Hudson, Tucker

There is a guy not far from me who owns a Hudson car.The car is in very good original condition.I believe the Hudson cars were tough cars, built like a Tank. cuhulin

Okay,lets start with the Hudson. For most of its life it was a fine car, but not super-innovative. Its claim to innovation came in the late

40s with its step-down design. Other cars had everything on TOP of frame rails, Hudson bent the frame rails out to the extreme outside of body- their step-down design. This made them lower and improved handling.

Yet in some ways they were backward. Their handling made them a power in NASCAR, but their engines were actually a bit primitive, straight eight flatheads, when their competitors were going to overhead valve v-8s.

Now to Tucker. The arugment still rages about whether Tucker was a con-man or innovative engineer. The only thing really innovative about the Tucker was rear engine, and he was certainly not the first to put engine in rear. The steerable center headlight was sort of a gimmick. The car in general lacked engineering development- kind of raw-edged. This was likely a money shortage problem. This was Tucker's biggest problem. He tried to bring an entirely new brand, with several new features, to market with inadequate funding. My take is that he was not a stock promotor, but genuinely tried to produce a car. But he was not a particularly good engineer, he was primarily a marketeer. He was NOT a tremendous businessman.

I saw a Tucker in a Museum. It was HUGE, as was the engine, which was originally a boat engine or airplane engine or something like that. Seeing photos of the car, or even the movie about it doesn't give you the feeling of how big it really was. Inside of it there was almost no dashboard or anything under the dash since it was rear engine which made the inside also seem huge.

It was originally an air-cooled helicopter engine, Tucker bought the company that produced the engine and adapted it to water cooling for use in his car. (His original home-grown flat six with hydraulic valve actuation proved unworkable.)

Tucker's idea was that passengers would hurl themselves into a padded "crash chamber" underneath the dash in the event of an impending accident. Seat belts were rejected - not sure if by Tucker or his board - in the belief that people would think the car was unsafe if it needed belts. Many of the other innovations that Tucker initially conceived of, such as disc brakes and fuel injection, were abandoned before the car's limited production run.

AFAIK the first domestic U.S. car to offer seat belts was the 1950 Nash. The first with disc brakes was the 1949 Crosley, which also sported a

4-cylinder OHC engine. (Unfortunately the Crosley's brakes corroded up badly when exposed to road salt and were abandoned in favor of drums.)

Not sure which was the first domestic production car to go with fuel injection - probably the Chevy mechanical system from the late

1950s. Bendix offered up an electronic fuel injection system that was supposed to be used in the 1957 Rambler Rebel, but reliability problems meant that carbs were used instead. (That system was ultimately bought and refined by Bendix.)

The Tucker movie from ~20 years ago was entertaining but not historically accurate in a number of areas.

I think some Chrysler products also had some type of disc brakes, Studebaker was the first in '63 to be fitted with disc brakes of the modern type in the US. Which is pretty late; my mom's '57 Triumph had discs on it (I'm guessing the same Dunlop/Girling brakes that were used by Studebaker?)

Also was used on some 1957 Chrysler products, and was also recalled. So it's a tie between that system and Chevy/Rochester, which actually did remain in production through the early 60's. Not sure why it was dropped.

At the same time, Bosch fuel injection was fitted to some Mercedes-Benz models, which I believe were the first vehicles anywhere to be factory fitted with FI. I believe that was actually a direct injection system and had some quirks - good for racing, had Special Instructions on the street. (I guess the same could be said of the Rochester system; back in the day FI seemed to be more performance-oriented than for emissions, economy, whatever.)

nate

They might have offered a straight eight, I don't know - I'm not really a Hudson expert - but the NASCAR Hornets were powered by a "Twin-H-Power" (dual carbs) straight six. There were lots of performance goodies available for those back in the day, and from what I'm given to understand, they didn't have a whole lot of top end (understandably) but were torque monsters.

nate

In the last few years I recall reading in one of the old car magazines (maybe one of the Hemmings publications) about a '57 Desoto that still had its electronic injection system. I don't think any of the Ramblers actually made it out the door so equipped, apparently a few Chrysler products did though nearly all wound up being retrofitted with carbs.

Somewhere in my pile of auto literature I have a '57 Rebel owner's manual which describes the operating of electronic fuel injection system in detail. It was quite an ambitious system for the time, the description could fit later computerized systems. (Though of course that early Bendix system was purely analog.) Also I meant to say that it was *Bosch* who bought the Bendix FI system and refined it to the point where it was actually usable.

That was the performance ticket for Hudson back in the day, as I recall output in factory trim was 170HP which was pretty respectable at the time and of course that could be hopped up considerably. Due to its "step-down" design and lower center of gravity the Hornet would out-handle just about all its domestic competition.

Unfortunately Hudson lacked the funds to engineer a V8 or even an OHV six. Also their unit construction while very advanced for the time made restyling a difficult and expensive proposition. With Hudson's relatively tiny development budget going towards the ill-fated Hudson Jet, the die was cast and the company was absorbed by Nash to form AMC in 1954.

The Hudson name continued on for a few years and V8s did become available, but by that time Hudsons were really just thinly-disguised Nashes ("Hashes") that did not enjoy Hudson's "step-down" chassis engineering and superior handling characteristics. The big Nashes were more about comfort and convenience than performance and handling. The Hudson name was also used on Ramblers and Metropolitans during AMC's early years before the Nash and Hudson dealer networks were consolidated.

On May 30, 8:32 am, Don Stauffer wrote: But he was not a

I thought he earned a ton of $ off of his patent on the gun turret? Many 10's of thousands went into B-17's, B-24's etc.. I dont know if he designed them himself or just held the patent.. anyone know for sure? Thanks, Ben