The Nash Airflyte was constructed like few other American cars of its time, and it was innovative in other ways, too. This 1951 factory film provides the details.
As we’ve mentioned more than once here at Mac’s Motor City Garage, the 1949-51 Nash Airflyte was one of the more distinctive American cars of its time. (See our feature here.) For example: Unitized body/frame construction as developed by the Budd Corporation caught on in Europe before it was fully embraced by the Motor City, but Nash-Kelvinator was an early adopter in the USA, starting with the 1941 Nash 600 and continuing with the Airflyte. ‘
In satisfying detail, this film explores how unit construction was incorporated in the Airflyte. We start with an entertaining demonstration of its benefits by “Lucky” Lee Lott’s Hell Drivers auto thrill show, followed by a technical explanation with animated diagrams. Much of the story is devoted to the stamping, welding, and assembly process at the Milwaukee and Kenosha facilities. The jigging and electric spot welding are not so different from today’s methods—-except that here, hundreds of human production workers are the welding robots, so to speak.
Also included are some glances at distinctive Airflyte features, including one that continues to fascinate people to this day: the fold-down seats, roll-out mattress, and fitted window screens that converted the car into a rather comfortable camper. While much has been made of the romantic possibilities, the setup was actually designed for tourists and outdoorsmen. Anyway, here’s the most complete visual presentation on the Airflyte we’ve found so far, a full 17 minutes. Video below.
I thoroughly enjoyed this. I’d have bought one, if I could see out that slot of a rear window.
The amount of manual labor that went into that car is really striking. In addition to a good share of the 8,000+ spot welds, there’re just generally a lot of human hands on this car – the fitting of the welding jigs must be really critical – and of course paint and sealing was always very manual. Note somebody had to clip the Weather-Eye’s fresh air cowl “scoop” to the inner wheel well for painting (~12:50 in the video).
Also impressed by the complexity of the stampings. It really drives home the expense of changing body styles with a unibody.
Though this at the time was state of the art body construction, and no need for the expense of a separate frame. With the spot welds you can see why robotics were such a huge advance in body construction, three decades on. Also, with the number of panels that are lifted from the press by hand, you can see why transfer presses were such an advance – sheet in one end, cut to size, stamped, holes cut, in sequence on three or four dies, all without a human hand touching them. As for the expense of changing styles, that’s why Nash went for a limited range of body options. The fewer the variations, the cheaper the whole operation. A fabricated body on frame offered a wider use of shared panels, (eg same roof pressing for both base level 4-door sedan and 2-door pillarless) but you needed the greater production volume that the Big Three could command to amortise the investment costs
“While much has been made of the romantic possibilities”
As a one-time Nash owner, I chuckled at this statement.
“Dad, can I borrow the Airflyte?”