This Is What Led To Hudson Motor Company's Downfall | Jay Leno's Garage | CNBC Prime 

Richard M. Langworth's book, "Hudson, the Postwar Years" has a chapter titled, "Why Hudson Failed." In this chapter Mr. Langworth points out the numerous issues that led to Hudson having to merge with Nash/Kelvinator in 1954 to survive (only three more years). Among them is indeed, as Jay Leno points out, the lack of a Hudson V-8 engine. But other factors also contributed to Hudson's demise. To name a few of these includes the famous postwar Step-down uni-body design being near impossible to significantly restyle, not having the manufacturing capacity, dealer network and even advertising budgets like "the big three" (Chevy, Ford & Chrysler), the failure of the 1953-54 Hudson Jet compact car to generate sales to even pay the cost to manufacture it (Langworth said in his book "the Hudson Jet was the single greatest mistake the company ever made.") and finally the so called "Ford Blitz" of 1953 whereby, as Langworth points out, "The overproduction of Ford and GM, in their strident efforts to bury each other, buried only the independents." Mr. Langworth mentions other factors too, but these are some of the ones that really stand out when it comes to the failure of the Hudson Motor Car Company.

They didn't go out of business, they merged with Nash and became AMC.

Factors of Hudson's demise. 1. No V8 when that's what the public wanted (engineering merits aside). 2. The Hudson Jet didn't sell well and was expensive to develop and Hudson burned up their cash reserves. It was also a compact that was priced basically the same as a base full-size Chevy or Ford. Mechanically it was good, In styling it wasn't so good. 3. Ford vs GM price war of the early 50's buried the independent automakers. 4. George Mason the guy who masterminded the AMC merger died of a heart attack and the deal fell apart. Hudson got together with Nash/Kelvinator. Studebaker got together with Packard. But the 2 pairs of companies never merged because of competing egos in management who all wanted to be CEO of AMC. 5. AMC dropped both the Nash and Hudson lines in 1957 to focus on selling the Rambler because Ramblers were selling and the Nash/Hudson lines were not. What is not true is that Hudson faded away because they made bad cars.

Hudson would have been better off not developing the Jet. That money would've been better spent on re-styling, or developing a V-8.

Hudson Jet (to compete with the Nash Rambler) - a great little car with styling that was compromised by management interference...very expensive to develop, sold very poorly. They had diverted funds away from their full size lines for that project and lost too much ground, leaving them no option but to merge with Nash to form AMC.

I question whether they needed a V8 to survive and their failure to survive was the result of not having a V8. Suppose that they have converted their flathead six to a twin overhead camshaft six with four valves per cylinder. That would have given them more power than any V8 available at the time and they would have won the stock car races by even wider margins. They could have advertised that pushrod engines were obsolete and that only Hudsons had modern engines.

when l was a kid I'd hear people talking about Hudson's but can't remember actually seeing 1 running on the road...now, the more I'm finding out about them the more l like them...what kind of bike is that in the background

Jay, I take it you don't own a Nash Metro, but could you find someone willing to come on the show who does? I've always loved the look of those goofy things. Besides, that I enjoy your show and would rather hear it all from your point of view.

Two “Fabulous Hudson Hornets!”

I love the terraplane

when I got my drivers license 1960. I drove our second family car. a 1950 hudson commodore 6. its cylinders were worn out and had a lot of blowby. but it still ran so we kept on using it. my dad said it was the best car he ever owned. as for me it drove nicely so it was better than no car.

The flat head 6 was also a problem. If it over heated it was never right again. Both the head and the block would warp. You could only shave so much off and hope it worked. multiple head gaskets and various other fixes never lasted.

That flathead 6 was archiac, it didn't even have a modern pressurised lubrication system. To compete a complete new design was required.

If the independents had seen what was coming and merged in 1947 and developed a good v8 - the Studebaker v8 was a decent motor, but the factories were obsolete. Maybe GM and Ford were awarded better war contracts than Nash, Hudson, Studebaker and Packard. I've read about Studebaker trucks and Package Merlin engines, but I think GM, Ford and Chrylser must have done better on war contracts.

What happened to the 1960 metropolitan, Jay? You don't own a Metropolitan??

For the US-american it should have been a 16 cylinder - I guess. 6 cylinder is best consumption and power / smoothness. Citroën put even that great 2Liter 4 cylinder motor of the TA - Traction Avant (construction of 1933 L'Attraction the Attraction) in the miracle car of 1955 - the DS (Déesse - Goddess) 19 .

Hudson will live again

Americans don't make good decisions. But gas millage was not important then when it was 25 cents per gallon. So they went for gas gussler v8.

I wish Dodge And Hudson were a thing