Old factory PR photos can be fascinating, funny, and sometimes downright bizarre. Here’s a photo sequence for the 1955 Hudson that manages to be all three.

As we’ve mentioned before here at Mac’s Motor City Garage, we adore vintage automotive PR photos. They’re the bread and butter of our content and we’ll never get tired of them. Their informational value is priceless and their variety is endless. That said, every once in a while we discover a batch of photos that make even us scratch our heads.

For example, check out this set of images for the 1955 Hudson, which came to us without the benefit of captions. In the scene above, a young lady in a bathing suit is thumbing a ride in a ’55 Hudson, which is driven, apparently, by a large white stuffed animal. Or something. Naturally, this raises a number of questions for us, starting with, “Huh?”

In the next photo, above, which is equally surreal, the roles are reversed. Now the young lady is behind the wheel of the ’55 Hornet Hollywood and the guy in the dog suit (or polar bear, or whatever it’s supposed to be) is riding in the passenger seat.

Now would be a good time, we suppose, to mention that the Hudson product line was all new for 1955, thanks to the merger with Nash on May 1, 1954 that created American Motors. The remarkable ’48-’54 Step-Down cars were discontinued (learn the secrets of the Step-Down Hudsons here) and the Hudson was now built on the full-size Nash platform, while sharing none of the Nash exterior sheet metal. Hudson customers could opt for the familiar 308 CID Hornet inline six or a husky new 320 CID V8 manufactured by Packard.

In the next picture, above, things are finally starting to make sense. The big white bear or dog (big bad wolf, perhaps?) is back behind the wheel of the Hollywood hardtop, and the lady model is displaying a large thermometer. Of course, that’s it!  This was, we can guess, a picture story selling a brand new feature at Hudson for 1955, All-Season Air Conditioning.

In the previous year, Nash had pioneered modern, integrated air conditioning with the evaporator and associated hardware behind the dash. (Pontiac also offered a similar system that year.) Previous automotive A/C systems were bulky and expensive setups with the evaporator and plumbing mounted in the trunk. With its more compact and advanced design, Nash—and now Hudson, too—could offer air conditioning at a practical price: $395. It was this news, along with the supreme comfort of American Motors All-Season Air Conditioning, we might conclude, that cooled off the big bad wolf.

We’ve never seen this photo sequence in published form anywhere, but if you have, please let us know in the comment section. We’d love to see it. Meanwhile, below is a more traditional PR photo showing the ’55 Hornet Hollywood hardtop and friends lounging around the pool. Speaking of swimming pools, you can check out another feature of ours on zany automotive PR photos here: “Cars and Swimming Pools.”