"Low-built beauty that promises you a glorious new kind of ride! Here is a car that you can instantly see to be the lowest-built of them all! Free-flowing, close-to-the-ground design telegraphs the fact that Hudson has the lowest center of gravity of any American automobile."
Even though we use to know the neighborhood, in Cuba from time to time appears a car that we didn't even think it would exist. One of these rare finds is this Hudson Pacemaker, the smallest car in Hudsons lineup for 1950.
Introduced in 1948 as one of the first new postwar-designs, the new Hudson made an instant impact with it's advanced "Step-Down" construction. Here the floorpan with the passengers actually sat "inside" the frame, and not on top of it like in more conventional designs. The car's height and center of gravity were the lowest by far, and this, in combination with the powerful engines, resulted in superior handling. No wonder that the Hudsons dominated the american NASCAR racing-series from 1950 through 1954.
As much as it was a revelation in the early 50s, the "Step-Down" body later became a burden for Hudson, because it was almost impossible to seriously restyle the car. In a time of annual model changes, the Hudsons started to look old soon, and customers quickly lost interest. Like many of the "independents", Hudson had to merge with Nash-Kelvinator in 1954 to become American Motors. The name Hudson survived for three more years on badge-engineered Nash-cars, and then disappeared.
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