History of Automotive Air Conditioning

I can speak to early airconditioning from owning one that worked. About 30 years ago I flew to Dallas Texas and purchased a 1940 Packard 160 series Super 8 four door with overdrive, sidemounts,radio, and airconditioning from a gentleman who ran Dr. Pepper there. I stuck my dealer tag on it and drove back to Pa. in the July heat breaking the 55 mph speed limit by a large margin. The AC performed very well except for going through Nashville Tenn. in the rush hour it started to get a bit warm inside. I thought UH OH the AC is crapping out. Not quite I passed a billboard that announced the outside temp as 101 degrees. I decided for the first car AC it deserved some slack. The way you shut it off in the fall was remove the drive belt no clutch just the big pulley. I sold it about 15 years later and have lost track of it. Another interesting note is many years ago when the Packard Club had a national meet in Detroit I was able to spend most of a day in the automotive historical section of the Library. Where you guessed it I spent all the time researching Packard. One fact was the announcement in 1939 of the first AC equipped Packard with a picture a 1939 Henney Hearse. They did not show why or how just the announcement with a picture of the Coach. There was also a story of the PMC Board arriving at the plant in an AC equipped Limo in the middle of the summer wearing overcoats and hats for a publicity stunt in 1940. Oh yeah both of my 56 Carribeans the convertible and the hardtop have ac the convert. Factory (doesn't work worth a damn), the hardtop modern Classic AC (works great).
 
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