Nash pickup a workshop gofer

0 0 August 22, 2025 Edit this post

by Bill Buys

Nash was for long time one of the major car companies of America.

It was one of the so-called Little Five (Nash, Hudson, Willys, Studebaker and Packard, as opposed to the Big Three: GM, Ford and Chrysler.

But apart from producing fire trucks in 1917, it was car-oriented, and did not build trucks of any kind again until its demise in 1957.

Or so everyone thought, until a chap named Jim Dworschack arrived at a Nash Club meeting one day at the wheel of a shiny red 1946 Nash Pickup.

“The pickup I have I first saw in the early 1970s, when I made a trip to the Nash Club member’s house in Illinois,” Jim, of Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, said.

“I had never seen a Nash pickup before, hence the journey to see it.”

What Jim actually saw was parts of the pickup, because owner Bob Moser had taken it apart to restore it.

“It was the only one I’d seen other than the prototype truck.”

The prototype he was referring to had a 1942 Nash 600 front clip (US term for the entire front of a car, up to the windscreen).

A panel had been welded to the body, behind the B pillar, to form the pickup cab.

The fabrication was placed on a 1936 Nash frame.

Perfect Steel Body Co provided the load tray and the rear mudguards came from a 1941 Ambassador.

The prototype pickup was a one-off, used by the Nash plant until it was gifted to a retiring engineer in the late 1950s.

The engineer then traded it at a dealership in Wisconsin and the dealer used it as a shop truck.

Later, one of the mechanics bought it for use on his farm.

The mechanic’s son took the pickup apart, but never got around to restoring it.

So it sat in bits and pieces until 1980 when the Nash Club's Don Lope bought and reassembled it.

Before buying Bob Moser’s truck, Jim was going to build his own Nash pickup.

Bringing the pickup back to life had become a stalled project for Bob.

“After not seeing Bob Moser for perhaps 10 years, I bumped into him at the ’86 Nash meet,” Jim said.

“I told him about my idea of how to make a Nash pickup. When I got done telling him the details, he just looked at me and said, ‘Why don’t you buy mine?’ So, I did.”

“On going to get the pickup, I found it all just as I remembered seeing it about 14 years previously.

“The cab had been restored and the chassis painted. Essentially, I bought a pile of pieces, and within a year, had it restored and on the road in 1987.”

The result was a mechanically sound, cosmetically appealing and a roadworthy truck.

“All appointments inside are the same as the Ambassador, including the famous Weather Eye heating system and sedan seat.

“The door panels and below-the-dash kick panels are Masonite with a leatherette-type grain stamped on them.

“The headliner cardboard also has a leatherette-type grain finish.

The floor is covered with the standard passenger car rubber floor mat.

“Even the wood-grained dash and window surrounds are what the autos would have,” he said.

Like other manufacturers, Nash carried over its 1942 bodies for several years after World War II ended.

However, it turns out that Nash did make a few of these pickups – but they were not meant to be sold.

They were merely workhorses issued to some of the brand’s dealers to be used as breakdown trucks or for ferrying parts from warehouse to dealership.

About 300 of them were delivered to Nash dealers in the United States, while the rest were kept for various internal purposes, including service vehicles, parts runners, and tractor-trailer units at Nash factories.

“These pickups were built on the ’48 convertible chassis, which had some extra reinforcing on the standard ’48 frame,” Jim said.

“The entire driveline was the normal Nash Ambassador Six, overdrive transmission, with the sedan’s normal 4.4:1 rear-axle ratio.

“The sheet metal is the basic Ambassador four-door sedan. The roof was modified with the creation of sheet metal behind the driver’s seat.

“The cab and all stampings were made at the Seaman body plant in Milwaukee, as there were no sheet metal stamping facilities at the Kenosha facility at the time.”

Additional parts on the pickups not found on a ’48 Ambassador sedan are heavy-duty springs and shock absorbers.

“All trim was chrome plated, as on the car, except the rear bumper was specific to the pickup and painted.

“Over the years, I lettered the doors with the original Nash lettering, as shown in the factory photo.”

As can be surmised from being based on a convertible chassis, the pickup has 1940s sedan road manners, but with the added benefit of a pickup truck’s carrying capabilities.

“The truck drives and steers easily, just like a car, because it essentially is a car.

“Being a car chassis, it has a long, low look to it, very unpickup-like for the era.”

Then, from 1947 to 1955, Nash Motors actually did have a stab at the ute market.

A March, 1947 press release said the new trucks would soon go into production.

However, by November, 1948 the company reluctantly concluded that the truck project had to be postponed indefinitely.

In the end, the company did build trucks, mostly heavy-duty models in small numbers and almost exclusively for the export market, mainly Canada and Mexico.

Called the Nash “Haul-Thrift” line, the new trucks were offered in one- and 1-1/2-tonne versions on two wheelbases: 133 inches and 157 inches.

They’re pretty sought after these days: a former Nash dealer in New Hampshire finally junked his Nash Haul-Thrift around 2008 and a week later found a restorer had bought it from the scrapyard.

Dealerships were told no retail sales were allowed, but as the trucks became older, dealers usually sold them — or junked them, depending on age and condition.

In 1954 Nash Motors merged with Hudson Motors to form American Motors Corporation (AMC).

Nash automobile production continued from 1954 through 1957 under AMC.

Nash would focus most of its marketing resources on its smaller Rambler models, while Hudson marketed its full-sized cars.

In 1987 AMC became a division of Chrysler Corporation.

I was close to a couple of Nashes in my time.

My father-in-law had a 1948 Ambassador sedan and later upgraded to a Rambler, and in my time in law enforcement in Johannesburg my patrol car was a Nash Rambler.

Neat vehicle, but with a rather gutless side-valve engine and a transmission that objected to Johannesburg’s sub-zero winter temperatures.

But none of those few Nash utes, pickups, bakkies, trucks or whatever, ever made it to the shores of South Africa, Australia or New Zealand.

Or most of the US, for that matter, so Jim Dworschack really picked up a winner.