1950 Nash Ambassador Custom - Jay Leno's Garage

is welcome to another episode of jay leno's garage you know if you've been to this website you know we do the mclaren p1 the f1 we do all kinds of high performance z06 corvettes the kawasaki supercharged motorcycle now we're slowing it down just a little bit today this is what you call a gog good old girl just a nice old car you know these are great fun this is a 1950 nash ambassador custom and you don't see these on the road anymore i like the front of this car because it kind of reminds me of my friend roddy dangerfield the comedian his face kind of looks like the front of this car yeah you can see it you can see it big six cylinder 238 cubic inch nash was an independent automaker they went out of business in the mid 50s but when they were in business they built some pretty fine automobiles now i know it looks kind of odd to us today but this was considered state-of-the-art styling this is the nash air flight sort of built like an airplane that was the idea streamlined i've heard a rumor that peanut farina was involved in the design of this car i can't quite confirm that some people say yes some people say no so i don't know but it certainly looks like it might have some of that fastback it's a big comfortable car well here let me show you an ad from 1951. this is a year later but it's basically the same here take a look this is the new 1951 nash air flight built the same way as the modern airliner and streamlined train specially designed for greater strength greater safety and the smoothest quietest drive you ever enjoyed thanks to exclusive nash air flight construction in an ash air flight you'll see the world through an undivided sky-wide windshield and enjoy the comfort of nash's exclusive weather eye conditioned air system there's legroom galore and hydramatic drive if you desire it a spill proof storage drawer instead of a cluttered glove compartment and there's economy that's amazing in a car so big and luxurious so before you decide take an air flight ride in the world's most modern car the 1951 nash airflight you know it looks like a big heavy automobile it only weighs 3 400 pounds which isn't bad you'd think it weigh 4 400 pounds but it's not it's fairly light and even though it is only a six it's 115 horsepower you know that was equal to the buick straight eight and some of the other v8s of the period so it was not a slow car certainly not a fast car but not a slow car this one has the automatic 1950 was the first year for an automatic transmission it's a gm hydramatic they put in these it was a three speed on the column this one of course as i said has the automatic so it does make it a little bit slower but it's a big comfortable car you know you can buy these for pretty much next to nothing you know for some reason i don't know why these are not as collectible as maybe as the cadillacs or some of the other cars i think they nothing on the road looks like this you know kids like it because it looks like something from the movie cars you know the big kind of goofy face and the big giant front end and the fastback roof and it's got the seats fold down into a bed here take a look at this picture let me tell you a story behind that the president of nash was on a road trip one day and about midnight he pulled into a motel and they wanted two dollars a night to stay two dollars to stay in a motel well that's ridiculous so he went back and he said i want to design a car that the traveling salesman could sleep in on the road uh you know where the where it turns into a bed in fact in some models you came with shades so you could close it off so you can actually sleep in your car on the road and not get that two dollar rip-off staying in some fancy motel well of course this car then became the drive-in king during the 50s and the 60s you know dads wouldn't let their daughters go out with guys that had one of these because the car turned into a bed with obvious results but that was that's kind of the cool thing about them come on let's go and i'll show you the inside you know this is just a good honest old car it hasn't been restored it's just been fixed up i got this from a gentleman named bill payton i met him at a benefit a number of years ago his picture and sadly he passed away and his family contacted me and they told me he had some cars went out to look and um i i just couldn't resist it i just i just like the honesty of it it's just a nice old girl here let me show you how advanced this car was back in the day in that commercial you just saw you saw the giant storage unit right here let me open that up look at that that's not that's that's bigger than the luggage space in my mclaren look at that and you close this here there you go this is my favorite the uniscope this is only on for a couple of years because it was a bit complicated and expensive all the gauges are right in here you've got oil and you've got fuel you've got temperature in the cautious speedometer um i like what they call the weather eye weather eye it just opens eventless air in her house uh clock clockworks i'm missing a horn ring i have to get this uh this is my favorite this here's how you start this car see nobody can steal these because this has what they call select old lift starting you grab the you put it in neutral you grab you select and lift select a lift yes why don't all cars have that it seems you've got the generator the light goes on when it's slows down and there you go nice big tube radio i always like tube radios they give a nice sound i can't turn the radio on because then i have to pay music rights when it plays a song it's very complicated but trust me and then when you want to look stylish you just close this like a giant roll top desk you've got a nice metal desk dashboard there let me tell you something hit your head on that dash they just hose it off and they sell it to somebody else that's the way these babies work yeah so oh hell this is kind of cool i'm missing can you see the turn indicator let me show you oh here you go you see the blinker is at the end of the stock and i need the uh i need the little cap that goes over there so anybody has one let me know i'll give you a call uh these old hydramatics have no park you have to use your your parking brake roll up windows and of course you got to have these when i was a kid this is the greatest thing before air conditioning the vent window fantastic smokers loved them i think this is a new headliner i think this was put in some time ago as i said this car was fixed up you know the great thing about getting old cars here in california is they don't rust in fact we're going to take this next door and i'll put it up on the left and we'll show you uh we'll show you what the underside of these this car is like it's pretty robust i mean they're nice driving cars and you can buy these for you know five six seven thousand dollars and they're wonderful wonderful cars because they're bulletproof these go 100 000 miles no problem now a mistake a lot of people make with these old cars is these are six volt cars and for some reason people seem to think six volts aren't enough to start the car and run the carb they did back in the day in