(EXPANDED FROM 2/10/2022)
In the early post-war period Hudson came the closest to being an American Mercedes-Benz. The new-for-1948 “step-downs” had engineering advances that most other automakers would not pick up on for years. So in a way it is tragic that Hudson did not maintain its independence into the 1960s, when its emphasis on roadworthiness, space efficiency, safety and aerodynamics might have found a larger following.
At the same time, the step-down arguably represented an evolutionary wrong turn in key respects. Historians have often noted that the Hudson’s unit-body construction did not easily lend itself to restylings, which resulted in the automaker’s full-sized cars looking decidedly old hat by 1954.
Less mentioned is that Hudson made a shift upmarket that may have undercut its ability to take full advantage of a post-war seller’s market before it turned brutally competitive (or anti-competitive, depending on your viewpoint).
But even if Hudson had managed to update the step-down in a timely fashion, staying in the full-sized, premium-priced field may have been a dead end. Hudson arguably needed to pioneer a new field to stay alive. Unfortunately, it guessed wrong with the ill-fated compact Jet.
Hudson lineup shifted above Buick in price
The introduction of the step-down coincided with significant price increases across the Hudson lineup. The least expensive model — the three-passenger Super Six coupe — saw its list price go up from $1,628 to $2,069.
Meanwhile, the top-of-line Commodore Eight two-door convertible went up from $2,196 to to $3,138. While it is true that U.S. automobile prices were escalating, Hudson’s prices went up more than Big Three competitors such as Buick, Chrysler and Oldsmobile.
Hudson was now perched at the top of the premium-priced field, with its lowest-priced models straddling between the mid-range Buick Super and the top-end Roadmaster. Even Packard’s bottom-end four-door sedan was lower priced than Hudson’s equivalent eight-cylinder model ($2,275 vs. $2,343).
The Hudson’s big price increases may have partly reflected the step-down’s greater heft. The weight of a 1948 Super Six went up over 400 pounds even though the car’s length was almost the same as the previous year’s models.
Perhaps even more importantly, former Hudson executive Roy D. Chapin Jr. said that the car had a variety of features that General Motors executives considered too expensive to even put in a Cadillac (Langworth, 1993).
Post-war design emphasized interior roominess
The step-down’s most obvious initial advantage was greater interior room. Richard M. Langworth noted that the 1948 Hudson “offered 61 3/4 inches of seat width up front and sixty-three in the rear — better than eighty-two percent utilization of its seventy-seven-inch width, the highest percentage in the industry” (1993, p. 34).
Also see ‘1946 Hudson shows what made automaker so important — and vulnerable‘
My sense is that this was mainly a function of the Hudson being an all-new design rather than a reskinning of a narrower pre-war body. This can be most obviously be seen when comparing the Hudson to a 1948-50 Packard, where the car’s added width came entirely from new “pontoon” side styling.
Of course, the Hudson’s biggest claim to fame was switching to unitized construction that allowed passengers to sit between the body’s frame rather on top of it. This didn’t increase the car’s roominess so much as it allowed a lower center of gravity for better handling — and a more stylishly low appearance. When the step-down was introduced it was from four to nine inches lower than its direct competition.
The step-down was heavier than its predecessor, but Hudsons still weighed less than their direct competitors. As a case in point, a Super Eight four-door sedan was almost 450 pounds lighter than a Chrysler Saratoga. And because the Hudson kept the same basic body through 1954, by that point its weight advantage often increased as Big Three cars got bigger and glitzier.
Hudson Commodore shows off well-tailored interior
The primary car pictured in this story is a 1948 Commodore. This top-end Hudson straddled the Buick Roadmaster four-door sedan in price. The six-cylinder model listed for roughly $20 less than the Roadmaster and the eight was around $100 more. As might be expected, you got a roomy and well-appointed car for your money.
Did Hudson go too far upmarket to be survive?
The step-down sold respectably in its first four years. Production peaked in 1949 at 159,100 units, which was the highest of any independent automaker that year.
From then on Hudson did not do nearly as well as Nash and Studebaker — and in 1953 even slipped below Packard. Might this have been partly because Hudson’s prices were too high?
Said another way, might Hudson have better navigated the postwar years by sticking with its previous strategy of straddling the low- and premium-priced fields? That’s essentially what Nash and Studebaker did with some success.
Management did add a lower-priced Pacemaker series in 1950 and the legendary Hornet in 1951. A two-door hardtop was also introduced, but it proved too expensive and uninspired to bolster Hudson’s high-performance image (go here for further discussion).
