While recently browsing the Making of Modern Michigan
online photo database, I came across this picture of the last 1942
Packard built before the company switched over its factories to the
production of war materiel.
Packard introduced its 1942 cars on August 25, 1941, and shut down
its automobile production lines at the Detroit East Grand Boulevard
plant just a couple months after Pearl Harbor, on February 9, 1942. As
indicated by the sign held above the Clipper in the photo, Packard
re-tooled to produce 1,350hp 4,000-cu.in. marine V-12 engines destined
for PT boats as well as Rolls Royce Merlin aircraft engines for P-40s
and P-51s. According to Dammann and Wren in their Crestline book on
Packard, toward the end of the war the company was even researching and
developing gas turbine engines.
If nothing else, this photo makes one realize just how much of an
impact Pearl Harbor had on the country and just how quickly things
started to change afterward.
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