1932 Packard Twin-Six: A Tribute to Phil Hill - Jay Leno's Garage

it's just a relaxing car to drive you know welcome to the episode of Jalen's garage of the car three 1932 packard twin six this car is special because it's the first classic car I ever bought I bought it back in the mid 80s and probably more important than the car itself as a man I bought it from I bought it from Phil Hill America's first world champion f1 world champion phil was more than a world champion phil was also a brilliant mechanic he'd been a Packard mechanic for years he raced for Jaguar he was a photographer he knew opera he loved music and he was a guy that had real mechanical sympathy for vehicles I don't think Phil ever broke a car during a race he I think just about every car he raced he finished with you know a lot of guys and globally aggressive and you know slam gearboxes and shift without the clutch and you know cars would blow up Phil's one of those guys he can just feel what it was doing all the time and I learned a lot from him in fact he taught me one of the most valuable things about any sort of antique car before you put it in reverse touch second because a lot of time you go you know trying to get it in put it in second and it'll go right into verse because they're on the same the way the transmissions are built that's first in Reverse or so too close to each other and when you win you're in second it a lot of my and it's work for every car ever since so it's always very grateful for that we lost Phil a little just about ten years ago we had his 80th birthday party here at the garage and it was fantastic Dan Gurney and all the great showed up to pay tribute to Phil he was ill at that time but not so ill II couldn't enjoy himself so it was really really a great time so this is one of those cars that has special meaning to me because I haven't really done anything this car in 30 years other than change the oil and drive it he did such a fantastic job restoring it he had a restoration shop called Hill and Vaughan where he turned out beautiful Pebble Beach level cars and in fact he won pebble of each a number of times he was just an interesting character you know I would sit with Phil and talk to him and I said you ever get scared in a car you know it wasn't what he was going to hundred miles an hour in a Ferrari or at Lamar or you know anneals places he said it was always when somebody would bring a car over to show him and they would try to show off and show Phil how good a driver they were he said that's what scared of more than me guys take a look at this Phil you know and they just didn't know what they were doing and he'd be clutching the dashboard it just sort of made me laugh you know nothing to track 180 but you're more scared of the idiot - just got a Corvette he wants to show off so he was just just a wonderful wonderful man and as you can see this restoration has held up exceedingly well all I do with this car is drive it and for a while it wasn't my daily driver but it was close I just used it a lot you know I see I've got the windshield open here that was sort of your air conditioning in 1932 the car is a v12 it's 445 and I have cubic inches so 446 big engine bigger than a Duesenberg but quieter you know Packard had the build quality nobody had the build quality the Packard did these are quiet they're smooth Duesenbergs were loud and raucous and you know the Hollywood crowd like the Duesenberg because they were fast and Menem 265 horsepower as much as 320 horsepower these were 160 but these had a sort of I don't know just a class and a grace these were the cars of kings and presidents and Packard's were really the luxury marque for a long long time in America especially in the 20s and the 1930s that was thought of their heyday the name twin 6 means twin 6 2 6 similar engines and it harkens back to 1912 when Packard was the first auto manufacturer to make a v12 engine in fact Enzo Ferrari was so enamored of the Packard v12 the original one in 1912 that he based his Ferrari engines out he said I want an engine like the Packer v12 but of course they were different but that was the first v12 so almost it's fair to say that probably ever v12 since then was based on that certainly the Liberty engines and all those airplane engines of World War one so again this was 1912 ten years earlier most cars had one cylinder then two cylinder cars then four similar this came out then six cylinders and then when the twin six came along there was nothing better and it sold tremendously well it finally finished about and I think 1920 maybe 1921 maybe 1922 then Packard went through a straight eight in 1932 they thought they would bring back the name twin six because there'd be a lot of people who remember the original twin six name but by that time it was the middle of the pressure in 1932 and people just didn't have the money or or didn't care you know Cadillac had the v16 Marmon had the v16 a lot of companies had v12 so this is the only year they called it the twin six it then went back to just the Packard v12 after 1932 they had cast-iron heads and they went to aluminum for a while and then I think they went back to cast-iron it's a three-speed manual transmission it has a thing called a vacuum clutch where you you're going down the road you push that up and when you let off the clutch disengages and you could shift without