This AMC dealer training strip proves that the Hudson fail-safe braking system was still being made in ’57, the last year of the brand. (Books and articles are vague and inconsistent on this fact.)
I don’t expect any regard for safety from the big three, but AMC was actively SELLING this feature up to the bitter end. It’s a simple gadget, just a mechanical linkage from the brake pedal to the parking brake cables so the pedal will apply the mechanical parking brake when the hydraulics fail.
Hydraulics DID fail often. I had several near misses when my hydraulic brakes failed, and one actual crash when another car failed and hit mine. It was a serious and common problem with an EASY FIX. Nobody ever copied the fix. Modern dual-circuit brakes aren’t failsafe in the same way. If the brake fluid is bad or dirty or empty, it will affect both circuits. True failsafe must use a different TYPE of system as backup.
If I had known about the Hudson system, I would have bought a used Hudson after my first bad experience, and would have avoided further trouble. If the feature had also been available on Ramblers, I would have bought a more recent used Rambler instantly. Guaranteed sale.
AMC owned the patent and the tooling, and already adapted the mechanism to the Nash platform when they modified a Nash into a Hudson in ’55. Despite already having the parts and skills and assembly-line procedures, they never moved the gadget to the Nash or Rambler.
AMC also owned my type of customer, the “conservative prospect” who enjoys economy and security. Why didn’t they try harder to attract and keep “conservative prospects”?
I guess the answer is Romney. After he departed in 1962, AMC lost its soul. By the time I was buying cars in the ’70s, AMC had disconnected the cables to “conservative prospects” and aimed to be all-hydraulic and all-glamor like GM.
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I like the term so much that I’m going to describe myself as a “conservative prospect” from now on, a potential purchaser of both products and ideas who values frugality, simplicity, and security above all.
Polistra's Mill 