The voyage home

a Hudson named Buddy

The tale of this Hudson starts at the beginning of January 2009 when I was cut down

by the influenza. I was feeling sick, my wife and friends where sick of me after a few days.

Throwing up, lying on the couch and became friends with the toilet and feeling ****.



After a week my body gave human signals again to my brain , the visits to the toilet became less frequent what was a good thing because all the car magazine’s in this place had been looked over at least 30 times.

But he, I was feeling better isn’t it ??

I got the bright idea to start cleaning and organizing the garage downstairs, yep, a terrific plan

But after a few minutes of cleaning I started to see all kind of colored spots around me and I realized that this flu was tougher than I thought.

Back on the couch watching the discovery channel, after a day looking at guy’s with unlimited recourses for parts and cash building the nicest cars in 2 hours WITH commercials your feeling worse than before you took the remote.

Okay “ broaden your horizon my boy ” is what my grandfather use to tell me and with this in mind I hopped onto the world wide web. Now I have a indefinable way of surfing on the web and I ended up on the website of the NSRA in the UK, looking through the Cars for Sale section, my eyes found a picture of a 1946 Hudson Big-Boy Pick-up and instantaneously I was Cured, forgotten was the flu, I was in LOVE !!!!!!



[IMG][/img] [IMG][/img][IMG]E-mails were sent and the details of the car came on the mail : Chassis of a S10 Chevy , a 440 Chrysler engine, 4 speed manual gearbox with Hurst shifter, custom stainless exhaust system, 4 barge, a hydraulic clutch, interior with racing seats, 4 point safety belt and roll cage, aluminum dashboard with Stewart-Warner gauges and a heating!! etc, etc, etc ..... There was unfortunately a “ tiny ” little problem : the funds to be used for buying the Hudson where destined to be used for a upgrade of the bathroom and the kitchen !! The reaction of my wife Marianne knocked me of my feet : I showed the pictures of the Hudson and she said : “ The kitchen and Bathroom can wait , when are we going to get it “ Green light it is, we exchanged more e-mails with Nathan the owner of the truck and after we agreed upon the price the deal was made. The plan was simple : Fly out and drive back ! We booked 2 tickets from Amsterdam airport to Bristol in the UK for the Friday 6th of February, the same night that in the UK snow started to fall, yes, serious snowfall. Our flight was cancelled during the last 10 minutes before boarding the plane. Back at the check-in counter of Easy-jet the informed us that the next 2 days all flights where booked and there was no way we could fly this evening, after convincing the attendant that we had urgent matters to take care of in the UK we agreed upon a flight to London airport the same evening. Nathan said he pick us up in London “ no problem “ all in all a 5 hours drive in the snow to get us to his place ( ! ) And there we had a first glimpse of the Hudson covered with snow[/img][IMG][/img]







We finished the evening with some good laughs and a few beers to celebrate our new car.



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Our plan to drive home the next day did not work because the roads over the hills ( we Dutch call them mountains )

were closed because of too much snow. So we visited the local hot-rod builders and celebrated again our new car

( And made some new friends ).

Sunday morning the weather looked fine and we decided to have a go at the mountain roads, we loaded all the goodies and spares on the car and drove of into the snowy mountains. Now I am a guy who likes a challenge now and than but driving on the left side on these narrow roads in the snow through hair pin corners with on one side the mountain and the other side a shear drop, let me tell you it makes you sweat so much that after a half hour when we arrived onto the highway we noticed that the heating did not work !!!

On the 200 miles trip to the ferry port of Ramsgate we let more and more horses loose on the highway and that was heaven nothing beats that big-block sound. Nathan called us halfway and tolt us that we left just in time because the snow was falling again big time and roads where closed again .

Hopped on the ferry at Ramsgate and arrived 4,5 hours later in the port of Ostende in Belgium,

At half past 2 in the morning we were turned inside out by Belgium customs,



I wonder why they stopped us :



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At home by 5 o'clock in the morning, tired and sleepy but with a Hudson Big-Boy in the garage!!!!



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travel photographs and video’s:

http://s5.photobucket.com/albums/y185/fredsv8shop/1946%20Hudson%20adventure/