Happiness in a Hornet
American Motors Corp. was nothing if not quirky, an admirable trait inherited from its immediate predecessors, Nash and Hudson. The former’s elegant and little-known 1940 de Sahknovsky Cabriolet, and the latter’s attractive and practical Big Boy and Cab Pick-Up of the immediate pre- and postwar years, illustrate how each builder did things in its own way.
As true postwar designs appeared, Nash unveiled its futuristically aerodynamic Airflyte for 1949, a year after Hudson’s launch of its less-unconventionally streamlined, Monobilt design. Hudson told drivers that, “Now you’re face to face with tomorrow,” while Nash spoke of cars, “Designed, engineered and built with the touch of tomorrow.”
The companies’ products then began to diverge. Hudson
