Hudson Wasp 1955 images

By 1955, the Hudson badge on this Wasp was covering for a car that was mostly Nash underneath, a product of the 1954 merger that created American Motors. It rode on Nash’s full-size platform and borrowed its 202-cubic-inch six from the smaller Hudson Jet, making up to 120 horsepower with the optional dual-carb Twin H-Power setup. Sales fell to just 7,191 units that year. Here’s the story behind one of Hudson’s last independent-looking cars.

1955 Hudson Wasp 202 Straight 6 Hydramamatic

MCF thanks Gateway Classic Cars for the images displayed here.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

By the time this particular Wasp rolled off the line in 1955, the company whose name was stamped on its trunk lid had, in a very real sense, already stopped building cars on its own. Hudson had just merged into American Motors, and what buyers were driving home was actually a Nash platform underneath, wearing Hudson sheet metal and a Hudson badge to keep loyal customers from noticing the switch. The engine wasn’t even new to the Wasp — it had been borrowed from Hudson’s own compact Jet a year earlier. None of that stopped the Wasp from looking every bit the confident full-size cruiser it was built to resemble. So what was actually happening under that Nash-based skin?

A Merger Wearing a Hudson Badge

The badge-engineering wasn’t subtle if you knew what to look for. After Hudson Motor Car Company folded into the newly formed American Motors Corporation in 1954, the Wasp abandoned Hudson’s own unibody design in favor of Nash’s full-size “senior” platform, riding on the same 114.3-inch wheelbase as the Nash Statesman. AMC’s stylists gave it exclusive Hudson trim and sheet metal to disguise the switch, and buyers could order it as a conventional four-door sedan or the sportier two-door “Hollywood” hardtop, across standard, Super Wasp, and Custom trim levels.

A Six-Cylinder Borrowed From the Compact Class

Under the hood sat Hudson’s 202-cubic-inch L-head inline six — the same engine used in the smaller, cheaper Hudson Jet compact, now doing duty in a full-size car. In base form it made a modest 110 horsepower, but with the optional “Twin H-Power” dual-carburetor setup, like the Hydramatic-equipped example pictured here, output climbed to 120. It wasn’t enough to convince the market: Wasp sales fell to just 7,191 units for the year, a sign that Hudson loyalists weren’t fully sold on driving what was, underneath, a Nash.

Wasp Buyers Could Still Order Real Style

Even wearing borrowed Nash bones underneath, Hudson’s stylists gave the 1955 Wasp genuine two-tone flair — crisp white bodywork set off by a contrasting color sweeping across the roof and rear deck, the kind of factory-optional color-separation treatment that made a mid-priced full-size car look considerably more expensive than its badge suggested. Chrome portholes, full wheel skirts, and wide whitewall tires rounded out a look built to compete visually with cars costing hundreds of dollars more.

The Continental Kit Buyers Loved to Add

Many Wasp buyers — and clearly the owner of this example — opted for an external continental spare tire kit mounted to the rear bumper, a period-popular accessory that stretched the car’s overall length and gave it a longer, more formal profile. Dealer-installed continental kits were common enough across mid-1950s American cars that surviving examples wearing one, complete with its own chrome bumper guard, are considered a desirable factory-era option today rather than a later addition.

Hollywood Hardtop or Formal Sedan

Hudson offered the 1955 Wasp in both a conventional four-door sedan and the pillarless two-door ‘Hollywood’ hardtop, and the hardtop’s cleaner roofline — with no B-pillar interrupting the greenhouse when the windows were down — was the more style-forward choice for buyers who wanted the Wasp’s two-tone paint scheme to read as one continuous shape rather than a broken-up sedan silhouette.

The Last of a Fading Nameplate

1955 turned out to be one of the final seasons a genuinely distinct Wasp survived in Hudson’s lineup before American Motors folded the badge entirely into its broader consolidation of the Hudson and Nash brands under the Rambler name by the end of the decade. That makes surviving 1955 Wasps a snapshot of a very specific transitional moment — Hudson’s proud independent history still visible in the badge and trim, even as the platform underneath had already become a shared AMC corporate product.

Why Collectors Still Seek Out the Wasp

Full-size AMC-era Hudsons like this Wasp occupy an unusual niche in the collector market: rarer than contemporary Chevrolets and Fords simply because Hudson’s total production was always a fraction of the Big Three’s, yet less prized than Hudson’s earlier Hornet due to the platform-sharing controversy. That combination of genuine scarcity and interesting history is exactly why well-preserved two-tone examples like this one, complete with a period-correct continental kit and full skirts, continue to draw attention at shows dominated by more common nameplates.

What Made the Twin H-Power Option Worth Choosing

Hudson’s Twin H-Power setup wasn’t just a marketing name — it genuinely added a second single-barrel carburetor to the 202-cubic-inch six’s intake manifold, letting the engine breathe more freely at higher RPM than the single-carburetor base engine ever could. That extra top-end breathing room is exactly why buyers who wanted the most spirited version of the Wasp available sought out the Twin H-Power option, even though the horsepower gain on paper looks modest by later standards. It was enough to give the Wasp genuinely brisk performance for a full-size 1955 sedan, particularly when paired with the smoother, more effortless shifts of the optional Hydramatic automatic transmission — a unit Hudson sourced from General Motors rather than building in-house, a common practice among smaller independent automakers who couldn’t justify the engineering cost of their own automatic gearbox. That reliance on a GM-built transmission is itself a small but telling detail about just how thoroughly independent automakers like Hudson had to lean on outside suppliers and platform-sharing arrangements to keep offering modern features their much larger rivals could develop entirely in-house. For collectors today, a well-optioned Wasp like this one, wearing both the Twin H-Power engine and the Hydramatic transmission, represents about as complete a package as the nameplate ever offered in its final independent-feeling form.

A Full-Size Cruiser Priced to Compete

Hudson positioned the 1955 Wasp as a genuine alternative to entry-level Buicks and Oldsmobiles, offering full-size comfort and highway manners at a price that undercut both — a value proposition that mattered enormously to a shrinking independent automaker fighting for every sale against Detroit’s Big Three. That competitive pricing strategy is part of why the Wasp still found buyers even as Hudson’s overall market share collapsed through the mid-1950s, and it’s a reminder that this car’s true competition wasn’t just other Hudsons or Nashes, but the full breadth of mid-priced American cars fighting for the same increasingly crowded showroom floor.

Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Republished by Blog Post Promoter