1952 Hudson Hornet: Twenty-Seven Wins, and a Champion Who Finished on His Roof

When NASCAR's 1952 season reached its last race at West Palm Beach, Florida, in November, Tim Flock needed only to start to be champion. The International Motorsports Hall of Fame records what happened next: on lap 64 his Hudson hit the retaining wall and flipped, skidding down the frontstretch on its roof. Flock's own summary, as the Hall quotes it, was 'I bet I'm the only guy who ever won a championship while on his head.' The title was his anyway, and it capped Hudson's most successful NASCAR season, in a year when fewer Hornets were built than the year before.^1,2,3

The NASCAR Hall of Fame counts the season as Hudson's best: 27 wins in 34 premier-series races, about 79 percent. Hornets won the first six races of the year and 11 of the first 12. Hudson also took the first of three straight manufacturers' titles, 1952, 1953 and 1954, which the Hall says ties it with Toyota and Oldsmobile for third on the all-time list. Those are institutional totals published by NASCAR's own museum, not a reconstructed race-by-race ledger, and they are the scale against which every individual Hudson result that year should be read.²

Within that total the championship was a fight between two Hudson drivers. The Hall of Fame biography says Flock and Herb Thomas staged a furious battle for the title, and that Flock won eight times in 34 races. NASCAR's own profile of Thomas says he also won eight races in 1952 and finished second to Flock. Thomas had been NASCAR's champion in a Hudson in 1951, the first driver to win the premier-series title in a Hornet by the Hall's account, so 1952 was a Hudson champion losing his crown to another Hudson driver.^1,4,2

The man who had given Hudson its first NASCAR win took his biggest 1952 honor in another series. Marshall Teague won the Daytona beach-road race in a Hornet in 1951, Hudson's first premier-series victory, and won there again in 1952, according to Mac's Motor City Garage. NASCAR's Research and Archives Center credits him with the AAA National Stock Car division championship for 1952. That title belongs to a different sanctioning body and must not be counted as a NASCAR championship. Hudson that year was winning in two organizations at once, with different drivers earning different honors.^5,2,6,7

The season was the work of a program, not of one famous car. Flock and Thomas won eight races each by the sources' counts, and the Hall's summary does not break the rest of Hudson's twenty-seven down race by race or driver by driver. Mac's credits Teague with seven NASCAR wins in Hornets over his career, and describes Thomas and the mechanic Smokey Yunick as the pairing that went on to win 24 times in 71 starts in 1953 and 1954. The National Historic Vehicle Register credits Thomas with 78 podium finishes in Hornets and the highest winning percentage in the sport's history.^1,4,2,5,8

One car from that season survives as physical evidence. The National Historic Vehicle Register says Hudson provided a 1952 Hornet two-door club coupe, VIN 7B-185596, to Herb Thomas halfway through the 1952 season, and that Smokey Yunick prepared it. The register calls it the only Hudson campaigned in NASCAR known to exist and records its later restoration and repainting and its present era-correct 7-X replacement engine; it is now owned by Al Schultz and displayed at the National Hudson Motor Car Company Museum. Its current state is a preservation state, not a specification for every 1952 race car.⁸

Under the hood of the showroom car was an L-head six, not a V8. Mac's describes the 308-cubic-inch Hornet engine in baseline form as rated at 145 horsepower and 275 lb-ft. Twin H-Power, two carburetors on a dual manifold, appeared in mid-1951, first as an over-the-counter dealer kit and then, the article says, as a regular production option in 1952; it was eventually rated at 170 horsepower. Old Cars Weekly gives 160 horsepower for Twin-H in its 1951 article, so the rating changed over time and the dates of each figure are not reconciled.^5,7

Why a six-cylinder car won so often is a question the sources answer with its construction. Mac's says racers recognized the Hornet's low center of gravity, battleship construction and muscular engine, and notes that Hudson lacked the money to develop a modern overhead-valve V8. The low-slung body and the big six therefore had to carry the fight on their own. The same article describes a later 7-X engine, a factory-blueprinted H-145 with overbored cylinders and a special camshaft, offered over the counter; the Thomas car's current engine is one of those.^5,8

The showroom went the other way. The Hudson-Essex-Terraplane Club's serial-number compilation, which shares a lineage with the Standard Catalog of American Cars, counts 35,921 Hornets for 1952, series 7B, down from 43,666 in 1951: a fall of about 18 percent in the year Hudson won 27 NASCAR races. No split by body style, engine or transmission has been confirmed in an accessible source, so how many 1952 Hornets carried Twin H-Power, or were Hollywood hardtops or convertibles, is unknown. Every 1952 Hornet carries its 7B serial plate on the right front door hinge pillar.^3,2

Winning did not reverse that slide. The compilation counts 27,208 Hornets for 1953 and 24,833 for 1954, while the Hall of Fame records that Hudson kept the manufacturers' title both years. The Hall names Thomas as the star of the whole effort, with 39 Hudson wins, and Dick Rathmann a distant second with 13. Lifetime totals disagree: the Hall's materials give 79 and 80 Hudson wins and the National Historic Vehicle Register gives 81, a difference no source yet reconciles with a defined counting rule.^3,2,8

The 1952 champion carried what he learned elsewhere. The Hall of Fame biography follows Flock to Carl Kiekhaefer's Chryslers, where in 1955 he won 18 races and a second championship, and NASCAR's own record of that season makes the same move. Hudson merged with Nash-Kelvinator in 1954, and the Hall records that Hudson production ended on June 25, 1957. The 1952 season remains the high point of the record: 27 wins from 34 races, a champion who clinched it upside down, and a surviving car that Hudson handed to Herb Thomas halfway through the year.^1,9,2,8