Nash Twin-Ignition Eights

If Nash Motors Company were a comedian, it would certainly be Rodney Dangerfield. If it were a baseball team, it would simply be the  Chicago Cubs. If it were a food, it would be the  old fashioned  macaroni and cheese. You see, in Dangerfield’s vernacular, Nash never gets no respect,  huh?  Automotive historians sing the praises of Peerless, Packard,  and Pierce-Arrow. They wax eloquent over Bugatti, Isotta-Fraschini, and Hispano-Suisa.  But Nash, well, Nash is treated like yesterday’s mashed potatoes.

Vehicles for the middle class

Now, to be fair, Nash does not belong in the pantheon of the great marques that built luxurious conveyances for the  rich, who, as Fitzgerald wrote, are different from you and me. But Nash always did a superior job of creating vehicles for the vast American middle class–vehicles that were solid, honest, and hard-working just like the citizens who bought them. Further, when one takes a close look at the Nashes of the late Twenties and early Thirties,  one has to observe that they came very close to presenting the style, power and flair of the classic marques–but at prices that were far more palatable to the middle-class masses that continued to require  automotive transportation even in the depths of the Depression.

The Nash story began when Charles W. Nash joined Buick,  another middle-class American icon,  soon after the turn of the Twentieth Century. By 1910, Nash had worked his way into the presidency of Buick just as William Crapo Durant was using the well-established brand to lay the foundation of General Motors Corporation. By 1912, Nash assumed the presidency of GM after Durant’s financial antics necessitated the directors to force him out.  However, Durant  wasn’t ready to say goodbye to his dream, and by the end of 1915,  he wrested control of General Motors back. This turn of events forced Nash to make a crucial  decision: should he stay with General Motors or should he strike out on his own?

Though he was a friend of Billy Durant, he decided that his best course was to resign from General Motors and look for another chance  in the still-blooming automotive industry. Partnered with fellow GM veterans  Walter P. Chrysler and  James Storrow, Nash began courting a takeover of Packard, but Packard’s board of directors turned thumbs-down on the deal, and Chrysler, lured by a bushel of GM cash, decided to stick it out at GM for the time being. (Of course, he would eventually leave to turn Maxwell into Chrysler Corporation.)

A transaction is struck

With the Packard deal but a memory, Nash looked for another car company to acquire, and he found it in, of all places, Kenosha, Wisconsin, nestled on the shores of Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee. It was there that the Thomas B. Jeffery Company built Jeffery (nee Rambler) cars and the Jeffery Quad four-by-four truck that became  popular  as a World War I transport vehicle. For less than $10 million, Nash bought  the Jeffery company lock, stock and barrel, and, while he and some other GM refugees prepared their first Nash automobile, the plant continued to turn out Jefferys.

Finally, in the fall of 1917, Nash Motors was prepared  to introduce its first true line of Nash cars. Designed under the supervision of Nils Erik Wahlberg, former GM engineer the new vehicles were, not surprisingly, solidly middle class. Inventive labeling was not one of their attributes–the 1918 model year lineup consisted of the 681 and 682 touring cars, 683 roadster, 684 sedan, and 685 coupe–but good engineering was. At their heart was an overhead-valve straight-six engine called “valve in head” by the Nash sales folks. With prices ranging from $1,295 to just over $2,000, they were out of the reach of common working families, but right in the sweet-spot for the growing middle class managerial, professional, and retailer set. The line-up proved to be an immediate success, and by 1920 Nash Motors had more than doubled the top sales mark the Jeffery Company had set in 1914.

Adding more solid vehicles continued to spell triumph  through the 1920s. One landmark edition  was the Carriole, a four-cylinder-equipped two-door sedan priced at $1,350 that was one of the first low-priced “closed cars.” Less than three years later, Nash made another bold move with the announcement of a new, affiliated model  to be called Ajax. In 1925,  the Ajax models–a four-door sedan and a touring car–debuted, but while they sold reasonably well, Nash decided they weren’t enough to sustain a separate firm, so they were brought under the Nash banner as the Nash Light Six. (By the way, your author possessed  a 1926 example since 1967.) Priced at less than $1,000, these cars were filled with virtue.

Continued victories

Nash continued to enhance  features as the Twenties turned into the Thirties. The 1928 lineup was  above all,  innovative. The six-cylinder-powered 400 series Nashes offered four-point engine mounts, seven-main-bearing crankshafts (as did the supposedly “cheap” Light Six) and “dropped” frames, but the big news was “Twin Ignition,” a two-sparkplugs-per-cylinder technology that assured more even combustion and thus much better power as well as  fuel efficiency.   Because Charles W. Nash seemed to have an uncanny ability to gauge what Americans would  acquire, the new Nashes were again a hit in the market, yet another success story for a  firm  that continued to roll in substantial profits year after year.

October 1929 and its stock market crash brought big challenges to Nash, mainly because the company launched  its most ambitious cars ever nearly simultaneously with the Wall Street debacle. New for the 1930 model year were the Nash Twin-Ignition Eights, most  of them riding on 133-inch wheelbases–the longest Nashes ever. With these models, Nash took the Twin-Ignition scheme  to its next logical step, putting together a 299 cubic inch straight-eight engine that was built with the same accurate conservatism that had always marked Nash products. With two sparkplugs popping in each cylinder, the engine was a model of efficiency in its day, supplying 100 horsepower and boasting such niceties as overhead valves and a nine-bearing crank (for strength and smoothness.)

Those 1930 models and the successors that followed in 1931 and 1932 are not generally recognized as classics, but even to the trained eye they are outstanding facsimiles. With  regal grilles, substantial length, and broad, sweeping fenders, the twin-ignition eight-cylinder Nashes could easily pass as “luxury cars.” The 1932 models that arrived in one of the worst years of the Depression are above all  noteworthy. At the very peak  of the range were the first of the “Ambassador” series, which rode on a 142-inch wheelbase. These cars, similar to their brethren the Advanced Eights, boasted Syncromesh transmission, freewheeling, and ride that could be adjusted (within reasonable parameters) from the dash. Unlike some other, more vaunted marques, these cars were also made  like brick outhouses–with not a  hint of mechanical maladies that beset some of the more touted vehicles of the day.

Vehicles even sold in the Depression

This insistence on quality, on  providing  the customer more than what he paid for, was the very reason that Nash was able to survive and finally thrive in the Depression when other car companies were breathing their last. When Charles W. Nash decided to turn over the leaderships of his company to George Mason of the Kelvinator Company in 1937, the company was solidly anchored as a fixture in the American market arena, and it would stay that way until Nash merged with Hudson in the mid-Fifties to form American Motors.

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