By admin on Mon 06 of Jul, 2009 08:52 MST

A few items for July from The AMC Heritage.  This stuff will be getting added to the July page in Rambler by The Month, since that page currently is only holding items from the 1969 American Motors Family Album by John Conde.

A Dashing '51 Nash- Newspaper article



My Dad sent this to me.



From the Arizona Republic, July 22, 2007





                 






From The AMC Heritage Forum, posted by Member IowaEagle, A Brief History of Dover Trucks:


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_(truck)



Dover was a make of trucks, owned by the Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan. Hudson announced the Dover brand in July 1929 as "Dover, built by Hudson Motors."



When introduced, Dover trucks were available as a "Screenside Express", Canopy Express, Open Flatbed, Panel Delivery and Cab and Chassis. Prices ranged between $595 and $895. Bodies for the trucks were built by Hercules of Evansville, Indiana.



The largest purchaser of Dover Trucks was the United States Postal Service which put the vehicles into service for mail transport and delivery vehicles. The Dover was a durable vehicle; USPS reported using some of the vehicles well into the 1950s.



The Dover was pulled from the market in either 1930 or 1931, with Hudson's production records being unspecific. The number of survivor vehicles is very limited; the one known restored mail truck was last known to be owned by a private collector in Michigan.



A fully-restored U.S. mail truck (possibly the vehicle alluded to in the previous paragraph) can currently be seen at Hostetler's Hudson Museum in Shipshewana, Indiana, which opened in October, 2007. The museum contains 48 restored or original Hudson vehicles built between 1909 and 1956. Information on the museum can be found at http://www.hostetlershudsons.com/ .





1929 Dover Mail Truck









Australian 1929 Dover Commercial










In July of 1967, Mechanix Illustrated did an article entitled, "How I am Going To Save American Motors", by Roy D. Chapin, Jr., seen here at Hemmings Clubsites:



http://clubs.hemmings.com/clubsites/classicamx/rchapin/rchapin.htm





In July of 1940, Karl Probst came out of retirement at Bantam to lay out the prototype plans for the vehicle that would become the famous Jeep.



The Kaiser-Frazer motor company was founded July 25, 1945



In July of 1908, a Thomas Flyer set the one and only around the world endurance record for a stock car.  Several members of the Thomas-Detroit team came over to the Hudson venture, which is why it is considered the predecessor of Hudson.  Roy D. Chapin, Sr., Howard Coffin, and Frederick Benzinger were all part of Chapin's team at Thomas-Detroit.



The Great Race Page:



http://www.thegreatautorace.com/race.htm



The actual Thomas Flyer which won The Great Race, is now in the National Automobile Museum (formerly the Harrah's collection).  It was obtained and restored by Harrah...



http://www.automuseum.org/NAM_collections_thomas2.shtml



-mike

U8QC6ANQEPFS

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By Route66Rambler  on Mon 04 of May, 2009 21:09 MST

Rambler Milestones for May...

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On May 1, 1915, Charles T. Jeffery, son of Rambler originator Thomas B. Jeffery, and heir to the line, set sail From New York City for Europe on a fact-finding tour.

However, there was a slight hitch in his plans a week later, when on May 7, the ship on which he was sailing, the R.M.S. Lusitania, was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, precipitating America's entry into World War I. Charles Jeffery himself, managed to survive the devastation.

This defining event changed Charles' life forever, and directly resulted in his decision to lead the stockholders to sell out to Charles W. Nash, former president of General Motors, and giving birth to the Nash Motor Company...

A Memorial Day tradition is the running of the Indianapolis 500 Memorial Day Classic. American Motors and its ancestors have played their part there, too...

1931 saw Hudson placing 10th in the Classic with this Marr Special Straight 8, driven by the immortal Chet Miller.

link=

In 1947, Nash-Kelvinator Corporation provided this Ambassador as the Pace Car, driven by none other than N-K President George W. Mason

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In 1967, Barney Navarro's team attempted to qualify a turbocharged 199 CID American Motors six-cylinder at Indy, driven by Dave Strickland. These efforts went on for a couple of years, but met with little success. There are limits to what you can do with a cast-iron passenger car motor...

link=http://www.JavelinAMX.com

I got this picture from The Javelin Home Pages, by John Rosa, at:

http://www.JavelinAMX.com

I can only wish that my site was as nice as his... a must see for every AMC freak.

Dave Carrillo fielded this awesome car at the Classic in 1976 and 1977...

