You don't get modern convertibles like this that are just so open, you know? I mean, it's like being in a toboggan in this thing. You're outside, you know, but you can drive this as a modern car anywhere, you know, 65 on the freeway, no problem.
And, you know, when this came out, the automatic transmission was like the greatest invention. It's true.
The fact that people could now drive just with two pedals.
Oh, that was it. That was unbelievable.
I mean, it's amazing how each year it escalated into something better.
Yeah. And they would sell millions of cars. Nowadays, you sell 40,000 of one model, oh, that's a big success, you know. Yeah. This thing drives very nice. Open up those two one-barrels, boy. Put your foot on it.
One episode of Jay Leno's Garage. The car featuring today: 1953 Hudson Hornet convertible coupe. You know, I am a huge Hudson fan. This is my little Hudson area of my garage here. One of the most underappreciated and undervalued cars for a long time.
Hudson, they came out of World War II with something called a step-down design. If you look at that post up there, you see how the chassis is lower than the body. Their big downfall was they stayed with the six-cylinder engine a little bit too long. You know, General Motors came out with a V8 and overhead valves and the Rocket 88 Oldsmobile. They stuck with the tried-and-true 308 cubic-inch six-cylinder in the Hornet that had the two one-barrels. Woo, that was a big engine. But, you know, it had more horsepower. It's about 170 horsepower versus the Oldsmobile, which is 160 or 165. It's just the Oldsmobile, the GM cars seemed more the future. Overhead valves, a V8, eight cylinders, not six.
These were the stock car champions of the early '50s. The thing was because of that chassis and that low-slung design, the other cars would take them in the straights and these guys would catch them in the corners with the Hudson. They were fabulous handling cars, great driving cars, a lot of features. We'll talk with the owner about some things that you couldn't get in other cars. And massive amounts of chrome. Look, look how thick this is. This is probably just 1,500 bucks worth of chrome just to do this. I mean, it's this thick.
These came out of the Hudson department store. Hudson was a big chain of stores in the Midwest. They decided to sell some cars at some point and of course you forgot about the department store part of it and the cars kind of lived on. Hudson lived on until the mid-'50s, merged in '54. I guess '55 would be the last year. Then it became American Motors. But this was the golden era of these cars. Let's meet the gentleman who owns it, Chris Dwan. And Steve Stratos, you are the star of the car. Good job, boy, this is a beautiful job.
Yeah, it was about a three-and-a-half-year project.
Yeah. I don't think any Hudson has ever been done to this level. The nice thing about it, these cars are so valuable now. It's kind of worth it to put that much money into it. You know, I paid 125 for my green one there like 25 years ago and it had 15,000 original miles, unmolested car. Just now it'd be crazy. But it's good to see these kind of cars restored because it's just a great mark. It's one I think the six-cylinder engine is what hurt it. General Motors was moving fast with all the horsepower wars and this just seemed old. They didn't have the money to do a V8 is really what it was and they kind of stayed with this design a little too long. But...
Well, and Jay, like you said earlier, you know, of '51, '52 and '53 they won NASCAR with this design because they could outpower the other cars in the corners, but the overhead-valve V8s and especially like when you go to '55, then the Chrysler 300s took over with the Hemis and so they really fell backwards. And of course their sales hurt because it was, you know, win on Sunday, sell on Monday.
And the Hornets were one of the better cars they ever built. So...
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it really was. And it's a fabulous car to drive. There's all kinds of little features on these. One of the ones that impressed me the most was the braking. You have hydraulic brakes, which all cars had just about by the '50s. But you also had a mechanical brake, not an emergency. You had your hydraulic line going to your brake pedal. And then you had a metal rod going to the rear brakes from the brake pedal. So if your brake pedal ever went to the floor, the rod would catch it halfway down and at least lock up your rear brake so you could stop. I mean...
Okay, here's your hydraulic brake right here. Now, should this fail, you see this here? It's connected to the brake pedal. It'll pull this, which pulls these, which pulls these two levers which run to the back brakes and that will give you—that's my hand—that will give you emergency braking if the hydraulic system fails completely. You've got the mechanical backups.
