Welcome to the Hooniverse Obscure Muscle Car Garage, a regular feature which aims to expand the notion of what a muscle car is, and to throw all conventional thinking out the window while we’re at it. For this installment, we are reaching back to the dawn of the 50′s, when most cars has less than 100 HP under the hood, handling was scary at best, and brakes were an afterthought. However, the racing tracks across the country were breeding innovation. Engines were being tuned to produce power, braking systems were being upgraded to handle the extra power and speed, and the cars were becoming more and more reliable on the track. In NASCAR racing, one car was busy winning races all across the country from 1951 through 1955. Let’s take a look at the Fabulous Hudson Hornet.

In 1948, Hudson made the automotive world take notice with their all new Commodore that featured radically new “step down” styling (dubbed “Monobuilt”) and frame construction. With the floorpan sitting below the frame, passengers had to step down to enter. It was a semiunibody construction with body and chassis welded together. Owners enjoyed the headroom and legroom this style offered. With the lowest center of gravity available, the car was lauded for its great handling and roadworthiness. Stock car racers embraced these Hudsons and christened them with the “Fabulous” prefix that followed this line through its days of track dominance.

Hudson Hornet dominated stock car racing in the early 1950′s. Famed drivers such as Marshall Teague, Herb Thomas, Dick Rathman, Fonty and Tim Flock, Jack McGrath, ‘Rebel’ Frank Mundy and Lou Figaro were part of the Hudson team. Together they accounted for 13 wins in 1951, 49 in 1952, and 46 in 1953. No other car of the time could match the Hudson’s bulletproof construction, low center of gravity, good handling, and factory support.

Committed to the L-head engine design over the OHV, Hudson continued to develop their line of six and eights, ultimately dropping the eight and increasing the original 262 CID 121bhp six to the 308 CID six, which was rated at either 145 hp or 160 hp with the dual-carb “Twin H-Power” setup. Hudson had since 1951 offered “severe usage” parts for their cars which were specifically designed for racing. By 1953, the special 7X race engine option yielded as much as 220hp.

The 7X engine was developed by Marshall Teague and Hudson engineer Vince Piggins. The big six had a larger bore, bigger valves, relieved and polished combustion chambers, high-compression head, high-performance cam, split dual exhausts, and the “Twin H-Power” carburetors and manifold. This combination boosted the big straight 6 up to 220 gross horsepower, a jump of 75 horses over the showroom stock figure of 145. All the stock components made the Hornet nearly untouchable on the track, and a record-setting 27 wins out of 34 starts in major stock car races in 1952 was proof!

Until Hudson’s innovation, all car drivers had stepped up into the driver’s seat. The “step-down” design gave the Hornet a lower center of gravity and, consequently, better handling. Fitted with a bigger engine in 1951, the Hudson Hornet became a dominant force on the NASCAR circuit. For the first time, a car not manufactured by the Big Three was winning big. Excited by the publicity generated by their success on the track, Hudson executives began directly backing their racing teams, providing the team cars with everything they needed to make their cars faster. The Big Three, fearing that losses on the track would translate into losses on the salesroom floor, hurried to back their own cars. Thus was born the system of industry-backed racing that has become such a prominent marketing tool today. The Hudson Hornet would contend for nearly every NASCAR race between 1951 and 1955, when rule changes led to an emphasis on horsepower over handling.

Despite the winning ways of the Hornet, Hudson was bleeding red ink. This can be traced to three different events in the 50′s:
1) Chevrolet and Ford were undergoing a trade war, sending extra cars to dealers who didn’t order them, thus undercutting the remaining independent car makers (Studebaker, Nash, Hudson, & Willys in particular).
2) Hudson gambled on a new compact car, the Hudson Jet. Its styling was bland, its engineering was nothing if not conventional, and it was priced higher than a full-sized Chevy, Ford, or Plymouth.
3) The Step Down Hudsons were very difficult to restyle because of their frames. Hudson didn’t have enough capital to completly re-engineer their full-sized cars, so they were haphazardly face-lifted.
Hudson and Nash merged in 1954 to form American Motors and the Hudson, the real Hudson, was dead. From then on, Hudsons were Nashes with a Hudson nameplate. The ’57 was the last Hudson of any kind.

Well, there you have it: An early 50′s NASCAR dominator. Yes, it’s only 6 cylinder, but an old flathead six that can be tuned to produce over 220 hp is quite astonishing. Bundle that with a car powerful enough to spank all of the other early 50′s performance cars (the V8 Rocket Oldsmobile 88, The Flathead V8 Fords and Mercurys, even the early Hemi Chrysler V8′s) with an iconic racing heritage, and you have a very early, and very obscure Muscle Car. However, you have the final say, so I’ll ask: is this an Obscure Muscle Car, or is it just too early to call it one? Can any early 50′s car be called a Muscle Car? Let me know your thoughts.

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