1948 Packard Super Eight

John Ashton

 

1948 Packard Super Eight

John’s Car

About this time a 1948 RHD Packard was advertised at Shortland and my younger brother who was now 16 years pestered me to go and see it. I managed to put him off for several weeks but then gave in and rang the number thinking it would be sold, but it wasn’t. When we arrived at the house there was a multi coloured unregistered Packard with no wheels in the back yard. I asked if it went and the owner said “sure”. He tipped some petrol down the carby, connected up a battery (it had no battery) and the car started almost immediately.

I asked how much he wanted for the car (it had torn seats and no passenger door handle but otherwise was complete), and his reply was you can have it for nothing. So I asked how much for the 4 wheels and the battery (he had taken these off the car for a beach buggy he had) and his reply was $20. So we bought the car drove it to a servo and got a pink slip and drove it home. My brother painted the car with a brush and Dulux super enamel, sewed up the torn seats and we got a door handle from the Packard owners club in Sydney who informed us that the car was a Super Eight. The was the only Super 8 of that year that they knew of in Australia.. It had a 327 cu in straight eight side-valve engine developing 145 h.p. coupled to a 3 speed manual gearbox with an automatic electric overdrive. If you stopped on a hill the car would not roll back unless you engaged reverse or pulled out a knob under the dash. It had massive torque and it was easy to start off in top gear. We did lots of trips in this car including to Queensland and South Australia.

 

John Ashton

April, 2020