Matty Winspur's "The Fabulous Hudson Hornet".

[Dave Metzner]

New from Moebius, 1954 Hudson Hornet - Matty Winspur's "The Fabulous Hudson Hornet". This kit represents the 1954 Hudson Hornet Special Club sedan raced, quite successfully, in the 1960's by Matthew Winspur  (father of Moebius' president Frank Winspur).

This kit is scheduled to ship from the Orient around the end of December and should be in stores by mid February 2017

 

Edited November 16, 2016 by Dave Metzner

[Fabrux]

Now that's cool!

[peter31a]

Very cool! I'd be up for one of those.

[tbill]

looks like another winner! that'll be on the wish list.

[Daddyfink]

Oh man! Another must have kit!! 

[W-409]

This is a must have kit for sure! These old Stock and Super Stock cars are my favorites and while this one is going to be Moebius quality, it's a must have. Is there more info or pics of the rear slicks? How wide are they and do they have any "grooves" on the tread?

[espo]

Another must have Hudson. I now understand Frank's interest in Hudsons since his father raced them.

[Bill J]

Looking forward to another great Hudson kit

[unclescott58]

I didn't know that anybody dragged Hudsons. I always figured they were too heavy for that kind of racing. Especially with the factory six still in it. I wonder how well they did? I wonder what kind of times they got going through the quarter?

 

[louie]

Now that is just awesome, absolutely love it. I for one appreciate Dave for keeping us informed about new Moebius kits. 

Thank you.    Jeff 

[Dave Metzner]

The slicks are just that - drag slicks, not cheater slicks - even after the fender skirts are removed you can barely see that they're not street tires.

Photos of the real car show slicks of some variety on the rear wheels - impossible from the few photos we have to determine if they were cheater slicks or not

The tires in the kit are slicks that we did for other kits that fit into the wheel wells of the Hudson, we were not going to tool new tires just for this kit. These tires are probably too wide for NHRA  Q stock legal tires in 1967, but nobody will be able to see that unless you display the model upside down!

[Mark]

I didn't know that anybody dragged Hudsons. I always figured they were too heavy for that kind of racing. Especially with the factory six still in it. I wonder how well they did? I wonder what kind of times they got going through the quarter?

 

They fit certain classes very well.  Besides the bigger Hudsons, the compact Jet with the big-car engine was also used.  NHRA had a rules loophole that allowed pre-1960 cars to use any engine in any body, provided both were the same manufacturer and the same year.  Some guys claimed that Hudson sold a kit over the parts counter to do that swap, but I don't think that was the case. 

Besides Matty Winspur, there was a guy named Ike Smith who ran Hudsons in various Stock classes in the Sixties.  I've got an old magazine article on a couple of those guys; one bought his car from a used car dealer for scrap price because the guy wasn't going to put it on his lot.  Hudsons weren't worth much in the mid Sixties.

There were a few Hudson-powered cars in the lower Gas classes also.  The bottom two or three Gas classes were reserved for flatheads, inlines, and overhead valve engines with fewer than eight cylinders.

[Dave Metzner]

Jack Clifford, ran Clifford Engineering - he specialized in racing and performance parts for 6 cylinder engines - Clifford had a catalog full of Hudson 6 cylinder engine performance parts.

 Clifford ran a 54 Hudson Coupe in the NHRA - mainly on the West coast...

Matthew Winspur also ran a Super Stock Hudson Jet - that car had the big 304 cu. in. 6 - I think it probably had a bunch of Clifford Engineering go fast parts on it!

[Jim_Kampmann]

Very cool Dave! Nicely built example of the race car too!

Thanks,

Jim

[W-409]

The slicks are just that - drag slicks, not cheater slicks - even after the fender skirts are removed you can barely see that they're not street tires.

Photos of the real car show slicks of some variety on the rear wheels - impossible from the few photos we have to determine if they were cheater slicks or not

The tires in the kit are slicks that we did for other kits that fit into the wheel wells of the Hudson, we were not going to tool new tires just for this kit. These tires are probably too wide for NHRA  Q stock legal tires in 1967, but nobody will be able to see that unless you display the model upside down!

Thanks for the answer!

That's no problem for me, I'll be glad to use those slicks on my build, even though they technically are not NHRA legal Stock class tires. But, no kits that I know of have the correct slicks in them so I have always used the "wrong" tires on my builds too. Much more important to me is that they look good when the model is displayed somewhere, and these tires definitely do.

 

 

[Brett Barrow]

They weren't that fast as drag cars go, they just did well in their particular junior stock class, which were determined by weight and advertised horsepower . It was in one of the slowest classes, L/Stock if I remember correctly.  You ran against the class record ET.  Sort of the forerunner of bracket racing but if you went faster you weren't DQ'd you were the new record holder.   

[stavanzer]

I like the way this looks. Might be my first Hudson build.

[Allen Wrench]

Dave, other than the wheels and tires, are there any other new parts in this kit?

[LVZ2881]

Ok. Now that's a Hudson kit I won't be able to pass up.

[horsepower]

There was a racer in Redding that ran a very nice '37 Willys sedan of show quality that ran a Hudson Hornet engine for power. It had a beautiful pearl green with a darker green fade and was just as good a show car as it was a successful drag racer, and yes, you guessed it it was called the Green Hornet.

[Janne Herajärvi]

I like it..

[Brett Barrow]

These are hitting shelves this week! Here are some pics of the Cragars, decals, and instruction sheet that show the changes to this kit. The only new* parts are the Cragars and tires. You actually get 6 of them, 4 "fronts" and 2 slightly deeper and wider rears along with 4 front tires and 2 slicks so you could run the street tires all the way around if you want. The slicks are definitely too big as has been mentioned in the thread. I'm not going to fault them for not tooling up new tires just for this one kit. It would probably look just fine with the fronts all the way around as you can see from the pic of the real car.   The stock Hudson wheels and open steel wheels from the Nascar versions are on the chrome tree as well, but the tires included are not the same as the tires in other Hudsons, I believe they are the tires from the 60's cars.

*new for the line of Hudson kits

You also get a neat "Matty's Speed Shop" sticker:

 

Edited March 8, 2017 by Brett Barrow

[Mark]

The Cragar wheels, slicks, and front tires look like the ones in the Melrose Missile Satellite I picked up over the weekend.

[Brett Barrow]

The Cragar wheels, slicks, and front tires look like the ones in the Melrose Missile Satellite I picked up over the weekend.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they are.   

[ChrisBcritter]

Would the narrow slicks AMT put in many of their '60s kits be more accurate? I have a few sets.