June 25, 1957 was a black day in Hudson history, as the last cars rolled off the production line in Kenosha. Here’s a brief look back at the final days.

When Nash and Hudson officially merged on May 1, 1954 to create American Motors, the venerable Hudson brand was given a reprieve, though it was a brief one. As the assembly lines clanked to a halt at the big plant at Jefferson and Conner in Detroit, production was transferred to the Nash facility in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The final generation of Hudson automobiles, produced from 1955 through 1957, would share their platform with the Nash Statesman and Ambassador.

With its Nash origins, this final Hudson series was quickly nicknamed the “Hash” and ever since, has never enjoyed much respect among Hudson enthusiasts. That’s a bit unfair. True, the Hash had little in common with the distinctive ’48-’54 Step-Down Hudsons (read the Mac’s Motor City Garage feature here) but still, it was a decent car in its own right, solidly constructed with fine road qualities.

Introduced in Hudson showrooms on October 25, 1956, the ’57 line was a modest facelift of the ’56 model with only minor styling and trim changes. As the Hudson brand was wound down under AMC management, the Hudson-badged Rambler and Metropolitan were dropped, along with all the big Hudson models except one: the 121.25-inch wheelbase Hornet, which shared its basic internal body structure (“black metal,” as it is known in the biz) with the Nash Ambassador, including unit construction with coil springs on all four corners. Overall height was reduced two inches by flattening the crown in the roof panel a bit and adopting 14-inch wheels.

While the external changes were minimal, the mechanical upgrades were significant. The standard (and only) engine was a 327 CID version of the new American Motors V8 with a Carter four-barrel carb, dual exhausts, and 255 hp.  The optional automatic transmission was a General Motors Hydra-Matic, here billed as “Flash-Away Hydra-Matic,” and another notable selling feature was the Nash/American Motors All-Weather air-conditioning system, an advanced design for its time.

The abbreviated ’57 lineup included two body styles, a four-door sedan and the Hollywood two-door pillarless hardtop, and two trim levels, the base Super and the deluxe Custom. (One identifier: On the Custom, the belt trim insert is embossed aluminum while on the Super, it’s paint.) To provide visual variety, 32 distinct paint schemes in single, two-tone, and even three-tone combinations (above) were available. With prices in the $2,800-$3,200 neighborhood, the Hudson was aimed squarely at buyers in the Oldsmobile-Pontiac range—but looking for something different, perhaps.

As American Motors shifted its focus to the compact Rambler line, Hudson sales continued to slide from nearly 56,000 in 1955 to barely 4,100 in 1957. At the same time, the Rambler brand was climbing through the sales charts to more than 91,000 cars that year. CEO George Romney’s strategy was paying off. American Motors had a future, but it wouldn’t include Hudson. The last Hornet (and the last big Nash Ambassafor, too) rolled off the Kenosha production line on June 25, 1957.

Before the end finally came, there were some furtive attempts at American Motors to continue the Hudson brand, which included several clay proposals like the one below. (Note the ’56 Ford and Chevy hardtops in the background, presumably for competitive benchmarking.) Obviously based on a stretched version of the basic Rambler body shell, the ’58 Hudson was never produced, of course, but some of its styling details did find their way onto the 1958 Rambler Ambassador.