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.

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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.

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