Pickupdate: Nash prototype still exists

Photo via Nash Car Club.

It didn't take long after we posted the photos of the prototype 1946 Nash pickup that we got the entire scoop on the pickup's history, how it was built, and where it is today. To begin with, Thomas Harrington, who now owns the pickup, left the following comments:

The serial number, K77646 is a Nash 600 number, a few numbers before the first Nash 600 car for the year 1946. The cab ID plate says "SAMPLE". I have the original plate from perfection Steel Body company, Galion, Ohio, which did the box; model number P1, serial number 80072. A replica of the plate is on the truck. A couple of years later a few pickups were made at the same time the larger trucks were made for dealers and export. Don Loper of NCCA found the truck.

I should add that I probably erred in restoring the truck, by making it fancier than it no doubt was originally. As no early engine was with the car a 1941 Ambassador Twin ignition 6 with overdrive was added. A wood floor to the box was added and a storage box in wood (removable). The word NASH was added to the rear gate using the same form as the original Nash lettering from the truck, which I keep separate from the truck.

We then heard from Don Loper:

I can tell you about the truck as I was told when I bought it. It's titled as a 1946 Nash pickup, but it was built at Nash Engineering in Kenosha during WWII, with an eye toward building trucks after the war. Then after the war, they couldn't get the steel to build all the cars they could sell, so the project went no further.

The man who more or less designed the truck took it with him when he retired in the '50s and traded it in on a car at Waters Rambler (long closed) in Madison, WI. Waters used the truck for years as a car pusher, parts chaser, runs to the dump, etc, and when they closed up in the '60s, one of their mechanics bought it for use on his farm. Later, one of the mechanic's sons took it apart and it sat in a tobacco shed till I found it about 1980.

When I first heard of it, my first thought was someone cut a car off and made it, and I was right except that the someone was Nash Motors. The cab is a 42 Nash 600 4-dr, cut off right behind the B pillar (still visible) and a new rear panel welded in. I know it's a 42 as the holes for the air filters on the ill-fated Lancia-type front suspension are in the inner panels under the hood. The resulting cab is mounted on a 1936 Nash frame which had a heavy X-member with 41 Ambassador rear springs and axle and front leaf springs from about 1936 with a beam axle from 1939. It had an open drive shaft. Airplane type shocks on the front but there was no provision for rear shocks.

The pickup box was bought from the Perfection Steel Body Company of Gallion, OH, and 41 Ambassador rear fenders were fitted along with fillets to move them out from the box. As you noted, it is shown with a side mounted spare (still has it) and without.

The interior was lined with a heavy cardboard like others of the period and the seat was covered in heavy "leatherette". The dash was standard Nash car, even including the engine turned aluminum around the gauges. The only change was it had no clock and there was no provision for one as the glove compartment door had no hole in it (like the inexpensive 600 business coupe).

The pictures you have in the blog are all of the same truck except for the 48 Ambassador pickup. What they did was to put a front end on it, take it out and take pictures, bring it back and change it and take more pictures. I'm sure of this as when I got the truck, all of the holes for the different grilles, etc, were still in the front sheetmetal. I found that the company pictures for the most part were taken at the Southport Beach House in Kenosha.

I heard that there were several 48 Ambassador pickups built for use at the plant and the proving ground out by Burlington, WI. We do have one of them in the Nash Club.

As for where it is today, Thomas has loaned it to the Wisconsin Automotive Museum in Hartford, Wisconsin.