The 1948 new Hud­son Com­modore Sedan was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary design when it was intro­duced. The con­struc­tion of this car was entire­ly new and very sur­pris­ing. Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool repro­duced the Amer­i­can Hud­son Com­modore Sedan in 1950 as mod­el 139B. Com­pared to oth­er Dinky mod­els of that peri­od, the stream­lined, aero­dy­nam­ic lines of this mod­el are imme­di­ate­ly strik­ing.

The Hud­son Mono­bilt was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary “step-down” unit-body con­struc­tion intro­duced by the Hud­son Motor Car Com­pa­ny in 1948. It inte­grat­ed the body and frame into one weld­ed struc­ture, low­er­ing the floor pan, and giv­ing cars like the leg­endary Hud­son Com­modore an incred­i­bly low cen­ter of grav­i­ty and unmatched han­dling

The result was a car that was only 158 cm. (62 in.) high. This was low com­pared to Ford, Chevro­let, and Chrysler, whose cars had heights of 180 (71 in.), 170 (67 in.) and 171 cm (67.3 in.) respec­tive­ly. In 1948, Hud­son sur­prised the car world with the new Step-Down design. Com­pared to these cars, those of the com­pe­ti­tion seemed dis­tinct­ly old fash­ioned. The Hud­son was a hit with the pub­lic. The total pro­duc­tion of the Com­modore for 1948 was 62,474 of which 35,315 were I8 units.

Shown above is type­writ­ten press release from 1947 on the reverse of the fac­to­ry pho­to of the Hud­son Com­modore Eight Sedan. As stat­ed in the release, Hud­son Motor Car Com­pa­ny invest­ed $16,000,000 in the new 1948 Hud­son.

To pro­mote the new Hud­son “Step-Down” design, 1:16 plas­tic scale mod­els were made by plas­tic spe­cial­ists. They were intend­ed for ship­ment to Hud­son deal­ers to demon­strate the car’s step-down and Mono­bilt design to cus­tomers. The dies alone cost $35,000. About 20,000 were pro­duced by Hud­son itself on a sep­a­rate assem­bly line built specif­i­cal­ly for this pur­pose in the Hud­son fac­to­ry.

The Hud­son Com­modore was pro­duced by the Hud­son Motor Car Com­pa­ny of Detroit, Michi­gan between 1941 and 1952. Dur­ing its pro­duc­tion, the Com­modore was the largest and most lux­u­ri­ous Hud­son mod­el.

Hud­son had devel­oped a new and rad­i­cal car design. Pro­duc­tion of the 1948 Hud­sons began on 12 Octo­ber 1947. Intro­duced on 7 Decem­ber 1947 to deal­ers, the Hud­son Com­modore was one of the first new­ly designed post­war cars made. The 1948 mod­el year inau­gu­rat­ed Hud­son’s trade­marked “Mono­bilt” con­struc­tion or “step-down” auto­mo­bile. The new cars were designed by Frank Spring and in part by Bet­ty Thatch­er, the first female design­er to be employed by a car man­u­fac­tur­er. The mar­ket­ing tagline for the inno­v­a­tive Hud­sons was “Now… you’re face to face with Tomor­row!”

The cars had a light and strong semi-unit body with a perime­ter frame. Because of the encir­cling frame, pas­sen­gers stepped down into the vehi­cles. Hud­son’s step-down design made the body low­er than con­tem­po­rary cars. It offered pas­sen­gers the pro­tec­tion of being sur­round­ed by the car’s chas­sis with a low­er cen­ter of grav­i­ty. In addi­tion to the safe­ty of being sur­round­ed by the car’s chas­sis, the step-down design also allowed Hud­son to achieve a weight sav­ings through the uni­body con­struc­tion, mak­ing for a well per­form­ing auto­mo­bile. The “Mono­bilt” or “step-down” design also required less steel for its pro­duc­tion.

Hud­son ceased oper­a­tion of the Hud­son auto­mo­bile brand in 1957 after the par­ent com­pa­ny merged with Nash-Kelv­ina­tor in 1954 to form Amer­i­can Motors Cor­po­ra­tion (AMC).

The “Mono­bilt” con­struc­tion no longer exists in mod­ern vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ing. True “Mono­bilt” cars fea­tured a perime­ter frame weld­ed direct­ly to the body. Mod­ern uni­body con­struc­tion inte­grates the floor pan, pil­lars, roof, and crum­ple zones into a sin­gle engi­neered shell, elim­i­nat­ing the need for a sep­a­rate frame.

Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool chose to repro­duce this attrac­tive mod­ern car, togeth­er with 139A Ford For­dor sedan, as one of the first new post-war Dinky Toys mod­els of Amer­i­can closed pas­sen­gers cars of the ear­ly 1950’s. The time had come to leave the out­dat­ed pre-war reis­sues behind and pro­duce new mod­els. The pro­duc­tion of prac­ti­cal­ly all old­er reis­sues end­ed in 1950.

Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool repro­duced this car as the 139B Hud­son Com­modore Sedan (assem­bly draw­ing 28–4‑49). It was first adver­tised in the July 1950 issue of Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine which also includ­ed a sep­a­rate descrip­tion of the Hud­son Com­modore. In 1954 it was renum­bered to Dinky 171 and was pro­duced until 1959.

The Dinky Hud­son Com­modore was described in Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine as “The body is large and long, with the fend­ers or bumpers absorbed into it, and on the sides there are embossed speed lines designed to give the appear­ance of for­ward motion, even when the car is stand­ing still”. This alludes to the beau­ti­ful raised dec­o­ra­tive speed line with a sec­ond col­or on the sides of the orig­i­nal car that gives it a very nice look.

Shown above is the left pro­file view of the Dinky 139B Hud­son Com­modore Sedan with “embossed speed lines on the side, designed to give the appear­ance of for­ward motion, even when the car is stand­ing still”, as described in the arti­cle intro­duc­ing the mod­el in Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine. Unfor­tu­nate­ly Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool chose to not high­light the raised speed lines on the sides by mask spray­ing a sec­ond col­or like the real car above. Instead, a two tone paint scheme was used to accen­tu­ate the roof.

Shown above is the rear view of the Dinky 139B Hud­son Com­modore Sedan with a chrome bumper. It’s a pity the tail­lights aren’t paint­ed red (although this was done on some lat­er mod­els) and the Hud­son emblem on the tail­gate isn’t paint­ed in chrome. That would have giv­en the mod­el a nicer appear­ance.

Shown above is the ear­ly Dinky 139B with small let­ter­ing on its mot­tled base. Lat­er mod­els used large let­ter­ing. In The Great Book of Dinky Toys by Mike & Sue Richard­son, the authors indi­cate that on 27 August 1952 the mod­el num­ber 139B was added, and on 11 August 1954 the mod­el was renum­bered to 171, but not marked on the base­plate.

My ear­ly Dinky Hud­son Com­modore has a smooth inner roof. Lat­er mod­els had “Hud­son Sedan” cast into the roof

The Hud­son Com­modore was, in fact, the first post-war Dinky Toys mod­el issued with a two-tone fin­ish, which Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool then applied to oth­er car mod­els from 1956 onwards. Six dif­fer­ent two-tone schemes were used on the Hud­son Com­modore Sedan, some of which are shown below.

It’s unfor­tu­nate that Mec­ca­no Liv­er­pool did­n’t high­light the attrac­tive speed lines on the sides of the mod­el by mask spray­ing them in a sec­ond col­or. The mod­el’s speed lines don’t stand out like those of the real car.

From Jan­u­ary 1956 onwards, many Dinky Toys mod­els were issued in a two-tone fin­ish, as shown on the back cov­er of the Jan­u­ary 1956 issue of Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine, with the slo­gan “Dinky Toys Gay­er than ever in 1956”. Com­pared with the col­or schemes used on the real cars, these two-tone schemes are more fan­tas­tic than real­is­tic.

Shown above are my Dinky Toys hard top Amer­i­can cars of the ear­ly 1950’s. From left to right:

• Dinky 139A/170 Ford For­dor Sedan (1949)
• Dinky 139B/171 Hud­son Com­modore Sedan (1950)
• Dinky 139C/172 Stude­bak­er Land Cruis­er (1954)
• Dinky 27F/344 Ply­mouth Estate Car (1950)

The stream­lined design and two-tone fin­ish of the Hud­son Com­modore imme­di­ate­ly stand out!

Nigel Myn­heer wrote a very inter­est­ing arti­cle “Dinky’s Amer­i­can dream” about Dinky’s glam­orous ear­ly 1950’s Amer­i­can cars, in the Octo­ber 2001 issue of Mod­el Col­lec­tor. The arti­cle cov­ers the Ford For­dor Sedan, the Ply­mouth Estate Car and the Hud­son Com­modore Sedan.