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The following quote is from an article on the Rambler on ateupwithmotor.com ...

"In 1948, Mason hired Romney, who at the time was president of the Automobile Manufacturer's Association (AMA), as his special assistant. Romney was a hot commodity in the auto industry, and to take Mason's offer, he actually turned down a far more lucrative offer from Packard."

True?

Absolutely it is true.

OK. I knew he'd been CONSIDERED as a candidate, but not that he'd actually been offered the job.

Wonder what that would have meant for PMCC if he'd accepted the offer?

wonder if this would have protected them on the govt contract shafting?

I doubt that, "Engine Charlie" put the fix on that.

Thought you might want to see a 1950 photo of George Romney and George Mason in the Nash NXI - a Metropolitan prototype.

Looks like they are pretty close there.

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The Metro's were very interesting little cars and surprisingly roomy for something about as long as a Packard is wide. A friend had one while we were in HS & I know from first hand experience, several teenagers can fit in them at one time. As a fairly large man, Mr. Mason looks very uncomfortable stuffed in his prototype though.

A late friend of mine's father was the director of purchasing for Nash, his father and George Mason were, in his words "A--hole buddies" evidently Mason hung out at their home in the University district and consumed great quantities of Bourbon.

Hi

George Mason was a big man that must have loved bourbon and cigars. Seems as if in about half the pictures of him, he has a cigar in hand or smoking one. He looks every bit the part of a portly auto executive of the era.

Anyone else notice the '52 Nash styling is not much more than the prototype Metropolitan design scaled up to a large car size? The story, related by Bob Thomas in his book Confessions of an Automotive Stylist , who worked in Nash Styling at the time, was they had been developing a conventionally-styled prototype for 1952 in competition to the Farina effort. In his words:

"Ed Anderson's styling staff had now grown to about ten people and we were all waiting breathlessly for the Farina car. When it was brought into the studio, we were astounded. It was awful. The model was beautifully crafted but as a complete design it was terrible. From the windshield forward the hood broke downward and took the front fenders with it. The deck from the backlite to the rear did the same thing. The car was in three parts. Diving front and rear ends attached to a straight through body. I must say that the body and greenhouse were good. And, of course, it had the offset below the belt line with the vertical lines.
It was so bad that we put a cover over it and stored it in the corner of the styling studio. Now, we had to come up with proposal of our own."A similar description of events is found in A Century of Automotive Style: 100 Years of American Car Design by Lamm and Holls (required reading by any auto design student of the period, IMHO).

At that point, Styling and top management put the Farina design aside until Mead Moore of Engineering, who butted heads frequently with styling director Ed Anderson, convinced Mason to go with the Farina design or a version thereof. Sounds as if it was a revenge move just to make Anderson and his staff's lives miserable turning it into a crash program as an all-new Nash was scheduled for their 50th anniversary 1952 models.
So, Styling kept the Farina central body section but must have scaled up the Metropolitan front and rear clip configurations to make the overall design....something of a "cut-'n-paste" synthesis. This whole ugly episode resulted in a very late introduction of the 1952 Nashes called Golden Airflytes on March 14, 1952, well into the model year.

See, bizarre corporate machinations weren't just the province of Packard management personalities!

Steve