Re: Touchdown

["piper_pa20" <piper_pa20@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with Frank.  What did Hudson have that Nash didn't have?  Their 
straight eight engine was just about obsolete.  The Jet was a loser in the 
market and didn't have anything that the unitized body Ramblers and 
Airflytes didn't have.  Hudson was sourcing their V8 engines from Packard 
weren't they?  The only thing going for them was their additional dealer 
network.  George Mason was evidently a good enough business man to see an 
advantage in merging rather than waiting around like a vulture to pick at 
the Hudson bones, but I don't know what it could have been except for the 
dealer network.

Joe Fulton
Salinas, CA

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <farna@xxxxxxx>
To: <mail@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2004 5:43 AM
Subject: Re: Touchdown


> On October 26, 2004 Mahoney, John wrote:
>
> > While my expected "let-down" weekend ended in so much fun with a car guy
> > who's just two years older than I am but who knows two hundred times as 
> > much
> > old-car stuff (I may never look at another post-war car again!), I'll 
> > land
> > on planet AMC [?] again and launch a question he threw.  "What if AMC had
> > taken more from its Hudson side than from Nash?  Wouldn't it have become 
> > a
> > more successful car company?"  (Ooh; the curse of another Boston 
> > bambino...)
>
> Right.... Hudson was drowning! I seriously wonder if Nash might not have 
> been in a better position if they had just let Hudson go under. What did 
> they get from the Hudson buyout? The only tangible thing I can see is some 
> engineering talent. They closed the old Hudson plant, and they didn't pick 
> up any real sales since many Hudson loyalists detested the "Hash". Now if 
> they had thought to stiffen the suspension a LOT and make the car handle a 
> bit, Nash might have kept some of the Hudson people -- at least the Hornet 
> should have been made to handle (that's what won Hudson NASCAR titles more 
> than power, the cars were out powered, but the low COG made it handle 
> better than anything else).
>
> Maybe I'm missing something, but if Hudson had simply went out of 
> business, Nash could have picked up some of the talent cheaper than buying 
> the company out!
>
>
>
> > The choice between "luxury" nylon or "sport" vinyl was just a
> > way to make two or three hundred dollars more --- as laughable now as the
> > twenty or thirty dollar model differences in the 1930s --- in MSRP.  But
> > choice only works when there are more than a few buyers.
>
> Yes, but $20-30 in the 1930s was more like $400-$600 now.... and most 
> likely a LOT more, depending on WHEN in the 30s you mean. So when things 
> are adjusted for inflation over 60 years, those differences aren't so 
> laughable.
>
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