Yeah. One of the great safety features that nobody—they never really exploited that. I didn't even know about it until I was restoring mine. I go, what is this? Is this a parking brake? No, it's connected to the brake. Oh, that's pretty cool. Yeah. Then you had the cork clutch. You put the... Yeah.
Yeah. For this car being a Hydramatic and automatic, it doesn't have it. But you're right. The stick-shift cars have some amazing technology within the transmission that wasn't really out in other cars for a long time.
I did the same thing you did with regard to that rear brake. It was like, what is this actually doing? And by the time you actually started figuring it out, you know, it—yeah, this was a pretty clever idea.
It's pretty cool. And this used the General Motors Hydramatic transmission. Correct. Did they ever use anything else like Borg-Warner or anything?
Okay. So that's kind of the sign that, uh-oh...
Things are [laughter] failing.
When you got to buy your competitor's parts to keep you going.
Yeah. I don't know why they failed. You know, I think they got overconfident when World War II ended. Hudson was the first one out there of the big three. They weren't a big three, but Ford, GM, Chrysler with a new car because...
Yeah, fully redesigned car.
Yeah. Ford and GM and everybody else was involved in the war effort. So when their cars came out after World War II, they were kind of just reheated versions of the pre-war cars. You know, a few little chrome...
Like the '48 Cadillacs, the first new body for Cadillacs.
That's right. Post-war.
This was a brand-new design and it was revolutionary. When you look at the picture, you sat down in the car. I mean, the framework, you sat below the frame. Frame rails were, let's say, up here, whereas on every other car, you sat on top of the rear axle. This one, you're either beside it or below it. And that's why it handled so well. And to this day, they drive great. And the other cool thing I love about it is this is the era like an hour and a half before power steering came out, you know, so you have something that's nicely weighted. It made it a little tricky to park, but everything was nicely balanced.
You know, we all talk about everybody wants a car now with no anti-lock brakes. At least you didn't have any of that. There was no power anything, but it was a nice compromise. They were just nice to drive. You get into a corner on this, when you get on an exit ramp, you know, a lot of cars from the '40s, if it says 35 entrance on the ramp and you're going 36... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These things just right around corners. I mean, they're just wonderful driving cars. And they had so many things like they had the Weather Eye and you put it on cold. Is that air conditioning? No, it's not air [laughter] conditioning. But it's just cold like...
Yeah. Yeah. It's just great. But just a lot of fun, you know. And a big old tube radio.
Yeah. So this has the optional eight-tube radio.
Okay. Well, you turn the—you turn—you click hum, a big hum with some, but you get a really rich bass sound. Not as good as some modern stuff obviously, but '50s pretty amazing. And you got all the stuff. The tissue box, the Kleenex box that goes under the dash.
That's hilarious. Is that what that is?
Yeah, that's what it is. And this car came with a lot of options on it. And when we bought it, it had a lot of stuff with it.
Well, this is top of the line. This had electric windows, a convertible, and they called it a convertible coupe. Now...
It's a Brougham. Yeah, Brougham convertible coupe.
Well, to me, GM, a convertible coupe was [clears throat] a hardtop with no pillar, right? So that was a—it wasn't a convertible. It was a coupe that mimicked... Correct. Whereas this was an actual roof went up, it was a coupe with roof ceiling...
How many pieces of chrome on this?
Over just about 310. And I think in the top alone, the top when we got the car, all the component pieces were all painted silver, right? So we had that all stripped, but there was 103 pieces of chrome in the top. So we had 400-and-something pieces of chrome. Now, figure even at a hundred bucks a piece, which...
[laughter] Let's not go into how much this cost.
Oh, yeah. Your wife might be... That's right.
My wife and I know how much.
You know, I got it [laughter] painted. You know, that's just... [clears throat] It was well worth it. And it's a style that holds up really well. When I got mine 25, 30 years ago, the Audi TT had just come out and people said, 'Oh, they copied the Audi.' No, no, this was out 20 years before the Audi [laughter] TT. It didn't look like most cars in the '50s. Big, you know, like 1958 GM, they put it on with a trowel, all of chrome. Just not a really attractive car. This just has nice lines and 310 pieces of chrome.
Well, that's unbelievable. It's so labor-intensive to build these cars, getting all this molding in. Oh, just fantastic. And this—you have leather, too.
