1950 Hudson Commodore 6 

convertible brougham

While walking through the paddock at the CSRG Charity Classic vintage race at Sonoma Raceway, the author spied this gorgeous 1950 Hudson Commodore 6 Convertible Brougham.

The Hudson Motor Car Company based in Detroit, was named after Joseph Hudson, the Detroit department magnate and one of the company’s early investors. The first Hudson automobile, the model 20, was sold as a 1910 model. 

Through the ensuing years, Hudson built a public reputation as an innovative quality mid-range brand and it was third-bestselling car in America before the Great Depression. The company suffered during the Depression and never regained its place as one of the top-selling brands. 

The Commodore introduced in 1941 was the largest and most luxurious Hudson offered to the motoring public, and this 1950 model is the third final generation of the nameplate. Introduced in late 1947, the new 1948 Hudsons featured the ground breaking “step down” design penned by long-time Hudson stylist Frank Spring and his team.

The 1948 Hudson Commodore was almost the car that never was, as Mr. Spring had originally proposed the “step down” design in 1941 but at that time it was rejected by Hudson president Edward Barit, who thought the car was too low. After World War 2 ended, Mr. Spring modified the “step down” design and Mr. Barit gave the okay for “step down” production after he drove the prototype.

The new Hudson design used unit body on boxed frame construction which Hudson called “Monobilt,” with deep frame rail sections and a heavy cowl structure to create an extremely rigid chassis.  The frame rails passed outboard of the rear wheels, and this unique chassis configuration provided a lower center of gravity all while maintaining interior headroom. In addition to the feeling of a safer and smoother ride, the “Monobilt step down” concept created the widest rear seat in the industry but at the cost of a narrow forward section of the trunk compartment.

This excerpt from period Hudson sales literature shows the key feature of the “Monobilt step-down” design: the floor pan was not attached to the top of the frame rails as with a conventional design, but to the bottom of the structure. Passengers stepped down into the passenger compartment that featured a lower roof height but the same interior headroom.  At just over 60 inches tall, the 1948 Hudson roofline was four to seven inches lower than its Buick, Plymouth, and Oldsmobile competitors.

The 1948 Hudson line offered customers four body styles - four-door sedan, two-door brougham, two-door club coupe and the convertible with two available levels of trim, either Super or Custom. Two engines were available - an inline 262-cubic inch side-valve six-cylinder 123 horsepower engine or an inline eight-cylinder engine that displaced 254 cubic inches and developed 128 horsepower.  

The new dramatic low-slung Hudson design was a sales hit – with 143,697 units sold in the 1948 model year, 142,462 cars were sold in 1949 and 143,006 in 1950, the year that Hudson introduced a third lower-cost trim level, the Pacemaker series.  

Hudson’s “step down” convertible models were built in a novel cost-cutting manner. Club Coupe bodies were pulled from the production line and wheeled to separate area of the factory where workers cut off the roof and added nearly 250 pounds of additional steel body reinforcement, which pushed the convertible’s curb weight to over 3800 pounds.  To maintain cowl stiffness, Hudson convertibles featured a characteristic nine-inch section of sheet metal for the header area above the windshield.

The reason for Hudson’s novel method of convertible body construction was because convertible sales were never a large percentage of overall Commodore sales. At most, Hudson built only a few thousand convertibles each model year - in 1950, for example just over 1125 convertibles were built, with most (700) as eight-cylinder models which makes the Hudson seen at Sonoma a rare machine.

The Sonoma 1950 Hudson was a heavily optioned 1950 Commodore 6 built on a 124-inch wheelbase, powered by the high compression (6.7 to 1) 262 cubic inch flathead six-cylinder with dual carburetors that developed 123 horsepower and Hudson laid claim to the most powerful six-cylinder engine sold in America.  

New features for the 1950 Hudson Commodore series included non-rotating push-button streamlined door handles, larger high-visibility taillights, and rectangular parking lights integrated into the front lower grille bar.  The convertible Commodore series featured a hydraulic operated top and window lifts as standard equipment.   

Our feature car sports the optional Hudson “Supermatic” semi-automatic transmission (a $199 option - supplied by General Motors), twin spotlights, twin fog lights, a sun visor and an optional Weather Master heater.  The car is finished Hudson color N-37 known in Hudson sales literature as ‘Cornish Cream’ with a deep red leather interior; this color combination was featured in the 1950 Hudson sales brochure.   

The car’s current owner related to me that he bought the car from the widow of a collector that he had known so he was familiar with the car. While the car was being fitted with a new convertible top, the car was in a minor accident and the body was damaged which led to a complete restoration. Since the restoration was completed, it has been driven cross-country and has accumulated 10,000 trouble free miles.

Hudson dropped the Commodore badge after the 1952 model year, after which Hudson cars were sold with the Hornet nameplate, which traded off that model name’s tremendous racing successes in AAA and NASCAR stock car racing circuits. Between 1951 and 1954, “Fabulous Hudson Hornet” stock cars won 80 NASCAR races and the 1952 NASCAR and AAA stock car championship, the 1953 NASCAR championship and 1954 AAA stock car championship.

Despite the name change, in an era when automobile manufacturers restyled their models every two years, the Hudson semi-unit body construction bodies meant the styling changed very little. Another problem for Hudson sales was that the “step down” design could not support a station wagon body style, which created left off the list for the growing market of suburban buyers.

By 1954, the once-daring Hudson “step down” design was six years old and considered dated, and Commodore sales across all three series fell to 121,000 units during the model year despite price cuts. The Hudson “step down” platform needed a complete redesign, but the company could not afford new tooling due its rapidly collapsing financial state. Hudson had invested heavily in the compact ‘Jet’ model introduced in the middle of the 1953 season and was a sales flop. Hudson reported a loss of more than $10 million for the fiscal year of 1953 compared to an $8 million profit the prior year.

On May 1, 1954, the Hudson Motor Car Company officially merged with the Nash-Kelvinator Corporation to form the American Motors Corporation, at the time the largest corporate merger in American history. Hudson assembly ended in Detroit, and the Hornet and Jet series were discontinued at the end of the 1954 model year. Over two years in exchange for its investment in the ‘Jet’ series of over $15 million, only 35,367 ‘Jet” cars were built. 

The new cars in Hudson showrooms from 1955 through 1957 were mildly re-styled Nash Rambler or Statesman models fitted with Hudson ‘Jet’ engines; those new Hudsons were known derisively by motoring enthusiasts as "Hashes.” Dealers also sold the imported Metropolitan during the 1954 model year.

Hudson sales continued to decline with 20,321 units sold in 1955, then just 10,371 were built in 1956. The last car bearing the Hudson nameplate rolled off the Kenosha assembly line on June 25,1957, the last of 3,108 cars built that year. The planned 1958 Hudson Hornet was re-badged as the all-new Rambler Ambassador.     

Hudson collectors are a small but enthusiastic lot, with the national Hudson-Essex-Terraplane Owners Club. There have been few Hudson cars featured in motion pictures, by far the most famous was the animated Cars franchise which featured ‘Doc’ Hudson voiced by Paul Newman. Actor Steve McQueen owned a pair of Hudson, a 1953 Hornet and a 1950 Hudson Commodore 6 Convertible Brougham which was fitted with a later Hudson Hornet engine and painted in a non-original two-tone paint scheme.    

Color photos by the author