“I just bought a 1950 Nash Ambassador Airflyte Super.” Just think how satisfying that would be to say to friends and neighbors alike. What would they imagine hearing the name? A car every bit as handsome as this one actually is. Here’s your chance to provoke such imagination. Get a look at the ad on eBay and start up your dream factory. The price is certainly right, at a current starting bid at $5 grand and no takers. If this is an encouraging sign, get in there and make a play. You’ve got three days for this to work. Then, you’ll get to Lake Forest, IL to pick up your new wheels.
What was the vision of the future from the vantage point of the half-century moment? You can partially tell via the enthusiasm in the name of this car. It’s kind of like people—those with more than three names are just a scene in themselves wherever they go. In the case of this Nash, the big, curving bustle back suggests the contours of a spaceship, though space travel was going to be a feature of the 1960s, not the nascent 1950s. But who cares? Go inside, and check out the huge, round speedo binnacle. And the radio, which has a little sliding door to cover it, almost like a secret spy compartment. This cockpit just looks like a fun place to spend time.
Nash was known as a company which prized innovation. This ran to include seat belts, unibody construction, and more. What became of Nash? It merged with Hudson and was phased out by 1957. American Motors was eventually the result. The legacy the company left, however, was real. It even made into a character in the Cars 3 movie, Louise Nash, described as a tough veteran racer who liked to mix it up alongside the Fabulous Hudson Hornet.
Tons of original paperwork and an underneath that looks absolutely spotless make this a buy worth checking out if you want a mid-century classic. What the reserve on the auction is, is not known, but if this car is as solid as it looks and goes anywhere near a four-figure number, someone is getting a heck of a cool car for pennies on the dollar. What else is cool? The fact that the front seat folds down flat(ish) for those late nights when it’s better to rest up than try to drive home. Mechanically, this particular model has a 6-cylinder engine with about 46,000 miles on the clock, though there’s no claim that this is authentic nor that the odometer has not rolled over. In fact, there’s not a lot of information in the ad, so you can decide for yourself whether that means this car speaks for itself or that the seller hopes you won’t ask the hard questions. Unravel that mystery, and you might have your next collector piece staring you right in the face.
Hopefully it will get some bids. Putting up a car like this for auction with no reserve is a gutsy move that hopefully doesn’t prove to be foolish. This helps highlight how this segment of the market has collapsed.
I for one am interested in what this car sells for.
Steve R
I bet it’ll be hard to find another one in this nice of condition. I like the fastback style of it, though I have to say it had to be hard as hell to see out of the back window, if at all driving.