Bought a Hudson picture book by John Conde, who was the Nash/AMC official historian as well as a PR agent. I first read a Conde book in 1960. When my parents bought a new Rambler, the dealer gave them Conde’s AMC Family Album, and I treasured it and read it for years. It helped to acquaint me with automotive history.
When Nash merged with Hudson in ’54, Conde got permission to gather up documents and pictures from Hudson executives and designers before their offices were closed. This 1980 book contains a tremendous number of photos that haven’t been seen elsewhere, along with a few surprising bits of info.
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Trivium 1: One of the big puzzles of auto history is the late adoption of a real trunk on four-door sedans. Coupes had an integral trunk almost from the start.
On this 1906 Pierce coupe the trunk is part of the same aluminum casting as the main body. By 1918 most coupes and roadsters were even more smoothly connected.
This 1918 Hudson roadster was typical. Despite the obvious example, sedans remained trunkless until 1934. The back wall was flat and the rear seat was against the back wall, leaving a lot of extra legroom between the seats. People often kept luggage in this extra space. Nobody thought of sliding the rear seat forward by two feet to close up the extra room and create a compartment like the coupe’s compartment.
When streamlining rounded the back wall and added overhang, the space behind the rear seat was usable even without sliding the seat forward, but still nobody thought of putting a lid on the back wall. The Airflow had a usable compartment, only accessible by lifting the seat. Most automakers tacked on a trunk after 1935, which spoiled the streamlining and looked like an aftermarket accessory. They still hadn’t followed their own coupe example!
I thought the Studebaker Land Cruiser was the first to solve this strange conundrum, in late 1934. But Hudson got there first by a few months. The Terraplane added a lid and advertised it.
In this picture Hudson president Chapin is showing the trunk to Orville Wright, part of the campaign to tie the Terraplane to airplanes. They also got Amelia Earhart to pose with a Terraplane. The connection wasn’t entirely fanciful, since the Terraplane was a fast car and looked fast, especially in roadster form.
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Trivium 2: Most books insist that the only Hudson ute-type pickup was the ’46-47 model. Those were fairly common; I remember seeing one in Manhattan in the ’50s. In fact the same ute began in the ’20s under the Essex name and continued in the ’30s as a Terraplane.
The Terraplane line also included more utilitarian trucks like this cab-chassis.
They also made panel trucks in the ’20s and ’30s but not the ’40s.
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Trivium 3:
Earlier I obsessed on the adoption dates of electric wipers. Other sources, including one detailed listing, indicated that Hudson never adopted electrics. By the time AMC started electrics in ’64, Hudson was long gone. Two of Conde’s pictures disprove the statement. Hudson was using electric wipers in the ’20s, but by the ’40s and ’50s all the listings showed vacuum wipers, with ‘vacuum booster’ often listed as an option.
The description of this ’26 Essex mentions one standard electric wiper.
And it wasn’t a typo or a one-year trial. When mounted on top of the windshield, a wiper mechanism was always visible. This interior of a ’24 Hudson clearly shows the cylindrical motor of an electric wiper, not the half-moon of a vacuum wiper.
If this turns out to be correct, it would add another ‘well ahead’ to the list of innovations below. I’m not sure of it yet.
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Sidenote: Hudson was running the table with innovations in the ’30s. In ’32 the platform frame was ahead of all other Americans. In ’34 the integral trunk was just ahead of Studie and well ahead of others.
In ’35 the all-steel roof was tied with GM and well ahead of others. But GM was much slower to adopt steel in the REST of the body. Hudson had steel framing in the REST of the body in ’26, second after Dodge in ’23, so Hudson was unquestionably the first with steel everywhere.
And in ’36 the failsafe brake system was so far ahead that nobody ever copied it, even now. It was hardly advanced tech; a backyard mechanic could have rigged a similar system. Nobody copied it because no other company wanted to protect its customers from hydraulic brake failure.
And in ’37 Hudson was first to move the battery from under the seat to the engine compartment. I’ve never understood WHY anyone wanted to put it under the seat in the first place. Batteries spill nasty stuff, emit toxic gases, occasionally overheat and catch fire. Even worse, a heavy passenger or sagging seat can SHORT the battery. This happened often in VWs, which stupidly kept the battery under the seat until the ’70s. Under the seat a battery is hard to reach and hard to remember. Under the hood you can check it routinely along with the oil and antifreeze.
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Later: No, I must be wrong about the electric wiper. I found a nice online source for Hudson owners manuals and other documents. Looked at some manuals from ’22 to ’32. Each includes a wiring diagram, which shows lights and gauges and starter but never a wiper motor. So those cylindrical motors must be an unusual vacuum type. Googling old wiper motors, all the US models follow the usual half-moon pattern but British Lucas vacuum motors are horizontal cylinders like the one in the picture.
And later again, in April, I found a ’34 Terraplane manual that DOES show electrics as an option. So Conde was probably right, and my first look at those pictures was probably right.
These manuals also answer one of my constant questions: When was synchromesh? Answer: 1934. Later than GM, Studie, Willys and Packard, but before Chrysler and Ford. Through most of the 30s Hudson had a City-Country selector on the headlights, with a rightward-pointing low beam for country. GM copied this later. Another book gives a Hill Holder as an option in ’34 and ’35, which was BEFORE Studie had it in ’36. Studie stuck with the Hill Holder until the end in ’66, while all others abandoned it after a couple years.
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