Hudson Hornet

“Win on Sunday, then, Sell on Monday.” It is one of the clarion calls of NASCAR, the venerable “stock car” racing sanctioning body that has become one of the hottest success anecdotes of the Nineties and now the new millennium. But, unfortunately, Hudson Motor Car Company was the exception that proved the rule in the early 1950s. The Hudson Hornet was one of the vehicles that made NASCAR a viable series in its infant and toddler years, but while the Hudson Hornet assisted  NASCAR in inestimable ways, NASCAR didn’t really help Hudson, at least not enough to stave off its inevitable  death  just a few short years after racing domination had thrust it into the limelight.

Strong roots

The company that would eventually spring the Hornet on the unsuspecting public was  formed  in 1909 by  George W. Dunham, Howard Coffin, and Roy E. Chapin.

A significant portion of the funding came from Joseph L. Hudson, a member of the family that owned and operated Detroit’s pre-eminent department store, thus the company was named in his honor. Of the founders, Chapin was,  the most experienced automotive top brass, having cut his teeth at Oldsmobile. To gain publicity  quickly prior to the 1901 New York Auto Show, in fact, Ransom E. Olds sent Chapin on a journey from Detroit to Manhattan in a Curved Dash Olds, a publicity stunt that helped make the brand.

Now at the top of his own company, Chapin and his crew swiftly set about turning Hudson into a name to be reckoned with. With deep financial pockets and savvy management, the company immediately vaulted ahead of scores of other firms that were vying to make a name for themselves in the fledgling automotive industry. In just its second year of production, 1910, Hudson Motor Car Company ranked 11th in the country  in automobile production. Chapin recognized  that most potential customers didn’t want to ride out in the elements, as they were forced to in the open cars of the era, so he developed “closed” models that allowed driver and passengers to ride in relative comfort, an improvement that helped sales skyrocket.

Soon, other advances followed. Hudson joined the Ford parade and transferred the steering wheel and driver’s position to the left side of the car, and, at the same time moved the hand levers for gear selection and emergency braking inside to the center of the car. Hudson also was quick to accept the General Motors-developed self-starter, the device that made gasoline-powered cars viable as a general consumer product.

In 1916,  Hudson presented  what it claimed was the first “balanced” crankshaft in its six-cylinder engine. The innovation provided unparalleled smoothness, and it was quickly copied, but not before Hudson established the reputation of its “Super Six.”

New brand line rises

By the close of World War I Chapin realized that his company needed a rival to the Ford Model T, which was the dominant vehicle of the era, so he had his engineers develop the Essex line. With an advanced all-steel body, the new model quickly established itself, despite the 1919-20 recession.

Yes, Hudson roared through the Roaring Twenties. On the strength of its growing reputation in the United States, the company went on an international kick and built assembly plants in England,  Belgium,  and Canada. In fact, the company operated as if the boom of the mid-to-late Twenties would never end.

Sadly, for Chapin and Hudson, the boom did end. By 1929,  the company had leapfrogged its way to the number three position on the U.S. sales chart, behind just Chevrolet and Ford, with 300,962 units sold. But that proved to be the high-water mark for the enterprise. The stock market collapse of October 1929 and the decade-long Depression that followed hit Hudson particularly hard, probably because the bullish Chapin continued to be optimistic.

Acts failed to help sales

Through the Thirties, Hudson continued to be an innovator with its Terraplane and Essex lines. In 1932,  those brands offered a choice of either six or eight cylinder engines, but 1932 was the low point of the Depression, and the costly changes to the models were greeted with yawns, not with profits. To jump-start sales, Hudson attempted some stunts. Economy runs, several hill climbs,  and speed records were established, but still sales languished.

It wasn’t until the United States became involved in World War II that Hudson trlly shook off the doldrums. Like all major U.S. industrial companies, Hudson became part of “the Arsenal of Democracy,” producing aircraft parts and huge engines for naval craft.

After the war ended in 1945, Hudson got another opportunity  to vault towards the top of the United States auto industry. Hudson’s management was much more attuned to succeeding in boom times than in retrenching when times grew hard, and the American car market was poised for unprecedented growth. Pent-up demand for cars was at its all-time peak after four war years had totally shut down auto production for civilian use.

Precursor to unibody construction

In 1948, Hudson got off to a good start by introducing an all-new Super Six, but it might be said that the car was too advanced for the marketplace. With unit body construction that Hudson sales brochures called as “monobilt,” the landmark Hudson Super Six set the stage for today’s cars, most of which use “unibody” designs. The floorpan of the Hudson was suspended from the bottom of the chassis, a throwback to Harry Stutz’s “underslung” method and the precursor of today’s low-aspect vehicle profiles. The chassis also extended outside the rear wheels, giving the car a well-enclosed “low-rider”  appearance. From ground to rooftop,  it was a foot lower than many of its contemporaries, and there was no doubt it was a  striking design.

Introduced in 1951, the Hudson Hornet  took the Super Six chassis, refined it and then added the piece de resistance, a significantly more powerful engine. When the 262 cubic inch displacement in-line six-cylinder engine was bored out to 308 cubic inches, the Hudson Hornet instantaneously became one of the hottest cars on the road.

On the strength of its  low center of gravity and powerful engine, it didn’t take long for early Fifties stock car racers to figure the Hornet had something going for it. In some ways,  it was odd that Hudson’s rather ordinary  L-head straight six became the hot ticket in the early Fifties, because that era was highlighted by the revolutionary high-compression V-8s from Oldsmobile and Cadillac. But the combination of dual carburetion (Twin-H Power) and cubic inches proved extraordinary in the face of high-tech. It controlled stock car racing in the early Fifties, when stock car racers actually raced “stock cars.”

Hornet’s string of NASCAR victories

Marshall Teague, who became synonymous with Hudson performance in the Fifties, prevailed on 12 of 13 AAA events in 1952. Overall, Hudson won 27 of the 34 NASCAR Grand National car races in 1952, followed by 22 of 37 in 1953, and 17 of 37 in 1954. It was an incredible feat, especially from a car that had some legitimate luxury credentials.

The chassis’ lower center of gravity, created by the “step-down design,” was both stylish and functional. The car did not only handle well, at least in the Fifties vernacular, at the same time, it treated its six passengers to a sumptuous ride. The low-slung  appearance also had a sleekness about it that was accentuated by the nearly enclosed rear wheels.

Sadly, its unibody design was expensive to update, so it suffered against the planned obsolescence of the Big Three. Hudson’s competitors, using individual  body-on-frame designs, could change the look of their models on a yearly basis without costly chassis alterations, but the Hudson Hornet design was essentially locked in until a re-engineering came due. So, despite its racing victories, Hudson’s sales began to languish. Finally Hudson merged with Nash and the brand vanished for good in 1957.

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