"something of an extraordinary nature will turn up..."

Mr. Micawber in Dickens' David Copperfield

Kit Foster's

CarPort

AUTOMOTIVE SERENDIPITY ON THE WEB

CarPort
November 2nd, 2005

1948 Hudson Commodore

My neighbor Dale Treadway snapped this
Hudson
while vacationing at Cape Cod last summer. It’s a 1948 or
’49 Commodore
– only the interiors differed between those two years. He
spotted it
in the parking lot at Rock Harbor in Orleans, and noted that it carries a
regular passenger registration
, a number issued in November of 2001. That implies that it’s in everyday use, not a collector car.

It could be what I call a “summer car.” When I was young I spent many summers at The Cape, and it was common to see older cars, often touring cars or
woodie wagons
, on the road. Massachusetts allowed six-month renewals for registration and insurance, so many folk kept a car at their summer cottage for use from July until Labor Day. Friends of ours on Nantucket had a
1930 Lincoln
“summer car” in the 1950s and it may still be on the island. In eastern Massachusetts the woodies were called
“beach wagons”
for obvious reasons.

Alternatively, it could be in regular use by somebody who simply prefers old cars. For six years we drove a 1963 Ford Falcon as our family car, and it was replaced by a
1970 Chevy Impala
that was so roomy and useful we found we didn’t need a minivan. These cars were 16 to 21 years old when we had them, nowhere near automotive senility. In fact, a 56-year-old Hudson is entirely satisfactory for everday use.

In 1948, Hudson introduced its new “Step-down” design, so named because the floor was level with the bottom of the outer frame rail. Thus one stepped down to get into it. Overbuilt by today’s standards, the Step-down had a
steel cage
that completely surrounded the passenger compartment. A high belt line gave the “greenhouse”
small windows
, unusual at the time but now coming into vogue with the
Chrysler C300
. Hudson also had a
new six-cylinder engine
for 1948, with full pressure lubrication for the first time in any Hudson.

In 1951, Hudson introduced the
Hornet
, a new top-of-the-line model with an enlarged six. It not only had plenty of
luggage space
, with the new optional
“Twin H-Power”
dual carburetion it had plenty of power.
Marshall Teague
, Herb Thomas and
Tim Flock
were among the Hudson drivers to knock
Oldsmobile
out of the NASCAR championship in 1951 and retain the title through 1954. With the new 308 cubic inch Hornet engine setting records, the old eight, a
pre-war design
with
splash oiling
, was redundant and was dropped after 1952.

Hudson’s 1954 marriage with Nash to form
American Motors
resulted in
1955 models
that were more Nash than Hudson. In fact, the best-selling Hudson in ’55 was a rebadged
Rambler Cross Country
wagon. The
1954 cars
were the last Step-downs and, to many, the last real Hudsons. The final automobile to wear a Hudson badge was the
1957 Hornet
, a car
familiar
to all CarPort regulars.

Serendipity: n. An aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
“They were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”
Horace Walpole, The Three Princes of Serendip
© 2004-2024 Kit Foster
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