Updating the step-down might not have been enough
Historians generally criticize Hudson for spending a bundle of money on the ill-fated compact Jet rather than on a V8 and updated styling for its big cars. As we discuss here, the Jet was clearly a bad decision.
Even so, this begs the question of where Hudson would have been most likely to find longer-term success. Should the step-down have grown in sync with its Big Three competitors and received a big-block V8 engine? Or would Hudson have tanked along with the rest of the premium-priced brands, whose collective output fell by almost half between 1955 and 1959?
I suspect that Hudson would have gotten wiped out if it had mimicked the Big Three. I would also raise the question of whether Hudson could have afforded both a new-generation body and an in-house V8 engine (unless development costs had been substantially shared with other automakers).
Did Hudson have a plausible way forward?
The Jet was arguably too small for a Hudson, but the brand might have found success in pioneering what would become the “intermediate” market. That could have been done by decontenting the entry-level Wasp, such as by shortening its wheelbase and length eight inches (to 111 inches and 194 inches, respectively). That would have positioned the Hudson in between a 1956 Rambler and Ford in size.
If the Rambler’s sales were any indication, a mid-sized car could have gotten by primarily with six-cylinder engines (go here for further discussion). So perhaps Hudson could have muddled through by purchasing small-block V8s from another automaker such as Studebaker.
With a sleek, low-slung body that made full use of the step-down frame, a mid-sized Hudson could have been an intriguing alternative to the increasingly overwrought Big Three cars of the late-1950s. Instead, Nash took over a dying Hudson and we got the dowdy Rambler. It proved to be a significant car, but hardly an American Mercedes.
NOTES:
This story was initially published on June 26, 2020 and expanded on June 17, 2024. Production and market share figures were calculated with data drawn from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (1993), Gunnell (2002) and Wikipedia (2020). All figures should be for model-year production, so may be slightly different than the numbers presented in automotive histories that use calendar-year data. Price graph does not include senior Packard models and the Chrysler Imperial.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 1993, 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised Fourth Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Langworth, Richard M.; 1993. Hudson 1946-1957: The Classic Postwar Years. Motorbooks International, Osceola, WI.
- Wikipedia; 2020. “U.S. Automobile Production Figures.” Accessed March 28.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES
- autohistorypreservationsociety.org: : Hudson (1948)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Hudson (1953)
Maybe Hudson saw the need to increase price to amortize the new construction method. Also if you are trying to survive on less than 100k cars per year, premium price means premium profit. However it is extremely hard to move a product upscale. This was an era where customers were highly brand conscious and Buick, Olds, Chrysler etc customers would regard Hudson as getting above itself.
Packard, Hudson, Studebaker and Nash were all put into the same economic vise that led to Chrysler’s bankruptcy in 1979: The cost-point per car was becoming higher and higher under the pressure of adopting new chassis, engine and styling that were more than just reskins and updates of 1942 models. In 1948-1949, only General Motors, Chrysler and Ford had the money to revamp their model lineups from current sales, while Packard, Hudson, Nash and Studebaker had to invest their war-time profits, almost everything in each company’s treasury, to intoduce fresh cars. Unfortunately, the independents created 1948-1949 cars that were styled in a love-hate relationship (Nash, Packard and Studebaker) or brilliant, but flawed, like the Step-down Hudson. Personally, I have always thought the 1954 Hudson was a great car, but each Step-down simply cost too much to build at a competitive price, and like the 1953 Studebaker sedans, locked the manufacturer into a no-exit future. In the meantime after 1949, Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs kept meeting the expectations of medium-price to premium motor cars at slightly lower prices !
I think Hudson’s strategy of premium engineering and premium price was about as good as it could have done in the postwar period. Consumer Reports publications of the Era also indicate Hudson had a reliability edge over the competition. The question for me is whether focusing on these product differentiators instead of the Jet could have built a loyal following large enough to yield sales volumes at a profitable level. Certainly Frank Spring’s X-161 prototype shows an innovative styling concept that might have appealed to connoisseur buyers over contemporary offerings from GM or Chrysler. Perhaps the Hudson 6 could have been converted to OHV or even OHC rather than engineering an new V8? Given Rolls-Royce and Jaguar were selling sixes into the US market at the time, that might have worked, at least for a while.
You make a really good point that the major Hudson histories tend to miss because their analysis is heavily colored by Detroit groupthink, e.g., in order to survive Hudson HAD to offer a V8. The success of the Volkswagen Beetle and Rambler illustrate how — even in the depths of the 1950s — being different could lead to greater success than trying to mimic the Big Three.