using the foot clutch that was considered a sort of labor-saving device a great thing at the time and also had freewheeling which means the engine disconnected from the drivetrain you could roll along which was fine but brakes are not what they were or what they are today and eventually like this came sort of dangerous and free willing disappeared right after that it all had something called ride control which nobody else had you pulled a knob and you know your shocks have fluid in them depending on how much fluid is in them it's how hard a soft the rides gonna be and when you adjusted it it would like close up the holes so the fluid the car would would firm up and then when you turned it the other way the holes be bigger and the car could float through the bumps and it was actually quite effective and works pretty well this is car that was guaranteed to go a hundred miles an hour which doesn't seem like much today but back then most cars couldn't go 60 miles an hour in fact the term a mile a minute was pretty popular because there weren't many cars it could go a mile in a minute certainly not for an hour at a time but this is one of the ones that could it's got a rumble seat in the back it's got all the options of the period vents open here you can open the windshield you got the cowl here and it costs the big camera on the front up here I mean I just love the design of this you know a lot of times you see repla cars and they always look a little bit off you know the proportion from here to here to here is the same from here to here to here is the same from here to here this is your thermostat what happens here is as the car heats up that those the hot water pushes that open and the vents open allow cool air in to cool the car and as the car cools events close again to try and keep the temperature fairly constant somebody else is kind of cool these bumpers are still was liquid in each end here and that would help take out some of the torsional vibrations that link would move up and down it would cancel out the vibration as a cook as the car went down the road what else can we tell you about it the rear window also goes down full clump complementing gauges you'll see that in a minute when we go for a ride but you know this is an expensive car as I said the first collector car I bought and I wanted to buy from somebody I really trusted and that's why I went down to see Phil and I bought a couple of cars from him and truly an honest truly one of the most decent people he ever want to meet you know John Lam was Phil's photographer of choice he would take all the pictures of Phil for road and track on all the magazines in fact he's got a terrific book out called the driving life this Phil right there there's the book you might remember Phil also drove the Ford GTS I mean it's an amazing life and the most quiet unassuming guy you could ever imagine areas of the GD 40s and Phil drove at a time when you didn't get rich doing f1 he just got kind of a firm handshake and maybe a nice slice of Turkey and thank you very much and that's all you got you know maybe you got free oil from one of the oil companies or free tires or something like that it was I think one of the greatest periods there's filled with Packard he won Pebble Beach with that one it's a good book if you get a chance if you see this in a bookstore pick it up because it's really terrific it just kind of tells his whole story let's take a look at the engine now I remember this engine is is clean there's a lot of the engines for my other cars because I use this one a lot but I can see it's a massive beast there's not many of these v12s left they're just a great great motor in fact let's take a look at the other side with the carburetor well carburetors right here but this is actually this was their first downdraft carburetor and engine you know you've heard of updraft and downdraft well updraft carburetor the carburetors on the side because in the old days the gas would come into the float Bowl and the needles weren't good enough to hold the pressure so if you had an updraft carburetor see gas would leak down just from gravity and get into the cylinders and you could blow up a similar doesn't part if it filled with gasoline when it's sparked so a downdraft carburetor the gas would come in and any loose gas or gas occur just harmlessly fall into the ground you know as they got better at sealing optically they went through the downdraft carburetor you know the needles in the flow pole could hold the fuel the fuel pressure back I'm if you're on the other side too there you go nice clean that's your oil fill right here they should dip stick down their fan generator pretty straightforward but just impeccably put together just an amazing amazingly well-made automobile they're really something I really haven't done anything give us for 30 years other than just drive it and maintain it and I brought you to clean it up a little bit more before we did this but I wanted to show it as it's actually being used let me show you the rumble seat through that's kind of fun you do that through the hatchway here and that opens like that you got a full seat and look you even have armrests that come out if magnets in it so you don't scratch the paint and on this side there's a step plate then we each step to get into the back of the car so it's that's kind of cool then when