The Packard Motor Car Company Trivia Quiz

Answer: A hearse

The Packard Motor Car Company was known for luxurious passenger cars, but also made buses, trucks, fire engines, ambulances and hearses. Many of the hearses made in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950's had bodies constructed by the Henney Company, founded in 1868. Mine came with a turntable and a chassis-tilting mechanism to facilitate loading and unloading the casket.

It made a neat camper, even if rust in the fuel tank clogged up the intake every couple of hundred miles. Actually, political correctness is not all that new, for these were supposed to be called "Funeral Cars."

Answer: 1899 to 1958

The first Packard, a one cylinder "Horseless Carriage", was finished on November 6, 1899 and the last, an eight cylinder Packard Hawk, rolled out in June, 1958. In between, 1,614,005 Packards were produced. The name "Packard Motor Car Company" became official in 1902.

Answer: Studebaker

Both companies were in serious financial trouble, finding it impossible to compete with massive General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. The joint effort failed after only two years.

Answer: A dividing window between the front and back seats

The jump seats were what made it possible to carry seven people, but you weren't really in a limo if you couldn't separate yourself from your chauffeur.

Answer: Ultramatic

Powerglide was Chevrolet's automatic and was used in some Pontiacs.
Hydra-matic was General Motors' main transmission, but it was also used by Nash, Hudson and Lincoln, among others. A fire at the hydra-matic plant in 1953 was the largest industrial catastrophe up to that time.
Ford built the Fordomatic, of course.
My memory of all these early efforts is that Packard was not the best one; they did have an excellent three speed with overdrive, however.

Answer: True

The First Series Packard was made in 1912 and the last, the Fifty-eighth, in 1958. The Twenty-second series, for example, was made in 1948 and 1949, the Twenty-third in 1949 and 1950.

Answer: All of these

It is too bad there are only three choices allowed, because I could have added the Lancaster Bomber, which had four Merlin Engines, the de Havilland Mosquito Bomber (two engines), and the North American P-82 Twin Mustang (also two). These liquid-cooled, supercharged engines were 1,649 cubic inches (27 liters) and produced horsepower ranging from 1280 to 1695.
The famous PT Boats used an even larger Packard V-12 of 2490 cubic inches and, right at the end of the war, a V-16 that produced 2500 horsepower.
Packard had also provided V-12 Liberty engines for World War One aircraft.

Answer: A Three Pointed Star

The Pelican motif (sometimes called the Cormorant) came from the Packard family coat-of-arms and eventually took over a dozen different forms.
Daphne at the Well was also called the Boy on the Slide.
The Goddess of Speed was also known as the Lady Chasing the Rolling Donut.
Earlier ornaments were more practical, being the radiator cap; the first was a "Motometer" or thermometer, the second a cap with a "bail." Many custom-made ornaments used exotic materials such as crystal and gold.
The three-pointed star belongs to Mercedes-Benz.

Answer: All of these

Again, the three possibilities are limiting. Just a few of the records Packard, or Packard-powered vehicles, held: Land Speed, 1926, 169 MPH; SF-NY, 1903, 61 days; Water Speed, Miss America IX, 1931, 102.256 MPH (first over 100 MPH); first flight over 30,000 feet, 1920; non-stop seaplane flight, 1924, 28 hours, 35 minutes; longest dirigible flight, 1922, 8,100 miles.

Answer: Ask the Man Who Owns One

Another story goes that he was asked if he had any literature about his new car and he said, "No, just ask the man who owns one." Either version is refreshingly different from more modern ad campaigns.
Most of the information I used to tweak my memory for this quiz came from the exhaustive "Packard, A History of the Motor Car and the Company" published in 1978 by Automobile Quarterly. There is enough amazing information about this great American icon to make a dozen quizzes; perhaps other FunTrivia members will add theirs.
Corrections and comments welcome.