The X-161 is an intriguing design. The car is chock full of really interesting innovations but has stylistic details that might have aged all too quickly. According this 1961 Car Life article, the X-161 was slated for introduction in 1957.
What’s odd is that the story says the car was based upon the 1954 full-sized Hornet platform but the new sheetmetal was five inches narrower. Yet the front wheels appear to be much farther inboard than the donor car’s. This suggests to me that either the X-161’s width was expanded to around 80 inches or they plugged in the compact Jet’s suspension. The car looks a bit longer than a 1954 Hudson but much shorter than the proposed 1957 Packard. So the Hudson’s big six might have worked okay if marketeers could have given the engine a legendary halo akin to the Chrysler hemi’s.
I suspect that a somewhat smaller and lighter body would have worked better, but it would have been fascinating to see how such an engineering-oriented “standard-sized” car would have sold in the mid-to-late-50s. Note that Hudson could have first come out with a new-generation Hornet around 1953-54 and a few years later offered a meaningfully shorter, and lower-priced junior variant.
Around the same time as the x-161 Nash came out with a similar concept. There are a couple photoshop versions of it with a Hudson style fastback. It looks better then the x-161
I agree. What makes the X-161 interesting are features such as the unusual front seats.
I wonder if the 1957 introduction can actually be right. The X-161 has themes in common with the Italia, and that came to market in 1953.
The prototype might well have used Jet mechanicals, particularly if, like the Italia, it was built by Touring. They would have had Jet mechanicals on hand. But I would imagine the production version would have been based on the Hornet Floorplan.
If Car Life was correct about the timing of the X-161, then Hudson’s plan was presumably to give the 1955-56 Hornet only minor updates (go here for further discussion). Given that the step-down was a positively ancient seven years old as of 1954, that sounds rather risky.
That said, I don’t know how to assess the accuracy of the Car Life story. Will do some more research when I have a moment.
It seems to me that Hudson and Packard would have made good merger partners for chasing the likes of Buick, Chrysler, Lincoln and Cadillac as a low volume, I premium priced producer. Once the post-war sales boom dried up and the big 3 price wars broke out the independent automakers were all basically doomed. We can rearrange all the chess pieces as many ways as we can, but but sadly, the results would likely have been largely the same. Least we not forget that outsized egos are always a big piece of the game of business, especially in the automotive world.
Bob, you said it well to point out the role of egos in the fate of the independents. Since you brought up merger partners you might find an Indie Auto piece on that topic interesting if you haven’t already seen it: “Would Hudson have been Packard’s best merger partner?”
What makes the 1950s particularly interesting to me is that even though most of the independents were pushed out of business, there were a few exceptions that pointed to the potential for survival. Willys showed that a small automaker could make it by focusing on a niche where cost structure didn’t matter as much — in their case, the four-wheel-drive market. Meanwhile, AMC under George Romney managed to compete on price with the Rambler. Romney was able to do that partly because he we arguably more cost conscious than any other post-war independent executive.
Not only did Hudson move upmarket, but it completely abandoned the low-price field. The company’s prior success had been built on its low-price offerings – the Essex in the 1920s, and the Terraplane in the 1930s.
Right. The 1920s through early-40s were a very different time than the post-war period, but it does strike me as interesting how Hudson’s fortunes relative Nash and Studebaker declined as it moved upmarket.
I did a nerdy data dive that included the pre-war period here. It’s a pretty long story that doesn’t have a very high readership, so I don’t know whether to update it or break it up into more bite-sized pieces.
It seems that the answer to replacing the aging step-down Hudson was staring the company in the face. It was the Jet.
The Hudson Jet as a compact was a bad idea at a bad time. If the company insisted on introducing a new car, then the Jet should have been up-sized and planned as a replacement for the step-downs. Instead, company president, A. E. Barit, decided that he needed to compete with the almighty Ford-Chevy-Plymouth trio and Rambler – both markets that were outside of Hudson’s purview by the time of the Jet’s introduction.
As introduced, Hudson’s compact was overpriced for its intended market. Indeed, the pricing structure you note for the step-down Hudsons indicates they were also overpriced in the midst of some pretty heavy competition, most of which were newly styled by 1951 and probably much more appealing in addition to being cheaper. This no doubt confused buyers who might have recalled the Essex/Terraplane era but suddenly going back down market, as Hudson tried to do with the Jet, proved to be an equally losing proposition.
