An Introduction to the 1929 Hudson Motor Car

In August 2001, our family acquired a 1929 Hudson Town Sedan. As you can see from the image below, it has the "bones" of a beautiful car, but it still needs some work. One thing people really seem to like about this car is its dash board, an ornate nickel-plated casting in Hudson's "Rose" Pattern. Click on the image at right to open a large image in a new browser window.

After much thought, we've named this car "Miss Daisy." It seems appropriate. After all, in the movie "Driving Miss Daisy," the featured car is a Hudson. "Best car that ever came off the assembly line," asserts Morgan Freeman, who plays the role of chauffer Hoke Colburn.

Although he was talking about a Hudson of a more recent era, the comment is applicable to the Hudson of 1929 as well. Hudson always prided itself on technology leadership. Over the years, Hudson introduced a number of auto engineering "firsts" in the auto industry. By far the most significant was the Super Six engine, which Hudson patented in late December 1915 and used with modifications through its 1929 model year. By installing precisely-designed counterweights on the crankshaft to bring it into balance, Hudson engineers greatly reduced high-speed vibration in the Super Six engine, and produced an astonishing 80 percent increase in horsepower output compared with an otherwise similar engine.

As a result, the 1929 Hudson was not only popular (third highest-selling U.S. car that year), it was fast. Indeed, it was the fastest Detroit-made car produced in 1929, capable of sustained speeds over 80 mph. Thus, in 1929 the FBI reportedly put out a warning to all local police agencies: If there's a late-model Hudson reported stolen in your community, be on the lookout for bank robbers. Apparently, it had become popular to steal Hudsons as getaway cars, since they were faster than anything available to the police. According to other reports, the Hudson was highly popular among bootleggers for the same reason. Hudson's legacy of speed reached its zenith in the early 1950s, when the Hudson Hornet was the dominant car on the stock car racing circuit.

Despite this racy reputation, the Hudson was basically an upper-middle class car in 1929 — not as pricey as a Packard, but a lot more car than a Ford Model A. The photo and caption below, from a 1929 Hudson sales brochure, capture the image that Hudson was trying to project to its customers.

I'm often asked "how many 1929 Hudsons still exist?" That's hard to answer definitively. The Hudson-Essex-Terraplane Club membership roster lists some 3,000 members and their cars. About 80 Hudsons of 1929 vintage are listed, of which only eight (including ours) are 1929 Town Sedans. By one Town Sedan owner's count, only a dozen of these particular cars still exist. However, Hudson ownership is widespread, with H-E-T members hailing from every state, plus large numbers in Canada, Australia, and Sweden (where there's an active Hudson club), New Zealand, and elsewhere -- 22 countries outside the U.S., altogether. One Hudson old-parts dealer told me that a substantial fleet of late '20s Hudsons still operates today in Argentina, as taxicabs.

This evolving web site provides some information on pre-30's Hudsons generally, on our car specifically, and how we're having fun with it. Check back from time to time for changed and new information, especially in the Restoration Diary section, which continues to grow and evolve. If you own an old Hudson, I invite your additions to the Hudson Super Six Mechanical Issues section.