Re: C (Hudson in respect to AMC)

[farna@xxxxxxx]

Well, Hudson was obviously the weaker company finance wise, or Nash couldn't have been able to buy them out. They didn't have a strong product line and couldn't afford (or get additional financing) to retool for another model. If the Jet had been semi-successful they might have survived a bit longer. History has shown that even Nash was dieing at the time, but had a winner in the Rambler. If they hadn't, the merger would have likely died when the Nash/Hudson names were phased out. Romney had the great foresight to kill both Nash and Hudson names and concentrate on the Rambler as it was. That had to be a tough decesion, as I'm sure a lot of board members were reluctant to give up Nash. My personal opinion (PURE SPECULATION ON MY PART!!) is that using the Ambassador name for the "top Rambler" was a nod to appease those who didn't want to kill Nash (was anyone left who didn't want to see the Hudson name go???) entirely, but they did have to name it something (I wonder if anyone!
  suggested Hornet??? With the 327 it surely had enough performance to finally satisfy those used to Hudsons). AMC did make clay mock-ups with both Hudson and Nash trim, but surely dropping the names streamlined the model line-up and made things less confusing for customers (though "Ambassador by Rambler" was a little confusing I'm sure!). 

Other than beefing the performance, especially handling wise, of the Nash bodies I don't see how Hudson could have been kept around at all. As noted by John with the HP figures, Hudson wasn't the most powerful car in NASCAR. It did handle better than anything else due to heavy duty "export" suspension and the lower center of gravity of the step-down body -- coupled with enough HP and gobs of low end torque (inherent to a long stroke six -- a comparison of torque numbers would be nice along w/ the HP, but I don't have books with the other makes here in Korea, brought my AMC books only!). As it turned out (hind sight is wonderful!), I'm of the opinion that the so called merger hurt Nash/AMC more than it helped. There was a gain of dealer locations, but a lot of them switched to other makes. So other than talent, what was any gain??? And again, I think the talent could have been had a lot cheaper -- those guys had to have jobs!! Some would have went to bigger companies, but Nas!
 h already had a good talent pool to work with. Dave Potter, the guy responsible for the GEN-1 (Nash/Rambler) V-8, "new" six (232), and later AMC V-8s came from Kaiser, not Hudson. 

Not trying to contradict/discredit John Mahoney! Just adding observations to the conversation. 

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