As Hudson was sailing off into the sunset, there was a notable addition to the product line for 1955: the Hudson Rambler, a Nash Rambler in everything but name.
The last Detroit-built Hudson, a Hornet, rolled off the assembly line at the Jefferson and Conner plant on October 29, 1954, a casualty of the Hudson-Nash merger earlier that year that created American Motors. There would be Hornets and Wasps in 1955, but the Wasp now shared its platform with the Nash Statesman (114.5-in wheelbase) and the Hornet with the Nash Ambassador (121.3 inches). These Kenosha-built Hudsons were quality, well-equipped cars, but despite their exclusive exterior styling, they were regarded as Nash/Hudson hybrids and nicknamed the Hash. (See our feature here.)
But meanwhile, there was more to the Hudson product line for ’55. Hudson’s small car, the poor-selling Jet, was discontinued, and the far more successful Nash Rambler was slipped into its place in the lineup. Unlike with the Hudson big cars, here there was almost no effort to give the cars a distinct Hudson identity. The only difference between a Nash Rambler and a Hudson Rambler was the medallion in the center of the grille. Some cars had an “H” embossed and painted on the hubcaps, but that was the extent of it.
So if you want to know anything about the Hudson Ramblers, simply consult the relevant materials for a Nash Rambler. Two-door Ramblers for ’55 featured a 100-inch wheelbase, same as the 1950 originals, while the four-doors were stretched to 108 inches. All were powered by the Nash 195.6 cubic inch L-head six with 90 horsepower, and a wide variety of body styles were offered in three trim levels: Super, Deluxe, and Custom. Hudson dealers sold more than 25,000 Ramblers in 1955, outpacing the big Wasp and Hudson where not quite 20,000 were sold.
For 1956, the Ramblers were now consolidated on a single 108-inch wheelbase platform and completely restyled with an unusual reverse C-pillar design that was dubbed the Fashion Safety Arch. Again, there was no real difference between the Nash and Hudson versions, but now the Hudson badge was moved from the center of the grille to the front of the hood. In 1956, the Rambler outsold the Wasp and Hornet by roughly two-to-one as the big Hudsons were fading from the scene.
For 1957, there were no Nash Ramblers or Hudson Ramblers, only the Rambler. This would be the last year for the senior Nash and Hudson as well, since American Motors was focusing all its product and marketing efforts on the Rambler brand. In truth, the Hudson Rambler is not so much the story of a car but the story of a badge. Speaking of which: In 1955 (below) and 1956 there was also a Hudson version of the Metropolitan, the subcompact manufactured for AMC by the British Motor Corporation. In the photo below, you can just make out the Hudson emblem in the center of the grille bar.
Great article, per usual, but the cool part was discovering that they sold a Hudson Metropolitan, something I didn’t know.
A friend of mine owns a Nash Metropolitan, also had no idea there was a Hudson variant. I told him to keep watching vintage car swaps and see if he could find an emblem. If he could, buy it, and put it on his car. Voila! One very rare Hudson Metropolitan, because that’s the total difference between it and the Nash version.
Decades later came the identical (with slightly different trim) Dodge Omnis and Plymouth Horizons.
The Dodge and Plymouth K-cars were so identical the only brand ID on them was a rear emblem. The grille showed the corporate pentastar.
Well, not quite. The ’81s did use unique divisional badging – particularly the 1-year-only Plymouth “rocket” in the Pentastar – before the ’82s began carrying the Pentastar front and rear.
But … when the Ks were introduced, Chrysler couldn’t afford both Dodge and Plymouth versions for the press previews, so they showed the Dodge Aries models one day and, overnight, “converted” the press cars to Plymouth Reliants by swapping grilles, taillights and identifying marks (hood ornaments and badges) for the next day’s showing.
This was related in a recent Collectible Automobile article on the 1981-84 models.
Re. the big ’55/7 Nashes & Hudson, by back around 1966 they had pretty well thinned out. I stopped to talk to someone at the time who had several in his back yard and asked where they had all gone. He opened the hood, pointed to the unibody spring tower, and said that they rusted around the top of the spring, and that it was common for one to be going down the road and have the spring eject itself into the hood. Not sure if the Ramblers suffered from the same problem.
Hi John, actually, it was the trunnions that rusted. Before ball joints, Rambler used trunnions to affix the front suspension to the unibody. My grandfathers ’61 Classic had 40,000 miles, in perfect shape, but the trunnions had rusted and nobody would fix it. I think the 1969 Javelin was the last to use trunnions.
I just love these Rambler features, makes me feel right at home.( Lynyrd Skynyrd) While I don’t like to reference cheesy TV shows, I do enjoy the highly scripted American Pickers. In one episode, they came across a woman in Indiana known as “The Hubcap Lady”. apparently, in a shed whilst looking around, they came across a derelict 1955 Hudson Metropolitan, that had like 50 miles on it. She said, her late husband bought the car new in ’55, with the intent of her getting her license. She never did and the car sat.
If you look at the cars, it’s the color combinations Rambler was famous for, 3 sometimes 4 colors on one car. The Rambler body plant in Milwaukee( now a Walmart) was located on E.Capitol Dr. The finished bodies were shipped via trucks ( IH 4000 cabovers) and open 2 tier trailers, maybe 6-8 bodies in all weather, possibly explaining the rust issues. My parents lived on Capitol Dr. and as kids we would sit and watch the trucks go by on their way to Kenosha ( about 30 miles) for final assembly. Seemed like one went by every 15 minutes, all the colors of the rainbow,,,it seemed. I never knew of Nash or Hudson, they were just Ramblers to us, even long after the AMC switch. They were part of Wisconsins heritage, and we were mighty proud of that.
The 1955-56 Hudson Ramblers were brand brothers but they were as radically different as you could have gotten…the only thing they shared was the 108-inch wheelbase on the four-door models, and some mechanical parts… The “fourth color” on some 1956 and ’57 Hudsons was in fact an anodized aluminum trim part, which to me was a bit much (although Ford and Mercury had similar trim on some of their 1957 models, turning their two-tones into “three-tones.” And for 1957, American Motors “bet the farm on the Rambler” and separated the make from both Nash and Hudson…