Yes. So this car came with single-stage paint, which was one-color paint instead of two-tone like a lot of them did. So that was an option. The leather was actually two-tone leather, but it was so destroyed when we got it. We had to redo it and we chose to do a single color.
Yeah. Well, I think it looks great. And you have the fabulous two one-barrel carburetors which looks like something off a Briggs and Stratton lawnmower, you know, just that. I mean, you have one-barrel carb. It's very funny. Very funny, but it's a great motor. And does this have the cylinder head was painted, right?
It's all gold. The whole...
Okay. And then the actual air cleaners are the bright [clears throat] red with the Hudson horn.
Right. Right. Right. Can we open the hood and show them that? Sure. Let me... You want to pull the...
Yeah. We Hudson owners know where that is. And plus, you could open it from the inside, which you couldn't do on a lot of American cars.
This was another detail here because of the gold.
So this was always outlined in gold, the same color as the engine. That was kind of a highlight.
That was the performance. Was that the high-performance head too, I think?
Six-cylinder, as you said, and 170 horsepower.
Yeah. And then this, of course, because it was an automatic, never got the 7X treatment, which would have been the NASCAR treatment, right?
Which the rumor is they got to about 200-and-something horsepower with it.
At the top end, but that, you know, I'll leave that to the Hudson experts.
And to the newer enthusiasts, these are oil-bath air cleaners. You fill these with oil and the dirty air be filtered through the oil. Correct.
I mean, the messiest thing when you have to change your oil in your air filter there, that's...
Yeah. If you don't remember it, you dump it all over yourself.
Yeah, just spills all over the place. But and you got your 6V battery which was, you know, that was another thing. Everybody else, GM was going to 12 volts. 6V was fine, very reliable. I never had any problem with it. On mine, I converted the generator to an alternator. Did you do that on this one?
No, no, we kept it all stock because there's a guy, it's called the generator, and he just takes your 6V and changes the internal so you get full power, you know, like you get with an alternator.
It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. And look at how complicated the windshield wipers are. Look what you have. You have this wire that pulls it back.
Cable-driven. I mean, it just looks like how long before that breaks. Yeah.
That was a little bit of a project to put it back together.
Oh, yeah. Getting all that to work. It's like little men are pulling a cable and pull the wiper. Yeah.
But it seemed pretty reliable. The actual transmission pieces were pretty—they're pretty stout. So, I mean, they seem...
And that's your oil filter on there. Now, that was an option, correct?
Correct. It was an option.
And that was almost aftermarket because I know I met an old Hudson guy, I don't like those oil filter things and the car is going to—it gets jammed up and your car runs out of oil. Yeah. They just didn't believe in it. Just didn't.
So in the '70s and '80s, this car did a bunch of tours and we have a lot of documentation on tours that it did and we're pretty sure that that's when they put that on there.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, they used to have one with a roll of toilet paper. Did you ever see that thing?
Yeah. Yeah. You got a canister. You went to the store. You bought a roll of toilet paper. That's correct. You stuck it in and the oil would filter through the toilet paper. Saving you money until the thing got so clogged up. Yeah. Just crazy.
They made an air filter for guys that have air hoses. Same principle idea. They put, you know, toilet paper in the canister.
Well, I love this era because you had something called the JC Whitney catalog and they had all these accessories. I've got one on my '54 Dodge Coronet Hemi wagon. It's just plastic pieces stacked up and the guy's going down the road and lightning bolts are hitting it and you hear, 'This is Radio Portugal.' Oh, he's picking up stations all over the world. You know, it was $1.98. [laughter] Just that kind of stuff. They used to have wolf whistles and all these things [snorts] you could buy for these cars. Yeah. Just hilarious. Just hilarious.
So we kept it as much as we could to Hudson accessories or Hudson...
Oh yeah, things and...
And is that a Hudson accessory, that one?
Well, that's great. I mean, even duplicating the stickers and all of that. That's kind of the fun part.
You know, we had a lot of help from 21st Century Hudson out of Southern Illinois. The owner there really loaned us some parts and things like that that we could either copy or have to rebuild.
I know. And all those parts are drying up. You know, I was lucky. Okay, the turn of the century, 2000s, it was just coming to the end. You couldn't, you know, people were getting rid of Hudson parts and nobody wants this stuff anymore. And I managed to stockpile a little bit. But yeah, it's a shame. It's a shame. It really was the end of an era, but it's just a beauty. We can shut that hood again. Good.