Jet could have been the “all new” 1952 Hudson, slightly bigger than a contemporary Ford but smaller than a step-down. To ensure success in the showroom and on the track, the up-sized Jet would have required two additions to the lineup: a rakish 2-door hardtop and an OHV-6 engine (with a V8 to be introduced for 1955); imagine a smaller, lighter Hornet with modern OHV power ripping up the contemporary NASCAR circuit. The company could even have hedged its bets and sold the Jet alongside the “classic” Hudson for the first model year, after which the step-down could have been retired.
The re-imagined Jet could have allowed Hudson to discreetly come down-market just enough to not lose too much cachet – unlike what happened to Packard with the Clipper – and perhaps stay in the game just enough that newly merged AMC might have chosen to keep Hudson as a separate brand in the medium-priced field (thereby allowing AMC to drop the Ambassador). Or, as previously noted in the comments, make Hudson a viable partner for a merger with Packard, allowing them to kill off the Clipper and focus solely on Packard-branded automobiles.
Jet might have been the new direction that Hudson needed at the time, providing the company with a vehicle able to continue their emphasis on quality construction along with race-proven performance. Such a car could only have further enhanced the legacy of the step-downs and future marketing would surely have traded on that image if only Hudson had seen what was right in front of them.
CJ, that’s an intriguing scenario. In a way the death of Hudson was a bigger deal than Packard because it had the strongest tradition of advanced engineering among the post-war independents. Hudson might have built some really interesting cars in the late-50s and 1960s if it had figured out a new formula for financial viability.
The Step-Downs sold well in the late ’40s despite higher pricing. In fact, Hudson sold as many as Nash’s lower-priced Airflytes. I think Hudson’s Monobilt and pricing strategy were a good decision and sustainable. Where Hudson fell short was proportions and appearance, which Barit and even Spring struggled with to the end.
The sedan’s proportions were the old pre-war 2-1/2 box, 6-window design with a short deck and rear overhang, rather than the new 3-box, 4-window design that was quickly becoming the industry norm. Perhaps Hudson’s proportions were driven by a decision to make the rear seat bottom’s width best-in-class, or maybe the latter fell out of the former. Whichever the case, the rear wheels ended up being moved much further back relative to the rear seats than everyone else. One could argue that Cadillac got away with the same geometry with its ’49 Sixty Special, but that car also had a much longer rear overhang and a much wider rear track (and a 4-window greenhouse). Hudson’s other design shortcoming was its high beltline, which diminished exterior appearance and made the interior feel claustrophobic. The industry was moving to more open and airy cabins.
As shown in the above table, Hudson has a similar wheelbase to Buick and Olds 98 but its OAL is a half foot shorter. That says a lot. Had Hudson created a car with modern proportions to go with its modern unibody design, it could have stayed current into the mid-50s with freshenings only.
Which would have left only a V8 and automatic transmission on its To-Do list, and here I think Packard and Hudson would have potentially made for a wonderful merger in early 1954, see my comments in the article that Steve mentioned. Working together they would have possessed the complete package including a strong sales force, but they would have needed to take a different approach than the Big 3. Fewer body styles, longer lifecycles, more timeless designs, and higher pricing driven by better engineering. The American Mercedes and BMW. And the Jet platform would have enabled a fairly affordable (Hudson version) 2-door sport coupe years before Mustang.
“Timeless design” is in the eye of the beholder. In this era timeless design meant ad copy for sheet metal two years out of date. Second, was America ready for an American Mercedes? Better engineering costs money, money they didn’t have to throw away. Third, was America ready for a sporty two door coupe? Probably. Studebaker’s Leowy coupe sold well in the era and the 4 seat T Bird with unFordlike features and premium pricing sold well. However this, and the 58 Inpala I think really started the decline of the mid price and premium cars.
Since much of IndyAuto commentary seems to be devoted to a what if independent mating game, I will add my two cents. A somewhat ignored vehicle seems to be the WIllys Aero. I gave it little thought as I always thought of it as a riff on Jeep mechanicals, which it was not. It appears to be a unibody plus subframe construction, on a 108 inch wheelbase. It was modern looking, and did not have the near cartoonish proportions of the Jet. It could have easily handled a reskinning for 1955 to keep the styling contemporary. However production peaked for one year at around 44k, and plunged. Like the Hudson, it was overpriced, around 200 more than contemporary chevys and Fords. An Aero based Hudson Jet with more Ford like sheet metal to appease Jim Moran, would go a long way to dropping Willys break even point, save Hudson a slew of Jet development dough, and given Hudson an E class/ 5 class equivalent as America’s Mercedes/BMW.
