Junkyard Find: 1952 Hudson Wasp Four-Door Sedan

The American Motors Corporation was formed by the merger of Nash-Kelvinator and the Hudson Motor Car Company in 1954. The Hudson brand went away after 1957, which means cars bearing the name of the founder of Hudson’s Department Store are tough to find in junkyards today. I managed the feat on a recent trip to a Northern California car graveyard, and here’s the car.

The spectacular Wasp, introduced as a 1952 model, was essentially an option package for the thrifty Pacemaker. Going up the 1952 Hudson prestige pyramid from there, you had the luxurious Commodore in the middle and the fabulous Hornet at the pinnacle.

This car underwent a mild 1950s-style custom treatment at some point, with shaved door handles. There’s a bit of pinstriping on the dash, too.

The “step down” Hudsons, which debuted as 1948 models, were so sleek that they looked like they’d been chopped and channeled right from the factory (although they rode a lot higher in the real world than the reet pleat, drape shape, stuff cuff, slammed-to-the-pavement lowriders depicted in the hand-drawn illustrations used in the Hudson brochures of the time).

These cars were respectably quick for the era, despite being powered by increasingly antiquated flathead engines. This Wasp’s engine is long gone, but it would have been a 262-cubic-inch flathead straight-six rated at 127 horsepower. The legendary 308-cube “H-Power” engine and its 145 horses only went into Hornets.

The Hudson Motor Company didn’t have the money to develop its own automatic transmission, so it bought four-speed Hydra-Matic automatics from GM. That’s what was in this car.

The MSRP for this car was $2,466, plus $175.71 for the Hyrda-Matic. That comes to about $31,319 in 2024 dollars. That put the Hudson Wasp into Olds Super 88 price territory.

Dean Moriarty’s Hudson in Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” was a 1949 model, and of course it had a tube radio like this one (though you weren’t likely to have heard the kind of jazz preferred by true 1940s hepcats on AM radio outside of the big cities). I can’t find a price for this radio, but it would have cost serious money.

It appears that Pick-n-Pull tried and failed to get $2,000 for this car as a “builder” before putting it in the regular self-service inventory.

I’ve found a few Hudsons in junkyards over the years, including a 1937 Terraplane, a 1953 Hornet and a 1955 Cross Country.

At highway speed, it must have been hard to hear the cats wailing out of a single dash speaker aimed at the windshield, but that’s what you had for car audio in 1952.

1952 Hudson Wasp in California wrecking yard.

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