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I've been a "Hudnut" since I was fifteen years old, when Mom got a '37 Terraplane to drive to work. When I turned
sixteen we started sharing the car, and it was the first of eleven Terraplanes and Hudsons I had back then. In
November of 1956 when Madeline and I were married, I was driving the last of that string of great cars, a '51 Hornet
convertible (almost exactly like the one we have now). We sold it at the end of 1957.
A thirty year career in the Air Force made having a hobby car pretty impractical, but not long after settling into a second
career in 1984, I realized I was once again in a position to resume playing with toys! We started looking for something
interesting, and in the spring of 1989 found a '36 Hudson convertible. That was the beginning of an eleven year process
of restoring that car to its original condition. Read more about it in the box to the right. While the '36
was "under construction," we bought a couple of other Hudsons so we'd have something to drive to car club meets. First
a '51 Commodore Eight coupe, and later a Hornet convertible, the same color as the one we had owned 35 years earlier.
And with fewer miles on it! The most recent acquisition (November, 2003) was a '47 Commodore Eight sedan, from the stable
of noted Hudson collector Herbert Bell.
I've been an active member of the national Hudson-Essex-Terraplane Club since 1989; served as vice-president for three
years and Eastern Region Director for six years, stepping down from the latter position in July, 2009.
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Results of an Eleven Year Process
With the restoration finished in 2000, this beauty went through the AACA's award sequence to receive a Grand National First
Prize in 2002. It also won the AACA President's Cup for 2000, and came away from the 2002 Meadow Brook Concours d'Elegance
with a Best in Class prize. The bad news was that the car was so rare, so nice, and so valuable that we just couldn't
get comfortable driving it. We made the decision in 2003 to sell it, and did so at Kruse Auctions' Labor Day event that
year. It's now in the Nicola Bulgari collection in Pennsylvania. The Franklin Mint folks did a photo shoot of
the car in June, 2006, and released their 1:24 model of it in early 2008. We hoped it would be
done in this same color, "Glacier Blue," but they decided to make it their special 25th anniversary model, so the
model is silver.
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