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I don't have a dog in the hunt but thought this was a very nice & interesting pre-war Hudson coupe. I've never owned a Hudson but would say they interest me 2nd after Packard. Kind of pricey I thought, but I don't really keep up with Hudson values so who knows?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1937-Hudson-Business-Coupe-/151014875833?pt=US_Cars_Trucks&hash=item23293022b9

My local mechanic mentor and Packard problem solver is a certified Hudson nut. He has an original 51"Doc Hudson" that will run rings around my 51, even with the bored out 327. He would go crazy over that car. I think the price looks very good for it.

Those Hudsons are certainly interesting cars, and that little flathead 8 is interesting as well. I say "little" because I think at maximum they were only 254 cubic inches, whereas the last of the Hudson 6s reached 308. I think it dates back to the Great Eight and Greater Eight of the very early 30s. They had a rather unique, very low (about 3 psi) oiling system, a combination of a plunger pump and drip feed yet right up to the end of that engine in 1953 or 54 you never hear comments about any significant problems or weakness with them.

That particular one looks like a very nice and uncommon car. I wouldn't mind having it my garage.

Sounds like Monsignor Grubbs' mechanic and my old mechanic and psychiatrist were cut from the same cloth. Wayne Ballerstein, now retired with macular degeneration, living out on the Calif delta, still a sage, fount of encyclopedic information and savvy, ran motor pools in the War II Pacific, then worked in Packard and Hudson garages. When the Hudson dealer here in Walnut Creek folded in '56, Wayne kept the service dept. going.
He had several "Doc Hudsons," one with a Clifford 7X engine. The only thing i didn't like about them was their claustrophobic bathtub seating, that deep dashboard like peering through a periscope.

The late Terry Erich, former publisher of Hemmings Motor News, Hemmings Small Boat, and the much missed Special Interest Autos, had a feature in the mid-'70s on a '52 or '53 Hudson Hornet Hollywood coupe which he reported on as a daily driver in those easier-going days, compared the build quality with then current Mercedes; no sloppy mastic runs, none of that.

Hudson had a promotional film of such stepdown models, in which the steering wheel was suddenly spun hard to the right at 60mph. Where most cars would've flipped, the Hudson sharply turned and kept going. This is why they ruled Nascar in the early '50s, despite having flathead 6s
only a few more ci than the ohv Olds V-8s.

The simultaneous 254-ci straight 8 Dr. Dyneto describes which was last used in the '52 models, was splash oiled, but rugged. In 1940, Augie Duesenberg was purveying a marine version of it. And, of course, such engines, bone stock, propelled Railtons.

Hudsons had what machinists call a "hard block," inc. chrome nickel steel so you couldn't use a standard boring bar. Reos also had such hard blocks.

Off subject a little, but in the late '30s, '40s, Ford and Chrysler products, all lines, either had harder blocks, or induction hardened valve seats, while Packard, GM, Nash, Studebaker had "soft blocks," and i always wondered why Packard, who never stinted on chassis or engineering refinement even in oft overlooked places most customers could care less about,
so opted.