 1995, Page 46


External links

{{Packard historic timeline
180 __NOTOC__ Year 180 ( CLXXX) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Rusticus and Condianus (or, less frequently, year 933 '' Ab ...
Cars introduced in 1940