Well, because of that, we kept all the parts that came off the car.
Because you never know when you're going to need to reuse it. And by the time we have to do it, yeah, you know, that part that's on the shelf might be better than what's in the car.
Just look at how many chrome pieces there are. And it just... Yeah. Just...
Yeah. So the finishing touch, Mark Solich out of the Chicago area has done a lot of stuff for Pebble Beach cars. And so when we originally took this car apart with Fran Roxus, we took all the chrome to him and dropped it off and he complained, but you know, nine years later, here we are.
Yeah. Is this Pebble Beach eligible?
I remember when I got into Pebble Beach, anything post-war. Oh, I'm sorry, it's too new, it's after World War II, you know. So it's fun to see these cars being appreciated because there were... It really was, I guess. And this was the golden era. After this, it was downhill pretty quickly.
Well, this is the first event with our car we've done just because we just got it finished, but also because you guys invited us. And thank you very much, Jay, for inviting the car.
An honor to have you here. It really is. And you know, it's still a good-looking car. It holds up, I agree, really well. You compare it to anything else from the '50s and it seems more streamlined, smoother, more aerodynamic.
That thing, my yellow one there, that's a fabulous car. And with this, I [snorts] put vintage air in that, you know, and you realize how hot this windshield gets in California. You realize this is like 115° or something. You put this on, your air conditioner lasts forever. It's the only car I have where when I'm driving it in 100-degree temperature, I kind of have to turn it down from high to the middle position because I'm freezing in the car [laughter] because this keeps how much sun that comes through that window. Oh my god. And of course, it protects your dashboard and everything else, too.
They used to have a thing you could put here that could see the traffic light.
Yeah. If you pull up to a traffic light, if you couldn't see the light, it had some kind of crazy mirror system. You'd look at it and it would show you above you if the light was red. Yeah, it would be very funny.
So the interior on this, you know, it was leather originally and parts of it were Naugahyde or vinyl and parts of it were leather. So it was really hard in this restoration. It took us about a year to find the right products that would match up together in the right colorway.
So part of this, you know, all the seats are leather, but like the dash is like a vinyl, right, Steve? It's like a Naugahyde kind of vinyl.
Yeah. So that kind of stuff kind of goes missing, you know, and to the point of these trim pieces that Hudson built, they're not perfectly straight. You know, they all change a little bit. So to make this line up, only the Hudson guys could really do it. So when you go to rebuild it, this is a real problem to figure this out.
How about the burlap? Is that burlap? I mean, that's another—that was Henry Ford's big thing, right? Using soybeans and all that kind of crazy. Yeah.
Yeah. And [snorts] it's on like, you know, '40s Chrysler Town & Countries and this and a bunch of '50s cars. And those are little ashtrays that a lot of people don't have in these cars because they got covered up and they rusted out.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Now, when you park this, do you park it with the top up for long?
Yeah. We're working on finishing up the top right now. But the top would usually be up on this car when I park it.
I'm not going to park it outside like this for long.
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So this was really painstaking because all the pleating on this has to line up as it goes from backwards to forwards. So this is not on the same plane. So all this is very painstaking because it actually is on an angle. So it changes angle. So to have this all line up, our guy little Joe spent countless hours trying to get the pleats exactly right and then going forward as it lines up with the door, pretty critical. This part, this was missing. These trim pieces were missing and Russ helped us. He gave us these pieces to match. So we got brass...
And nice. Now people have a standard that they can match their car against when...
They can look at this and go, this is how it should have been done. This is how it was done. So this was nice to have the pieces. And then the ashtrays. This is really...
When we got the car, this was covered. We didn't even know there was...
Everybody's smoking. I have an Imperial. It has like four or five cigarette lighters in it. People just smoking it. Hilarious. And they're all dead now.
So this was pretty cool how this pivots like this. Yeah.
And we couldn't find these. It took me about a month and a half to find.
If you're in a convertible and you're smoking, like, that's going to go in the ashtray.
Yeah. [laughter] Right. And the passenger seat has one too, just in case, you know.
So this was a labor of love, Jay, as you understand. I mean, you've done restorations on...
