Electel Blogspot

By around 1940 American automobile makers were mostly thinking that streamlined (in the visual sense) sedans with fastback (smooth, curved transition from the roof to the aft of the car) designs were the wave of the near-future. All three Ford Motor Company brand sedans featured fastbacks.  Chrysler Corporation sedans were fastbacks slightly modified by slight curve to improve trunk capacity.  General Motors cars were mostly notchback, but fastback designs were in the works for the 1941 and 1942 model years.  Less wealthy manufacturers such as Hudson and Studebaker did not add fastbacks to their sedan lines. But relatively prosperous Nash offered both notchback and fastback sedans on their redesigned 1941 line.  As some observers have noted, Nash was hedging its bets on styling direction, and this was a somewhat costly way to do so. For now, I'll ignore the new entry-level 600 model that featured unit-body construction and focus on the traditional body-on-frame Amba...

Nash was the most financially successful of the lesser American automobile companies during the 1930s Great Depression (Wikipedia entry here ).  This allowed it to facelift its car fairly drastically towards the end of the decade and then launch innovative new body designs for 1941. This post is limited where possible to Nash's top-of-the-line Ambassador series.  Lesser Nash models received similar treatments.  But I need to focus on certain key similarities to support my arguments, so feature car bodies as uniform as possible across model years. Unless noted, images below are via the factory or are of cars publicized for sale. Gallery 1935 Nash, photo source unknown To set the scene, this appears to be a 1935 Nash Advanced Six four-door sedan.  This body was new for that model year.  Ambassadors had longer wheelbases and their hoods were longer, but otherwise the models looked similar from this viewpoint.  Key items to keep in mind are the shapes of the si...