the dead of winter they always work fine the big mistake is six volt wire is thicker than 12 volt wire you can't just get automotive wiring and put it on this car you need to get six volt wiring so it can carry the current uh when i got this someone had altered the starter and put a 12 volt starter on it thinking it would spin it faster but that doesn't work just put it back the way it was done at the factory these guys went to college they know what they're doing and they work fine and that's what we did here we converted this everything back to six volt and we used the proper six volt wire uh when we did the electrical we haven't had any problems at all here's something kind of cool about this engine have you noticed right here this is called the sealed in head and water heated this is only on the ambassador it's like an aluminum bolt-on plate here and the idea was by altering the plate you could add more or less carburation if you wanted to that's kind of cool another interesting thing is the single exhaust system see how it starts here and it goes all the way around the engine it's held by just these u-clamps the only thing that hold it and there's no gaskets that bolted directly onto the engine there a big mistake people make is sometimes they over tighten these and they warp them but if you if you seal them down good they don't leak they work pretty good let's bring it next door we'll put it up on the left and we'll show you what it looks like underneath all right here's what i love about california cars like this with the exception of a new exhaust system which we put in everything to be pretty much original i don't believe this car was ever restored just cleaned up but of course in this california climate you get a little bit of rust but over 64 years that's not bad that's not bad as you see there's our new exhaust system we got this from walgreens i think is the guy that does these he does all these uh vintage uh exhaust systems he has the original plans and he makes them up for you so that's kind of cool as you can see you have a torque tube that drives the rear wheels here these are really stout strong cars there's your bulletproof high dramatic transmission up front there's your independent suspension unequal arms coil springs tubular shocks uh the only ambassador had the had the uh and a roll bar in front you notice the shocks are inside the coil springs a lot of mechanics hated that because it made it harder to work on but i think it rode better um and look at this see the kind of all these holes here that was sort of done to uh to lighten the the overall front and weight of the car but they say it increased wind drag so i don't know but that's that's what i read the brakes are nothing to write home about they're they're 10 inch drum brakes which is typical of the period when you drive a car like this you try to use uh i use what they call anti-crash technology you just sort of try to avoid stuff really but actually it stops pretty good i mean you'll get brake fade obviously of course but it's not bad if you drive it the way it was intended they're actually fine they're actually fine but this like i said this is what you call a good old girl that's i mean it's not you can see this hasn't been restored all this what's left in the undercoating torque tube the rear ends and these last about two or three hundred miles not much you have to do there as you see it's pretty straightforward and easy to work on well it's probably time to take it for a ride and see how she goes come on although i would have preferred the uh three-speed column shift with the overdrive you know this gm hydramatic is one of the world's great transmissions and at the time it came out it was the greatest transmission in the world i mean four speed smooth ship very nicely you know there's something about driving these cars when i was seven years old my dad at a 57 plymouth and he would let me sit in his lap and hold the steering wheel and that's what you feel like when you're driving this thing the car is so huge the wheel is so big you feel like a kid you know driving your dad's car just kind of hanging out of the wheel maybe that's why i like the nostalgia feel and look of these automobiles plus another thing is you know everybody collects 55 56 57 chevy's 55 t-bird you know there's so many of those kind of cars around you don't see many of these and they're they really are unique and different but i think the thing that really killed a lot of these independents was they didn't have a v8 until it was too late you know general motors just overpowered the industry with their fabulous overhead valve v8s for the cadillac and across the 265 chevy and as i said before this six cylinder even though it had more horsepower than the buick straight eight it was the six versus an eight you always felt like you were getting something extra with the eight you know same reason get a five speed instead of a four speed even if the final overdrive is the same you feel like you're getting a little bit more with the five speed looks like how much space there is it's not unusual to find a key or a hyundai crushed up under the wheel well i like how much room you have you can actually wear a hat lincoln could drive this car look at this you know what i like about these cars everything has a mechanical feel to it there's no power steering there's no power brake so everything is kind of nicely weighted you always know where the car is at all times i mean it's not that it handles grey but it doesn't handle bad it just handles honestly you know you can you go around you hit tires coming okay okay thank you i know i'm going a little too fast here that uh cross-ply tire chirp okay i'm not gonna catch that bike you know there's a pretty active uh nash club the guys that own these things that are in the club are fanatical about them because they really are dependable cars you can take them anywhere and your average shade tree mechanic can actually fix these and work on it you know everything is right there easily accessible and that aerodynamic styling you just feel it cheating the wind i mean i drove this thing a lot during the summer and i got hotter than the car did uh you know it doesn't overheat nice big radiator i know it doesn't seem like it but this was groundbreaking styling back in the day hudson also with the hudson hornet once you get over 60 65 miles an hour the aerodynamics really come into play let's take it on one of those new super highways is just starting to build here in america and see how it cruises it says in the brochure it climbs hills in a jiffy i'm not sure what a jiffy is but it seems to be doing it just fine well as you can see it's getting to be nightfall and sure i could blow two bucks and stay in some fancy hotel but why not do it the nash way see you guys next week

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Views: 1,279,632

Rating: 4.9334259 out of 5

Keywords: Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno's garage, nbc jay leno's garage, jay lenos garage, jay leno, 1950 nash ambassador custom jay leno, jay leno classic car

Id: oGopLn5Apf8

Length: 16min 51sec (1011 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 01 2014