Regarding the X-161’s 5-inch narrower body, I suspect that they either meant to say 5 inches wider body or perhaps longer body (at the rear). The door sills and door widths appear to be common with the production cars, which would make sense given the reuse of the underbody frame underneath the sills. Touring also appears to have used the same rear door lower hinge hardware and location, while the upper hinge appears to have been moved down several inches. Perhaps the notch along the body adds 2-1/2 inches of width on each side of the car. The idea of using Jet front track is interesting, though it doesn’t seem to follow the build progression that started with early Hornet fresh off the line. It may be the case that the front bumper was borrowed from Italia. Perhaps the rear too, but hard to tell.
I don’t think there was some built-in inhibitor to the Independents being profitable (with large cars) in the 1950s and later years. They all had breakevens well below 100,000 units, which they could have easily hit had they simply created more desirable cars. The sharing of high-investment bodies and mechanicals would have helped, but Hudson engineers didn’t want a V8 and AMC went off and tooled one anyway once Romney had had it with Nance. The demise of the Independents was the result of many factors but the one that towered above all the others was poor product decisions at the highest levels of the company, including within the Studio. They did their best and racked up some wins but their competition did better overall.
I couldn’t agree more with how succinctly you phrased it, Paul, about there not being a built-in inhibitor to profit for the American independent auto companies.
Post-war, the Big 3 realized they didn’t need to invest in producing anything but utterly conventional, “large” rear drive cars that were little different than their immediate pre-war counterparts. Alternate technologies, such as OHC engines, adoption of disc brakes, front wheel drive, even wide-spread use of unit body construction was off the table for GM, Ford and Chrysler in the 1950s so anything outside this tried and true formula was a losing proposition. That’s why I find it so astounding that the independents decided to swim against the current, the result it appears, of profitability taking a back seat to ego.
Nash at least had a precedent with the pre-war 600 (1941-49) and by introducing the Rambler as a well-equipped, fashionable variant (Lois Lane drove one in the early 1950s Superman TV series), it managed to carve out a respectable niche for itself. But it was a niche for one at that time. George Mason must have had the most patience and least ego of any of the independent company leaders of his era because without being able to make a profit, the future AMC would not have had much of a future ahead of it.
I agree with your comments and the others above this post. The problem for Hudson and Packard was that each needed to do something before 1948. Packard still had money in 1946 as did Hudson. Those two manufacturers needed each other. The Clipper-based “bathtub” Packard could have been a 1948-1949 model only, but the 1948 Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles pushed up the need for the John Reinhart “high-pockets” Packard restyle to the 1950 model-year rather than 1951. The need for a substantial Hudson restyle of the “Step-Down” was for the 1953 model-year, which was before the Ford-Chevrolet sales blitz ! Timing is everything ! I do not believe the need for an O.H.V. V-8 was really absolutely necessary until 1955, as both Packard and Hudson had kept up refinements on their sixes and eights through 1954. Hudson and Packard with a resourceful, good engineering and design staff could have been a potent combination.
One other factor was the status of Willys-Overland down the road in Toledo: It was no secret that Willys at the end of World War II was seeking answers as to its future. Why did not Packard and / or Hudson did not pursue Willys before Kaiser plunked down a sum for Willys ? Even Studebaker or Nash might have been interested before Henry J.!
This has been a fascinating discussion and Steve, I am enjoying reading your earlier posts, all of which are well-written and include lots of good data on sales and specs. Your Groupthink article was spot-on, and unfortunately still true as the industry has chosen to electrify existing segments (sedans, SUVs and pick-ups) because those are the only segments that they know. It’s like converting a Viking range into a microwave oven. We aren’t getting transportation alternatives that lend themselves well to electrification!
The Aero that Kim mentioned was indeed an interesting car. Maybe part of the problem with all those early 50s compacts was that they looked a bit old-fashioned. Perhaps a lower, sportier 2-door hardtop and convertible would have been the better body style to offer.
It’s somewhat hard to look at these 1950s cars with a 2022 mindset. The Aeros were pretty thin on the ground even then. All I really have are ad illustrations from that era, which could probably make Trabants look sexy. It just seems to be such a nice platform going to waste. PS When googling “1955 Hudson concepts” or some such, an artist had some paintings of his ideas of continuing thwr 2 1/2 box six window design. V-8 and auto? You could drop a hemi and a six speed in these crates and you still couldn’t give them away.
