Tag: Hudson
-
More Hudson trivia
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…
-
Non-hostile divorce
Most successful companies started as hostile divorces or shotgun marriages (LBOs). In autos, all the big names but Ford and Packard started as splits or buyouts**. Hudson’s origin was unusual. It was founded by salesman Roy Chapin and engineer Howard Coffin. Both originally worked at Oldsmobile. When Oldsmobile was bought by Wall Street types who…
-
Random auto thought
Chrysler doesn’t get enough credit for devotion to safety. Imperials and Chryslers had padded dashes every year since 1949. The padding was standard from ’49 to ’54. Might have been optional later, but a quick look at online pictures for every year from ’55 to ’65 shows padding in every picture. Most are attractive, designed…
-
Starker comparison
In previous item I contrasted Hudson’s personal approach to GM’s anonymous bureaucracy. Hudson was a stock company but behaved more like a family-run outfit. Hudson’s founder Chapin continued running the company from 1909 until he died in 1936. Then Abraham Barit, who had been with the company from the founding, took over and continued until…
-
Hudson’s brake patent
Here’s the 1935 patent for Hudson’s unique lifesaving failsafe brakes. It’s wonderfully clear in both text and diagrams, explaining the purpose of dual safety. NO OTHER COMPANY EVER COPIED IT, EVEN THE ULTIMATE COPIER GM. When AMC produced Nash-based Hudsons for three years, it kept the system on the Hudsons but NEVER TRANSFERRED IT TO…
-
How it worked
My current Hudson obsession gave rise to several questions about details. The unique failsafe brake system is vaguely described online but not detailed or diagrammed. I bought a ’48 Stepdown Owners Manual on Ebay for $40 to satisfy my curiosity. The brake system was pretty much how I imagined it. The pedal applies leverage to…
-
Up the down flation
Still thinking about upflation, repurposing a product for a higher price. The largest upflators were American cars made in other countries. It’s a good illustration of BASELINES. The same product has a higher status measurement when the yardstick starts at a lower altitude. The Willys Aero succeeded here for only two years. It beat Rambler…
-
Just for fun
Still toying with the Prospects. Here’s the definite brand associations in the mid 50s when most of those dealer training films were made. The easy correlations are inside the chart, the more ambiguous ones listed separately. Customer GM Ford Chrysler Independents Conservative Prospect Chevy Ford Plymouth Nash Step-up Prospect Pontiac Mercury DeSoto Studie Luxury Prospect…
-
More wiper puzzles
Earlier I tried to pin down the start dates for electric windshield wipers, after seeing that the conventional wisdom about AMC was wrong. The earliest factory-installed electric wipers were Chrysler in 1939, then Packard in ’42, then Ford and GM and Studebaker around ’51. In each case the wipers were optional on top models at…
-
Relative prospects
Expanding on cars vs religion. Major food companies always offer a wide variety of subtypes within their one specialty. Each company offers at least three types of soup or pickles or cheese or wine, often hundreds. As I noted last week, successful car companies did the same. One size fits all = bankruptcy. Religions are…
-
Now they’re Hudson
Religion Unplugged writes about the growing pains of the Anglican schism. ACNA split off 15 years ago, and has grown mostly by attracting people from non-liturgical churches who were hungry for liturgy but didn’t want the lunacy that comes with the ‘mainline’ package. ACNA didn’t anticipate the intake, so its bylaws were written to satisfy…
-
Henry’s Hudson
Vintage.es has some nice pix of Henry with his first 1896 car. The sequence runs from original 1896, with Henry looking dapper in his handlebar mustache, to the late anniversary occasions, with Henry not quite all there. I’ve been focusing on Hudson lately, so one thing stands out immediately in the details. Henry’s first car…
-
More Studie trivia
1. It appears that Studebaker tried out hydraulic brakes in ’26, just two years after Chrysler started the trend. Hydraulic appeared as an option on the big President for one year, then disappeared. The company made the switch for sure in ’35, around the same time as everyone else. 2. The ’32 Hudson Terraplane adopted…
-
Sell amortize, sell non-amortize
Nash was the greatest of all amortizers, so the exceptions to the rule stand out. Hudson had two unique inventions, the failsafe brake system in 1936 and the stepdown body in 1948. Nobody ever copied the failsafe brakes, which were the BEST SAFETY FEATURE before seatbelts. AMC continued installing the simple failsafe system on its…
-
Hudson got there first
My latest coffeetable book mentions that Hudson had the first all-steel roof, beating GM to market by a month in late ’34. The ads on this page clarify how it was done. Hudson simply inserted a steel panel for the midsection instead of the wood and cloth that everyone but Pierce had been using all…
Polistra's Mill 