Not wanting to step on Monk's great USS Hornet Found thread . . . It reminded me that a lot of the great performance car names have come from WWII military inspiration. Corvette, Mustang, Hellcat . . . .
And there was the Hudson Hornet . . . an early NASCAR star, as even youngsters who watched the Disney "Cars" film series knows.
Yet when AMC Boss George Mason suddenly dropped dead in October 1954 . . . . as the Hornets were becoming "Hashes," a clueless, performance-hating George Romney (yep daddy of ol' Willard Mitt hisself) took over.
The whole Hornet namplate is canned. Daddy Romney goes ape over the subsequent AMA racing ban and sluggish compact cars (which he'd apparently been an advocate of from his earliest days as a trainee at Nash-Kelvinator).
The Hornet nameplate briefly came back almost 15 years later. But other than an often forgotten SC/360
and a Jim Wangers/Motortown tape-stripe "AMX" (https://www.hemmings.com/magazine/mu...X/3701061.html) the Hornet revival never amounted to squat.
How is it that a nameplate can be so thoroughly steeped in both military and racing glory, yet be cavalierly cast aside?
And there was the Hudson Hornet . . . an early NASCAR star, as even youngsters who watched the Disney "Cars" film series knows.
Yet when AMC Boss George Mason suddenly dropped dead in October 1954 . . . . as the Hornets were becoming "Hashes," a clueless, performance-hating George Romney (yep daddy of ol' Willard Mitt hisself) took over.
The whole Hornet namplate is canned. Daddy Romney goes ape over the subsequent AMA racing ban and sluggish compact cars (which he'd apparently been an advocate of from his earliest days as a trainee at Nash-Kelvinator).
The Hornet nameplate briefly came back almost 15 years later. But other than an often forgotten SC/360
and a Jim Wangers/Motortown tape-stripe "AMX" (https://www.hemmings.com/magazine/mu...X/3701061.html) the Hornet revival never amounted to squat.
How is it that a nameplate can be so thoroughly steeped in both military and racing glory, yet be cavalierly cast aside?
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