I searched that and found a couple of interesting sites on alternative Aero and Hudson. Am guessing the latter is what you were referring to.
https://auto.howstuffworks.com/1950s-willys-concept-cars.htm
https://forum.hetclub.org/uploads/FileUpload/04/60cfd21adcc553725fc9d77f500647.pdf
I’ve altered ’54 Hudsons (using Microsoft Paint) that ended up looking OK for a ’55 Hudson. They kept the front fenders and also the doors except for the upper few inches above the main body curve, which I occupied by extending the side glass and and a new curved windshield downward, keeping OAH same. The rear of the car is still a problem, the rear track being too narrow and the overhang being too short. This would have represented a “half” redesign but perhaps affordable, and if Packard had joined, the Hudson could have used the 119 wb while Packard used the 124 and fashioned its own hood and grill.
If external funding could not be obtained, another option for a merged Packard-Hudson 1955 redesign would have been to internally fund a new body using X-161 as starting point by delaying Packard’s V8 until ’56. I think new bodies powered by old motors would have generated more sales than the opposite.
Thank you Paul for finding and sharing those sites. I am intrigued by the artit’s idea of keeping the six window 2 1/2 box style into the mid 50s. Perhaps a little lower beltline would help too. However, that style had long run its course. GMs first generation post war cars had that style as alternates to their 3 box bodies, and rapidly disappeared. Customers resounding chose against this line. The Aero looks great though, with a dogleg windshield it would be ready to go for 1955.
I’m very thankful for this discussion, as it has helped me to pinpoint the yearmodel of my fathers Hudson to 1948, the year I was born. During WW2 my father served as military veterinarian officer and parallelly compleated his studies in neutral Sweden, where he befriended my mother. In 1948 my father was a beginning countryside veterinarian here in Finland, and to get permission to buy an American car you had to petition the Ministry of Public Welfare and the Bank of Finland.
As the pregnancy was overdue my father took my mother on a more or less rough ride on the country roads in the Hudson to induce labors. Maybe stuff for a good story, but absolutely life threatening for the mother and the baby-to-be. Everything ended well, I was born at home in the one room home my father, mother and my one year older (hospital born) sister had rented, with permission to use the kitchen included. From my earliest times as a toddler I have flashes of memory crawling in the back seat of the Hudson, i remember the murky brown color of the car.
Pa did not keep the Hudson for very long, don’t know why. We often visited the little village, where my parents had been a part of the social circle of young professionals that lasted a lifetime, even as all the friends moved elsewhere and advanced in their careers. On one such trip I remember a group of men swarming around some villager’s white Hudson Hornet. The car mesmerized me with its flowing lines and some exterior details. I remember the scene like it was yesterday, even as it was nearly 75 years ago.
Whereas I think that the idea of an “American Mercedes-Benz” did not really permeate the U.S. top-of-mind thinking until the late 1950s and early 1960s, the alliance of Studebaker-Packard and M.-B. gave more exposure to the Mercedes brand outside of New York and California. Outside of subscribers to “Road & Track” and “Sports Cars Illustrated”, who would seek out the brand ? The cars sold through the Mercedes-Benz U.S.A. / Studebaker-Packard partnership were the following models:
W188 300S/300Sc, luxury car (1951–1958)
W120 180, mid-size executive car (1953–1962)
W180 220a/220S, luxury car (1954–1959)
W198 300SL, grand tourer (1954–1963)
R121 190SL, roadster (1955–1963)
L319, light commercial van (1955–1968)
W105 219, luxury car (1956–1959)
W121 190, mid-size executive car (1956-1961)
W189 300d, full-size luxury car (1957–1960)
W128 220SE, executive car (1958–1960)
W111 220/220S/220SE/230S/250SE/280SE, full-size luxury car (1959–1971)
1960s
W110 190c/200/200D/230, mid-size luxury car (1961–1968)
W112 300SE, full-size luxury car (1961–1967)
W113 230SL/250SL/280SL, roadster (1963–1970)
W100 600, full-size luxury car (1963–1981)
W108/W109 250S/250SE/280S/280SE/280SEL/300S/300SEL, full-size luxury car (1965–1973)
W114/W115 200/230/230/240/250/280, mid-size executive car (1968-1976).
The cars built after 1961 were likely what an American would have wanted with an Americanized M.-B. I think the 1963 Rambler Classic with a 232-six or 327-V-8 and front-disc brakes could have served as the foundation for an “American Mercedes”, but that is six years past Hudson’s expiration date !