you're done you just close these and then we're ready to go for a ride the first thing you notice when you in this cause the beautiful wood all throughout the vehicle and you got you look your ashtray kind of molded right in there over here you got your starter button and you have two doors one on each side to glove compartments you've got vents down there that you can let air in and your brake is on this side you have your ride control knob here you pull that out of pushing in depending on how hard to saw if you want the ride to be beautiful engine turned dashboard here's your speedometer this is your choke right here this one here is a meter or voltmeter ammeter actually is what it is oil pressure you've got your this is how much fuel you have that you feel gauge this is your water temperature this is your clock and of course your cigarette lighter look at that imagine lighting your cigarette from your car the age we live in your key goes here you have another door here you can open and close a horn is in the center your headlights are adjusted here as well as your dash lights this is your freewheeling here which allows you to shift without the clutch you're you've got your windshield wipers here one on each side you you can turn them on individually this these are your sun shades these come down obviously to keep the light out of your eyes it's a pretty cool well-equipped car for the period you have interior lights you have lights in the corner you have a window shade in the back and you got actually have a dome light as well as two lights on the side you have a shade you can pull down and that window also rolls down and you got the beautiful left window cranks and door handles as you can see nicely polished I don't know what material this is I guess it's I don't know is that stainless steel I'm not even sure but it's certainly held its luster all these years and we see and also nice wood here on the side as well it's just a well-made automobile this was not a cheap car back in the day this is probably five or six thousand dollars which doesn't seem like much now but a house was $1,200 so I don't some idea what this thing costs I think it's time to take this thing for a ride [Applause] you know you think people are status conscious now back in the 20s and 30s people really judged you by the automobile that you drove I mean almost more than anything else because there was nothing else really that you could carry with you that had the prominence in the stature of an automobile maybe some jewelry if you were female or maybe it expensive watching for a man but you know pulling up to a nightclub or a restaurant in an oppressive automobile like a Duesenberg or a Packard or a Pierce hour or Rolls Royce well that meant you had arrived by 1932 the car was here to stay and it wasn't just about practicality anymore you know Henry Ford thought nobody would ever need any more of a car than a Model T which is to get you from here to there nothing fancy but people like luxury there like status by 1932 was the height of the depression so all the manufacturers come out with dream cars Cadillac with 16 cylinders Cadillac was the first car to have the engine compartment styles and when you open the hood oh my god there was chrome and copper and stainless steel and just a beautiful looking mechanical thing you know it was like the back of a watch and to combat the 16 cylinder Cadillac Packard came out with this their own v12 and it was a magnificent ancient quiet strong not many of these engines left you might pay fifty or sixty thousand dollars if you could find one today even one that's not in very good shape but once you get them running they're pretty bulletproof I've had this thing over 30 years I've never done anything other than changed the oil it's a low revving powerful if you consider 160 horsepower powerful and most people did back in the day the Duesenberg was the extrovert that was a 100 265 horsepower 320 supercharged the Packard had a quiet elegance these are popular among bankers and you know society people and folks like that just because they were so extremely well made I mean literally just rolls down the road it's got so much torque it it's beautifully let me show you how this shifter works you see when you put that in freewheeling you can take your foot off the gas not touch a clutch shift it touch the gas and it reengage it again let me show you how the freewheelin works you drive along and you lift your foot off the gas but I notice you don't slow down because the engine has been disconnected from the rear wheels by that I mean it disengages the clutch pulls in and you're just rolling this does not have hydraulic brakes this has mechanical brakes with a vacuum in it which means it's like a power bi mechanical brake I mean instead of having hydraulic brakes we have liquid in a tube that applies pressure you have a steel rod you press your foot on the brake and the steel rod pulls the brake shoe hydraulic brakes are much better because you can get more power but these actually work quite well because these had the best of both worlds you had a piece of steel you know Henry Ford used to say the safety of steel from pedal to wheel because he didn't like hydraulic bracing at first but it really is true and with the mechanical advance you could get a lot of pressure by pressing on the pedal and you wouldn't