couldn’t disguise the fact that the Nash
body was in its third year — probably
the big reason for the drop — but the re-
sult was distinctive enough that the 1951
Airfl ytes stood out again.
The fastback roofl ine still continued
into the trunk lid, which was now brack-
eted by a pair of short tailfi ns trailing
rearward from behind the B-pillar on
two-doors or the C-pillar on four-doors.
The fi ns allowed for higher tail lamps
compared to their previous location in
the trunk lid, but the key change in front
was a new grille. Vertical bars replaced
the eggcrate, and if that didn’t match
the new tail lamps in terms of safety
improvements, it did indeed freshen the
look.
“Nash presents the world’s most
modern cars,” advertising boasted, “the
brilliant new Airfl ytes for 1951” ...
“Note the new modern front with oval
air intake. The massive new Guard-Rail
bumpers. It’s one sweet sweep of line,
to the Sky-Flow rear fenders and racing
teardrop tail” ... “They are America’s
new automobile values” and “new in jet-
line beauty.” In the case of “the distin-
guished Ambassador,” potential owners
were urged to “drive this lordly master
of the highways.” It was for the most part
salesmanship, but then as now, Nashes
have rarely been described as anything
less than good cars and have often been
cited as examples of excellent value.
Admittedly, however, the 1949 through
1951 Airfl ytes’ appearance is a love-it-
or-hate-it design, but tastes can change.
From ‘leave it’ to ‘love it’
“As a kid, I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t
give you two cents for one of these,” said
Don Rancatti, the Williamstown, Mass.,
owner of the 1951 Ambassador four-
door featured here. “You looked at them
and they were ugly. A neighbor of mine
had one, a 1951 Nash Ambassador, and
he was a salesman and he didn’t know a
thing about the car. He’d go out there in
the winter and try to start it. He’d fl ood
it and it wouldn’t start,
and of course that all got
blamed on the car. ‘It’s a
Nash. What do you ex-
pect?’
“But as I got older,
I thought, ‘These aren’t
ugly.’”
After more than a year
of searching, he found
the Ambassador in about
2006 when it was adver-
tised for sale on the Nash
Car Club of America’s website. The
seller, he recalled, had purchased it from
a woman who’d used it to commute to
college and it was in excellent condition
with no rust and a nearly perfect interior.
It needed paint and some minor work to
get the overdrive operating properly, and
he installed electronic ignition, a non-
stock oil fi lter and a starter relay.
The Nash now has less than 60,000
miles showing. Rancatti said that it’s
ready for any trip and when he drives
it, the reactions among those who seeit are consistent.
“The fi rst thing you get,” he said, “is,
‘What year is it?’ Or, ‘What is it?’ One
or the other is fi rst. I think, ‘What is it?’
comes fi rst and then they want to know
what year.
“Some of them are aware of Nash.
Others, I’ll say, ‘It predates AMC,
American Motors.’ ‘Oh.’ Some of them
don’t even know who American Mo-
tors was. ‘Oh, yeah, American Motors.
I didn’t know that.’ ”Anyone who’s experienced an Air-
fl yte won’t be surprised that he calls it a
“very nice driver” and while he said he’d
probably opt for the Hydra-Matic if he
had it to do over again, the three-speed
with overdrive has advantages. His fuel
economy is about 21 or 22 miles to the
gallon, which is roughly what Nash ad-
vertised, but 70 or 75 mph on the open
road is no problem.
“Without overdrive,” Rancatti said,
“it’d be howling ...
“The steering is slow compared to a
modern car and it’s a big steering wheel,
but with the radials on it, it doesn’t wan-
der. With the old ones, it was all over the
place. I don’t know how we drove those
when we were young.”
He owns other cars, but has no hesi-
tation in saying that buying the Nash
was the right move.
“The car drives nice,” he observed.
“That’s probably its most endearing at-
tribute. The thing is easy to drive. It’s a
one-hand driver ... You can relax driv-
ingit.”http://www.oldcarsweekly.com August 22, 2019 ❘ 27
Nash slightly toned down the Airflyte
dashboard for 1951 as the earlier mod-
els used a gauge cluster mounted in a
pod attached to the steering column
that it called the Uniscope.The Ambassador’s overhead-valve six is “the famous Jet-Fire engine that chal-
lenges all others on performance.” Its 234.8 cubic inches produces 115 hp.