I ran across a random car show at a shopping center just north of Fort Lauderdale on Sunday. I parked my 928 on the edge, and instantly one of the perpetrators came over and told me to park in the middle of the row.
"Open your hood, we want to see the 32 valves" He said.
Bite your tongue you philistine! My 928 only has 16 valves, but it does have a whole lot of 1960's love in it's two-valve cams. Read: this Austrian-spec '85 928 makes 22 hp more than the US version with 16 MORE valves and 300 cc's MORE displacement.
Well, 13 second quarter mile times aside...I wandered and looked at the various old American "Belle Americain's", which is the term that Europeans use for the occasional old American car. I'm convinced that with the strength of the Euro, and the fact that Europeans FALL OVER when they see a '70 Cadillac with huge fenders... that this is a growth segment. Want to make money over the next 10 years? Ship a bunch of 1960's and early '70's Cadillacs to Brussels. Beaters with bad paint and a few engine issues, but intact. Do a low-buck improvement on them, which means new $1600 paint, and replacement carpet and fix all the gauges. Vinyl? If you can get it fixed for $500 then DO it. In the end: Probably about $3k worth of work. You'll park them in a wharehouse at first, but I bet over the next 10 years that they will triple in value!
You can't flip a house these days. But in a few years...you'll be able the flip the hell out of a '76 Coupe d'Ville Brougham!
In any case, the show went well. Everyone mingled, and my odd import-with-inches got plenty of attention, until the
Packard showed up!
1948 Packard! I know just a little bit about these, and I know that they are powered by an inline-8 engine. When the owner pulled into the lot, I asked him via lowered window to "rev it up- I want to hear what an inline 8 sounds like" and he did it. He did it very gently, probably 3000 rpm at the most. It sounds like a BMW inline six, which means it sounds rich, but there is none of the "warble" that an even-firing V8 like my 928 or any American V8 has.
The engine is an "L-head". That means that it is just like a Briggs & Stratton lawnmower, in that the valves are actuated by a cam that is located in the crank and the valves are upside down. The head is nothing but a metal plate, and the combustion chamber has an odd "L" shape, which is totally inefficient and ultimately results in low power, low fuel economy...and most importantly, bad emissions. The area around the valves, which is remote from where the combustion takes place first, is an area where particles of gasoline can hide. They don't get burned [lost power...] and they then wind up flying out the tailpipe. Not good.
For a lawnmower? Who cares. California does, and they are probably smart to prohibit these engines and 2-stroke motors just for this last reason. I have a 4-stroke weed-whip which needs valve adjustments every six months [I guess hydraulic lifters on a weed-whip is asking just a bit much-!], so I guess the "L" head is pretty bad..
But this Packard! Road-going sex!
[sorry; I have strange interests~]
Here's the pictures. This is a 286 cubic inch engine- this is EXACTLY the size of the V8 that is under the hood of my 928! For some reason, I suspect the output of this Packard 286 is less than my Porsche 286~
N!