have to worry about you know flue and then the tube leaking or braking or anything like that so they were pretty bulletproof fact I haven't touched the brakes on this car in 30 years other than just to adjust them plus it's just nice to drive you know this is one of the few antique or classic cars you can actually take on the freeway and drive at freeway speeds I did put high speed gears in the rear end this had like 456 s or something when I we put like 350 fors in it so now you can cruise its 65 or 70 without you know just revving the the heck out of the engine there that's the only modification I did was put the high speed gears in it it's got plenty of power it's really comfortable and it's an impressive-looking automobile 142 inch wheelbase probably weighs about close to 5,000 pounds which is pretty hefty as I like to call it Road heavyweight look we'll take it up to 65 70 you know it's funny in all the cars we do here we always put a microphone near the tailpipe so you can hear the sound of the engine but this one there's hardly any sound at all but it's just meant to be incredibly quiet it really drives much like a modern car when I first got this thing filled one for ride with me and sat in the seat I tried not to scare him by showing how good a driver I was and I think he appreciated I think you he appreciated that he was really a wonderful guy very quiet very soft-spoken Phil made his acting debut in the John Frankenheimer film Grand Prix this is scene where you see Phil wheels fire fire the cars on fire you know that that was his acting I think that was his entire acting career he was a pretty shy guy a very modest guy you know if he saw a group of men standing and he said which ones the world champion and we didn't know you might not pick Phil he was so unassuming but that was a very nice quality wasn't a braggart wasn't allowed just a truly decent human being very modest and I don't know mechanical genius people throw the word genius around not as close as I've seen when it comes to dealing with old forests he just had an intuitive sense you know as a young man he went to England I think to work for Jaguar you learned to drive those over there I believe he won the very first Pebble Beach Race if I'm not mistaken and as I said I don't think he ever broke a car you never I want to go blast around I'll take out the Duesenberg and open the cutout on the exhaust make some toys drive it pretty fast whatever it's Christmas time and my wife and I want to go look at the lights around town we'll take this thing because it's quiet you can sneak up on things it's kind of fun I don't think would be unfair to say that Packard was the equivalent of rolls-royce in America I think pretty close certainly technically as good as those cars although this car cruise was fine at 65 even 70 miles an hour on an ice road like this you know 45 to 50 seems just about right extremely smooth ride lots of torque engine turning I have no there's no tachometer so I don't really know what the engine rpm is but it's obviously not much 20s and 30s were really packet ad I think that's fair to say it was the best-selling luxury car in America if not the world I mean packages are known the world over you know back in the day when cars like this who built they all had the extravagant hood ornaments and this one is no exception imagine Parkin is on the street today how long you think that the hood ornament would last before somebody ripped it off just take the whole cap and run off with it so that's you know that quickly you faded out the only her on the left is really the flying lady on the rolls-royce but that one was pretty impressive as I said I enjoy driving this car because it's comfortable and it's fun and it's so well made but most of all cause it reminds me my friend Phil Hill you know there's an old saying you never want to meet you heroes but that was not the case with Phil he was truly a hero and you know he grew up and raced and the most dangerous time in racing it was the deadliest period when Phil race drivers got killed at the rate of one a week one every two weeks sometimes even more and he saw a lot of his close friends go up in flames and crash and he wore those scars you could tell that had affected him you know whatever people would talk about racing and accidents and things he would always sort of just quietly you know just kind of back out of the conversation because he had been there you know kind of like guys that had been to war versus guys that never been to war and tell stories you know the guys in the bender war just kind of keep it to themselves and he was always quiet about that kind of stuff he was America's first world champion most of all it was a truly decent human being and there's my friend and that's why I'd like to dedicate this episode to Phil Hill Godspeed my old friend see you next week [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 742,665

Rating: 4.9482841 out of 5

Keywords: F1, Formula 1, Phil Hill, Derek Hill, V12, champion, John Lamm, Phil Hill: A Driving Life, 24 Hours of Lemans, 12 Hours of Sebring, Packard, restoration, racing legend, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: Q5e-E2BQVBY

Length: 24min 39sec (1479 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 21 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/tangre79]

I love those headlight buckets