Beau Nash

When independent U.S. automakers started their postwar sales race, Nash got off to a slow start. It clunked along with an overstuffed, bathtublike car while Studebaker lengthened its lead in the No. 1 independent position behind the Big Three. But this week Nash took the wraps off a new 1952 model that made motorists and competitors sit up & take notice.

The new Nash Statesman and Ambassador (Nash's small car, the Rambler, is essentially unchanged) are clean and speedy-looking, with sloping hoods that give them greater road vision than many other U.S. cars. The new models have 25% more window space than last year's and the widest seats on the road (64 1/2-in. rear seat, 65-in. front), although the body is only 1 inch wider.

Nash's new look came from a new designer, Italy's Pinin Farina, who has made his name as a high-priced custom builder of auto bodies for Indian rajas, Persian shahs, etc. All such cars, no matter whether the chassis are Rolls-Royces, Alfa-Romeos, Fiats, etc., are usually known as "Farinas." Pudgy, nervous Designer Farina, who has 650 workers in his Turin plant, always looks as if he had just crawled out from under a car (as he usually has). Unlike most auto designers, who work with clay mockups, Farina works with sheet aluminum, which he hammers into shape on wooden frames. He is affectionately called by Nash "the world's greatest fender bender." Farina lives more like a mechanic than a high-priced designer, sleeps in a room in which a bed is the only piece of furniture, a naked bulb the only light. He allows himself one luxury: a window air-conditioning unit.

Besides the new Nash sedans, Farina has also sleeked up the racing-type Nash-Healey sport roadster which Nash brought out last year. This year Nash will make 200 to sell at slightly more than last year's $4,200.

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