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In 1978, Roger McCluskey qualified 11th in the Warner-Hodgden AMC Experimental Special. This car featured an aluminum block and heads, but inferior castings killed hopes for that year...

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Jimmy Thrall, Dick Simon, and John Martin working on the Vollstedt/AMC fielded at Indy in 1979.

From The Tribute to Jimmy Thrall Website

link=http://home.earthlink.net/%7Ejimmythralltribute/

http://home.earthlink.net/%7Ejimmythralltribute/

On May 1, 1954, Nash-Kelvinator Corporation and Hudson Motor Car Company, after merging in a January 14 stock deal, incorporated as American Motors Corporation.

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On the left is A. E. Barrit, CEO of Hudson, in the middle is George W. Mason, head of Nash-Kelvinator and on the right is George Romney, Mason's protege', and later, governor of Michigan.
Romney is seen holding a representation of the new corporate logo.

Picture from the 1969 American Motors Family Album by John Conde

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By Route66Rambler  on Tue 28 of Apr, 2009 23:21 MST

This is perhaps the most brutal and horrific road race ever run, and for the few years that it lasted, it was the ultimate proving ground for both driver and race car.

Found a couple of pictures of Bill France's Nash Ambassador that was run in the 1950 Mexican Road Race. The official title of the race was the Carrera Panamericana.

http://www.racingsportscars.com/photo/Carrera_Panamericana-1950-05-10.html

Bill France and Curtis Turner were entered in the race at No. 37, but crashed out and didn't finish.

Later on, in September of that same year, the car is seen here in a race at North Wilkesboro Speedway in a full drift at speed:

Ebenezer "Slick" Smith drove this Nash Ambassador in the Sept. 24 NASCAR race at North Wilkesboro Speedway. Smith crashed midway through the race and wound up 20th in the field of 26. Bill France and Curtis Turner had driven the Nash in the Carrera Panamericana during the summer. The Nash Motor Co. was the first manufacturer to actively support NASCAR racing.- HowStuffWorks.com

The link at the top of this post has a page with photos of other AMC Heritage cars in the race, also, including a couple of Hudsons:

1950 Hudson entered No. 1 by Luis and Tomas Iglesias-Davalos. Did not finish, timed out.

1950 Hudson entered No. 14 by Dempsey Wilson and Lou Figaro. Did not finish, crashed out. Seen here, in the middle.

The car to the left is the No. 98 car, a 1946 Hudson Commodore. Entered by Chuck Meekins and Joe Pisano. Did Not Finish, over time.

From the WikiPedia:

Endurance

Eight Nash Ambassadors were entered in the 1950 Carrera Panamericana, a 2,172-mile (3,495 km) endurance race run over five days across Mexico. Three finished but the highest-placed was disqualified.

The 1950 model driven by Roy Pat Conner was in sixth place on the ninth and final stage, 33 minutes behind the leader, when Connor became too ill to continue. Curtis Turner, who shared another '50 Ambassador with Bill France, purchased Conner's car for its superior race position, replaced Conner at the wheel and left France to continue without him.

Punctures had delayed many participants, among them a race favorite, Grand Prix driver Piero Taruffi, whose Alfa Romeo 6C 2500's tire problems had held him to 28th place on the third stage. By the eighth stage he was up to ninth place. On the final stage Taruffi had improved to fourth when Turner passed him in the mountains by bumping the Italian until he yielded the place. Taruffi took it back when the Nash, in turn, was temporarily halted by a flat tire.

But at the finish, with Taruffi in Turner's sights, the elapsed time of the ill-handling, underpowered Nash beat the Alfa by 11½ minutes to put Turner in fourth place behind a Cadillac 62.

However, regulations prohibited changing a car's crew and he was disqualified, which handed fourth, with a time 27 minutes behind the winning Oldsmobile 88, to Taruffi, who would win a year later.

Bill France eventually crashed out of the race but the damage did not prevent the Nash being driven back to the U.S.A., where France and Turner used it for a full season's dirt track racing in the Southern states.

The France/Turner entry was one of four Nashes that crashed out. A fifth retired with engine trouble. Santoyo's 1949 Ambassador was classified 36th out of the 47 finishers and another '49 model came 39th.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_Ambassador (external link)

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By admin on Tue 27 of Jan, 2009 22:19 MST

Upgrade City

We’re installing the newest versions of our site software and its customizations. We’ll be back at it again, before long, better than new, everything under control, just like always…

First, I'll be putting the old posts back into the blog, along with their pictures...

Once that's done, we can begin concealing the bodies... er, I mean, tend to the little details...

-mike

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