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This car was spotted on a drive from San Francisco to Napa California in 2006. When Nash and Hudson merged in 1954, it was the largest corporate merger in history. American Motors was the odd car company when I grew up because of it’s styling and size. GM, Ford and Chrysler were all making larger cars and the styling was quite different. The “little round thing” was what we called my aunt’s Nash convertible.
Now, at least to me, this car looks fine and is right up to date with some of the cars on the road today.
American Motors was formed from the merger of Hudson Motors and Nash-Kelvinator. The deal was the largest corporate merger up to that point – worth $197,793,366 – but was just one phase of a planned megamerger of Hudson, Nash, Studebaker, and Packard. The combined company would cover all segments of the market, and their size and ability to share engineering would amortize costs nicely; at least, that was the plan of Kelvinator’s George Mason, whose company owned Nash. The name “American Motors” originated with Mason, who started working on the plan just after World War II (thanks, Dan Minick.)
© Fred Winograd copyright 2011