Jet Sedan delivery and Pick Up

[Deleted User]

Would Hudson's fortunes have been helped by bring out a sedan delivery or pick up versions of their Jet? Would a convertible Jet allowed for more sales? Would the tooling costs have been justified? Would you have wanted one either then or now?

hudsontech

Hudson's fortunes MIGHT have been helped if they'd forgotten about the Jet and put the development money into a V-8, like everybody else was doing.



Hudsonly,

Alex B

SuperDave

Has anyone ever transplanted the Packard engine into a stepdown? Seems like it would have been a natural sorta like what a 55 SHOULD have been? Not to denegrate the 55-57 cars, but I always wondered what would have happened had AMC use the Hudson platform and spent the money on a V8.. Food for thought.

harry54

As far as the sedan deliveries and Pickups, that's not a bad move when you already have the dominant market share overall. However because of there overall mkt share of 13th they should have focused accordingly. The first thing the should of done was an overall market research project of the market place. Then they should have looked at there pro's and con's as far as there existing product base. After doing all of this at length they then should have proceeded based on the research and what they already did well. I agree that they should have started working on the v-8 as early as 1950. Then they should have introduced a remodeled Hornet with the new v-8. As far as the money that they spent on the Pacemaker and Wasp they could have spent that money better. If they had not ever have introduce those models , they could have sold more stripped down specials earlier and maybe could have come out with a wagon or sports car. They were really on that path anyway. They could have picked up on the Sport luxury theme " just like Bmw". The way I look at it. They were making the type of car that Bmw made in the 80's and 90's . How ironic that one of the most succesfull Car companies of all time "Bmw" took a page out of the theme of Hudson. Fast luxury sedans that handel. If they only new. We could now have the 3 Series Hornet , the 5 Series Hornet and the 7 Series......

[Deleted User]

Folks, don't go thinking that the Hudson engineers didn't see the pull of the V8 the fact is they did not have the money to retool the engine plant to produce them. Early on they saw the need for V8's. The sorry truth to it is the upper management put their money into the Jet project. This project was floated in the 1949 and 1950 time frame. The rambler was doing well as a compact fuel efficient car and Hudsons upper management thought that this would be a good path for Hudson to take. They were doomed from the get go. They floated a 16 million dollar bank note to finance the retool. Frank Springer had designed a beautiful low slung compact and had even pushed the Italia design for the Jet. He was over ruled and the ungainly Jet was born. During the time it was conceived and produced the world changed drastically. The korean war made it hard to get material the tastes of the buying public went from compact to big cars and Hudson were running a 5 year old design. I have docs from the engineering division where they had stated the need to build V8's. No money was available so they did the next best thing and pumped up the six and its a testimony to their skill that they got so much power out of the six. They saw it coming, knew it would probably kill them but could do notthing about it, other than kick the V8's ass's as a matter of pride. Can you just imaging a Hudson engineered V8?



One mistake in direction will kill a small car company and they didn't have the money to get themselves out of this. They knew it late 53 when the board proposed the merger and I have the May 54 docs that put forth all the financials and how the merger will take place. So really it was all over in late 53 early 54.



If Hudson had taken the 16 Million and brought out a new stepdown with a V8 and let Springer go to town we may have gotten a few extra years out of Hudson. However we could have never withstood the pricing war between Ford and GM that happened around 1954 when they basically dropped car prices by hundreds of dollars had superior financing and rebates. None of the orphans could compete with that type of gorilla marketing.

harry54

I have to agree that Frank Springer was certianly the Stylist that they should have allowed to run things. He was correct before the war , light years ahead of the mkt, with the step down design and with the italia. From things that I have read in regards to the Italia, it was a hot car with not enough horsepower. If they had the Hudson v-8 who knows ? Regardless of the merger, Hudson could have had a much more dominant role within AMC. Just as Cheverolet has the Vette maybe the we could be talking about a 50th aniversary Italia.

MikeWA

In looking at the other offerings of the time, it just seems to me that the stepdown design was at the end of its usefulness come 1955, no matter what you tried to do to it. The limitations of the frame were just too much. Chevy, Ford and Plymouth all had pretty crisp new designs in 1955, and lets face it- think back to your youth in the '50's- Hudson was a joke, style-wise. Everybody compared it to the bathtub Nash. We are all jaded now, by our knowledge of the innate quality of the marque, and its superior handling, etc.- but if you put a tweaked '54 Hornet against a 55 BelAir hardtop or a '55 Crown Vick, I think you know where the buyers are going to go. They needed a total re-design, regardless of the engine, and there just wasn't any money to do it. They worked themselves into a box from which there was no escape.